Bridgewater is the largest town, retail and service centre on the South Shore, so it makes sense to have a shopping area located there.
The South Shore Centre is the brand new name for the Eastside Plaza and Bridgewater Mall located across from one another on LaHave Street.
“We don’t see them as two separate properties, it’s one collective, retail property,” explained property manager Michael Levy of the Zenda Group in a phone interview with the South Shore Breaker from the company’s headquarters in Montreal.
“We serve Bridgewater with pleasure but these properties just don’t serve Bridgewater,” referring to a regional population of 100,000 who frequent the company’s tenant family stores and services.
Levy is the Vice-President of Asset and Property Management for the Zenda Group.
Currently its entire portfolio of assets in the Maritimes are those properties in Bridgewater. Their other properties are spread across Newfoundland and Labrador, Texas and Ohio.
Levy said renaming the retails properties collectively as the South Shore Centre is part of a refreshed visual identity as the company welcomes some new tenants — some known, some yet to be named — in the near future.
The brand revamp includes new exterior and interior signage and renovations to have three dedicated lounge areas. In cyberspace, shoppers and retailers will see fresh social media and web assets anchored on www.southshorecentre.com.
The company also recently announced Value Village will debut in the region in the fall after it takes over almost three fourths of the 3,000 square metres of space that Gow’s Home Hardware vacates at the end of May 2019.
“Our intention is to do a very expedited build-out for Value Village that will start June 1,” said Levy.
“New lighting, new floors, new walls, new everything. It will be a really stellar store when it’s done.”
Levy estimates the price tag to be about a million dollars paid for by the Zenda Group, which expects to turn over the space within sixty to 75 days so the national for-profit thrift store can open by October.
Working on the project is Architecture 49, designers of new Sobeys and NSLC stores (among others) and Seagate Construction, whose projects include other Value Village refits and expansions across the province.
“Value Village believes in this market for their business, and we’re very excited to welcome them to our community and work with them,” said Levy. “The traffic they bring is also proven. People come from far and away to shop there. I think the immediate community and the surrounding trade area is going to enjoy having them there.”
That the town’s enduring hardware store is consolidating with Home Furniture and opting for a new location across town on High Street this spring is water under the bridge for the company despite efforts they made to retain it in their retail family, said Levy.
“(Gow’s) are a valued tenant and we tried to make it work for them, but it is what it is,” adding that leasing space in smaller markets isn’t an easy sell. Levy admits they were also caught off-guard with the Leon’s Furniture Ltd. closure on the heels of re-tenanting Gow’s, too.
“We had a lot of work to do, but we’ve got the persistence and the patience to get these deals done,” he said, adding the company is working on finalizing tenants already in the area that will be announced soon.
“Bringing new stores to the market is our speciality,” said Levy.
“But we’ve been quite successful recently in assisting local retailers who want to relocate from other sites within the market and join our family, which we’re quite excited about.”
Levy cited Mark’s, H & R Block, Vogue Optical, Up Til Dawn and Kitchen Witch and Vogue Optical.
“Co-tenancy, professional management, synergy with the other tenants and parking as advantages they enjoy,” he said.
Besides the new retailers, Levy said he’s seeing the trend of their existing tenant mix renewing leases early and long-term.
Since acquiring the mall property in 2011, the Zenda Group has introduced retailers SportChek, Rossy and Winners to the region. Shoppers Drug Mart and Sobeys are also major tenants with approximately 60 other retailers and services including the Bell, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank, and The Chronicle Herald.
“The aim is to provide a shopping experience that will satisfy both visitors and local residents, with a good mix of national and local stores and services.”
