Edmonton City Centre mall owner goes into receivership

The company that owns Edmonton City Centre mall and three attached office towers in the downtown core is in receivership.

A court order granted on Monday put accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in charge of managing and operating assets owned by Edmonton City Centre Inc. That includes the mall, TD Tower, 102A Tower, Centre Point Place and building parkades — in total, about 1.4 million square feet of office and retail space.

Montreal-based commercial real-estate lender Otéra Capital Inc. filed a statement of claim last week seeking the receivership order.

According to the filing, Edmonton City Centre owes Otéra nearly $140 million under credit agreements struck in August 2019.

The statement of claim alleges Edmonton City Centre defaulted on the terms of two loans, with an initial failure to make a required payment in December 2024, followed by further missing payments. Otéra agreed to hold off on taking further action until July 1, but after making a final demand for the outstanding amounts, filed a lawsuit on July 2.

In a legal brief outlining arguments for the receivership order, Otéra representatives said City Centre is a "complex property" that needs active management by a receiver during the sales process.

"Otéra's security needs protection and safeguarding from waste because City Centre is not being properly funded and maintained," the brief says.

In a statement to CBC, a representative for LaSalle Asset Management — one of the named beneficial owners of Edmonton City Centre — said, "Unprecedented market shifts in recent years have created unique challenges for this property.

"We've worked closely with all parties, including our investors and lender, to find the best possible resolution. Edmonton City Centre remains open and committed to providing service to all its visitors."

Edmonton City Centre has lost several large tenants in recent years — Hudson's Bay shut down its store in 2020, and Sport Chek pulled out in 2023. A former Coles bookstore location also shuttered in 2022, but a new Revolver location recently opened in its former space, selling records, movies and pop culture items.

CBC Edmonton is also a tenant in Edmonton City Centre.

Mall key to 'trajectory of downtown'

Edmonton Downtown Business Association CEO Puneeta McBryan said news of the receivership isn't necessarily a surprise to people who live and work downtown.

"We know that the asset owners have been pretty stretched for some time," she said.

Challenges bringing people and businesses back to downtown Edmonton after the COVID pandemic are nothing new, especially as a significant portion of the downtown workforce began working from home at least part of the week.

But McBryan said struggles for Edmonton City Centre started earlier, with the January 2020 closure of Holt Renfrew in Manulife Place, which is connected to the mall.

Many downtown shopping centres across the country are struggling, McBryan said. But in Edmonton, there's just too much retail space for the current size of the downtown population.

"So we need to do two things: We need to rapidly grow our population, which we're working on trying to get more residential built, but likely also demolish or repurpose a huge portion of our retail."

The Edmonton City Centre property stretches from 101st to 103rd Street in between 103rd and 102nd Avenue. At the intersection of two LRT lines, with Rogers Place just to the north and Churchill Square, the Winspear Centre, Citadel Theatre and Art Gallery of Alberta nearby, it's a consequential piece of downtown.

"It's this sort of wall right now at the centre of our downtown. And what happens in the mall is inextricably tied to the trajectory of our downtown," McBryan said.

"I think whoever comes next, whoever buys the asset … we're all crossing our fingers that that happens soon, and it's someone with a really good plan.

They should bring in an expert and really put together a strategy that reimagines this property for what our downtown really needs and what the market will actually support."