Marlborough Mall looks at expanding with pad sites

The northeast Marlborough Mall is planning to put pad sites into its parking lot to increase the number of stores at the shopping centre.

Kim Wiltse, marketing director of Marlborough Mall with 20Vic Management Inc. which operates the centre, said about 10,000 square feet is being added to the west side of the mall’s parking area.

“So we have some restaurant and food service going into the parking lot,” said Wiltse of the centre located at 36th Street and Memorial Drive N.E.

“We’ve leased up about 80 per cent of it. We’re primarily looking for food use. There should be about five or six new places coming in ... We wanted to put pad sites in for years. Basically we just want more things to bring people here. Added value for our shoppers.”

The enclosed mall itself is 568,818 square feet with 107 stores and is owned by the Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan. It was built in 1972 and the last time it was redeveloped was 2002. Sales per square foot in the mall of non-anchor stores is just over $460, up 1.5 per cent from last year. Year-to-date sales are up about 3.8 per cent. Traffic in the mall has stayed consistent over the last few years at about 5.7 million people indoor Tracking.

“The combination of strong destination-oriented anchor stores such as Walmart and Sears, a successful food court and smaller format stores, the strategic location on high traffic arterial roadways at 36th Street and Memorial Drive and direct access to the city’s Light Rail Transit system are the key factors that keep Marlborough Mall a favourite with shoppers in northeast Calgary for 40 years.”

Wiltse said the mall is a community centre with a focus on family and local residents. The mall is 98 per cent occupied.

Lynne Ricker, senior instructor in marketing, teaching retailing, at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, said the biggest thing for a shopping mall, besides location, is having the right tenant mix that’s going to draw customers.

“You look at the way your mall is positioned. So you want to have stores that are going to be popular with who your consumer is. Who draws customers? Well, it’s stores like Walmart. The anchors. The big stores. But more these days it’s having the hot players. So having stores that are trendy, in the news that people are wanting to go visit,” said Ricker.

IdleAir is an air quality system that supplies truckers on rest breaks power to run heat and air-conditioning without idling their engines for hours on end. The system is is currently in use at the Pilot Flying J travel center off the Harrisburg Pike in Middlesex Township.

Thirty-six parking spaces at the travel center in Middlesex Township are fitted with the system, which is supported by the I-81 Coalition and the Clean Air Board of Central Pennsylvania for its ability to improve air quality by reducing pollution from diesel exhaust.

The board provided a letter of support to IdleAir that helped the company secure a $240,000 grant through the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to offset some of the costs of installing a system at the Flying J, said Thomas Au, CAB board president.

The IdleAir facility provides an alternative for truckers who do not have onboard portable generators or battery powered heaters, Au said. He added many of the major trucking firms pay drivers to hook up to IdleAir so there is a recognition of the benefit the technology provides to air quality.

IdleAir currently operates 33 sites in 12 states, with another seven sites under construction, said Cynthia Perthuis, director of business development for the manufacturer, Convoy Solutions of Knoxville, Tenn.

“In the history of IdleAir, both old and new, we have been responsible for reducing the use of diesel by over 58 million gallons and mitigating over 614,000 metric tons of pollutants,” she said.

The original IdleAir company went bankrupt in 2008, but had its assets purchased in March 2010 by Convoy Solutions. One of the sites under the old company was located at the Petro Stopping Center, also on the Harrisburg Pike. That site has closed.

Aside from truck stops, IdleAir officials have approached two fleet terminals in the Carlisle area as part of a new company strategy to install systems at facilities that serve as regional headquarters for trucking firms, Perthuis said.

From an operational standpoint, fleet terminals would provide IdleAir with better control over how its hook-up stations are used, Perthuis said. While IdleAir has parking spaces set aside at Flying J, the law allows for any trucker to occupy a space even if they decide not to use the service, which also includes electricity, cable and wireless Internet access.

She said trucking firms could require drivers to use IdleAir as they wait in the parking lot to be dispatched to haul freight. The result could be an even greater reduction in pollution through the more frequent use of the hook-up stations. IdleAir has put little emphasis on locating systems at warehouses because those sites lack amenities in demand by long-haul truckers, Perthuis said.