Bri-Mor Developments continues to build out its retail presence in Calgary with its latest project an 85,000-square-foot centre called Cityscape Square in the northeast, which is anchored by an ethnic grocery store.
Aleem Dhanani, Managing Director of the company, said the development will provide a full range of services from family-oriented restaurants, retail and local specialty shops, daycare, health and wellness and professional services along with three drive-thru pad locations.
“We know that Calgary is a great place to do business. The demographic is great. There’s a lot of economic potential in Alberta and Calgary is kind of the leading engine there and there’s a great entrepreneurial spirit. It’s a city that’s made up of entrepreneurs and with a lot of great values and great ambition,” he said.
“So we know we want to be here and we’ve created a set of tools to help us absorb the ups and downs of the market. You can make a success of any market but you have to adapt to that market and you have to adapt over the different times.”
The retail development is located on the highly-visible corner of Metis Trail and Cityscape Boulevard.
“It’s in the northeast which is the fastest growing quadrant in the city and it’s in the fastest growing node in that quadrant where even during COVID the price point was such that home sales didn’t really stop,” said Dhanani. “It’s growing at such a fast pace. When it’s a build out, we’re expecting 80,000 people within three kilometres and with those projections as well as the future LRT, this abuts to Metis Trail which is such a great collector. It means our tenants can service not only the community but then they get to service people going and coming from work.”
Across the street, a 1.9-million-square-foot industrial real estate development is also under construction.
“So we get the benefit of residential on one side and then we’ve got the worker customers. That’s a sizeable industrial play so we’re expecting it to become a significant employee base.”
The first openings include Guru Fine Indian Dining and Sweet Shop, southwest Calgary’s premier Indian fine dining restaurant with a second location with a concept that incorporates a private dining room, sit down restaurant and a sweet shop. Guru specializes in a wide range of dishes from the Indian subcontinent.
Sanjha Punjab Grocery is one of Calgary’s best known independent Indian and South Asian grocery stores, offering a wide range of authentic high quality grocery items and fresh produce and this is their fourth location in Calgary.
There will be nine buildings on the site. Retail will take up about 70 per cent of the space.
“In the face of COVID we actually started construction of Cityscape when the vaccines weren’t out yet and society was wondering what’s going to happen but we made the decision to dig because we have that confidence. As we look forward, the one thing that is highlighted about Calgary, particularly the entrepreneurs in Calgary, is that there’s still a lot of entrepreneurial courage to actually start a business again,” said Dhanani.
“So as much as there was challenge over the last several years with COVID, we haven’t found that retailers are not excited to come, expand or to build out.
“I think what’s important for retail is to make sure that there’s people ready to purchase their products. You want to be close to rooftops is what we say. When you have 80,000 people within three kilometres there’s a lot of rooftops there and that makes for an even greater success of your site. Our projects are quite strategically placed.”
Cityscape Square will include a 7-11 Convenience, Gas and Carwash, Crown Liquor, Apollo Physio, Cityscape Dental, Cityscape Optometry, Subway, Crown Barbers, Mary Browns Chicken, Dominos Pizza, Lahori BBQ, Madras Café, and Summit Kids Day Care.
Dhanani said the area has a heavy concentration of South Asian and Asian people and it is very culturally diverse and culturally animated.
He said the company has been blessed with very strong strategic homebuilding partners in some of its developments such as Mattamy, Brookfield, Qualico, Cedar Glen.
“It’s because of those partnerships that we get an even greater source of strength in dealing with the market and bringing the best in class assets and teams to the table. Strategic partnerships have been really critical,” added Dhanani.
Bri-mor Developments was launched in 1988 by Haider Dhanani but, after his death, his wife Fatima took the reins determined to celebrate her husband’s vision of a company run on a value-based approach to managing real estate assets, with a focus on trust of customers and industry partners, value creation and a strong work ethic.
Fatima said Bri-mor started as a property management company and evolved to where it is today.
“From property management, I started acquiring small apartment buildings because at that time, and this was about 25 years ago, the market was conducive to that segment of the real estate and profitable at that time, and once I got the handle of managing that and learning the ropes of making profitable transactions, I went on to picking up small parcels of land and that’s where the development side of the business started,” she said.
“It evolved very slowly. It was all market driven. We have followed the market. We have also entered the residential single-family and that has been pretty good.”
