^^ The condos on Waterfront are likely as far from a major grocery store as the Selkirk Ave area is from the McGregor and Mountain Safeway. Often when people talk about the "food desert" they are really saying "there is no 60,000+ sq ft, major chain grocery store that is within a walkable distance from my condo on Waterfront". I know there was lots of outcry over the closure of the Extra Foods on Main St when the then Safeway, now Coop, immediately next door remained open. It often gets wrapped up as being about inner city poverty though.
In terms of if Loblaws in counting the No Frills stores in their 50 store count it is hard to truly say due to the lack of information in their press release. While the new locations are both franchise locations they are flying a Loblaws owned banner, featuring Loblaws private label products on properties leased from Loblaws. I think there is a pretty good chance they are being counted in the 50 stores.
In terms of the former Polo Park Target location, Shindico, the leasing agent for the site, posts this on their site:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Shindico Blog
It’s going to be difficult and costly if that store needs to be subdivided, and it would also take time. Ideally, another department store would be the most suitable and compatible tenant with the vision for the rest of the site.
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Source
Their leasing site also lists the size on that location as being 140,000 sq ft which rules out virtually every retailer with established operations in Canada that would be willing to consider a new location in Winnipeg. My guess is that you could perhaps talk Sears into moving their from Polo Park but you would be throwing out some pretty heavy concessions to make that happen. The Sear space in the mall is of course far more attractive but the mall as a whole would likely see long term benefit in having Simons move into that space. Having waited out the Winnipeg market for many years I doubt that Simons would be interested in trying to anchor the free standing Plaza site instead.
Other interesting notes from the Shindico site is the Plaza site conceptual plans now include their "Outlets At Polo Park" concept featuring an approximately 30,000 sq ft anchor which would in the south east corner of the site. The north east corner now is listing a hotel. Between the hotel on the north east corner and the Target site (north west) is a grocery store still listed. Comparing the size to the Outlet anchor is looked to be around 30,000 sq ft which would roughly match the size of larger ethnic focused stores like T&T. No where to be found though is the residential component which the City of Winnipeg had included as a bid condition when selling the site.
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