Sporting goods store Bushtakah may be moving to the Glebe. So too could dog boutique shop Bark & Fitz or The Cake Shop.
If the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group can swing it, there will be an H&M store in Lansdowne Park and maybe a Cora’s restaurant and an LA Fitness location.
Since OSEG cannot guarantee the final layout of the retail area of a redeveloped Lansdowne Park, there have not been any signed lease agreements with possible tenants, but OSEG frontman Roger Greenberg did offer some indication of the stores that might move in if the plan is approved by city council on June 28.
Bushtakah, Nood Furniture, Highlander Heritage Brew Pub, Bridgehead, and The Cake Shop have all submitted letters of interest.
Another list of targeted tenants include Mountain Equipment Co-op, H&M, Pottery Barn, Indigo, Pickle Barrel and Moxie’s.
“You can see very clearly the types of tenants we want to have in there,” said Greenberg to city council on Thursday.
Glebe BIA executive director Catherine Lindquist said they were not impressed with the number of national chain stores on the list of potential tenants at Lansdowne.
The majority of shops in the Glebe and Old Ottawa South are independently owned and operated specialty shops.
The Glebe BIA has been arguing that the size of the proposed retail development in the park is too large. A report from the Market Research Corporation recommended that the maximum additional retail space in the Glebe should be 36,200 square feet over the next three years.
A Tate Economic Research report, supported by a third-party review by Malone Given Parsons, found that the area could support an additional 360,000 square feet.
The Glebe BIA said the peer review was not balanced in its scrutiny or critique.
Mimi Ward, a partner with Malone Given Parsons, defended her findings, stating that both reports contained a lot of great information for developing marketing strategies and, based on their peer review of the market demand, they concluded that up to 360,000 square feet of commercial and retail space is “warranted and viable.”
