RioCan aims to build highrises at 3 Ottawa shopping centres

Retail leasing giant RioCanaims to re-invent 20 of itsold, tired malls in major Canadian citiesbyputting up high-rise towers withapartments, offices and ground-floor storesin a bid to deal with changing retail trends.

The country's largest real estate investment trust held an open house forOttawaresidentson Wednesday eveningto lay out a proposal for Westgate Shopping Centre, whichit intends to submit to city planners in January.

• Westgate Shopping Centre's future up for discussion Wednesday night

The early designs showfive towers to be builtover the next decade or two,bringing 1,100 residential unitsto the site ofone of the city's oldest malls. The first towers on Carling Avenue could be 24 storeys, while the ones closer to the Queensway could be 36 storeys.

"Retail's changing. A lot of people are shopping online. You can get groceries even by picking up the phone now," said Stuart Craig,RioCan's vice-president of planning and development.

"The one thing retailers have beensaying to us across the countryand we have 340 centres so we talk to a lot of retailers is you've got to bring more customers to our doorsteps."

Company has plans for Elmvale Acres, Silver CityGloucester

Craig sees RioCan putting in greenspace where he right now sees a "sea of asphalt."The site is attractive partly because the city intends to improve transit in the area in the next 15 years, he said.

The goal, Craig said, is to re-inventgood properties to make sure the company's real estate assets areused well and viable. RioCanis introducing residential as a way to strengthen its retail, he added.

At Westgate Shopping Centrealone, Craig saidRioCanplans to investmore than $200 million.

The company held a public meetingrecently about a similar long-termplan forElmvale Acres Shopping Centre on Ottawa's St. Laurent Boulevard, and it also has plans to build three towers at a strip of mostly empty stores at Silver CityGloucester.

The companymay eventually look at Lincoln Fields and Donald Plaza.

In addition to thoseprojects to intensify shoppingsites in Ottawa, Craig saidRioCan isconsidering othersacross the country:three in Calgary, one or two in Edmonton, two in Montrealand eight in the Greater Toronto Area.

"It's a huge capital expenditure, ultimately, but we're a fairly well-heeled company so we're prepared to take on the challenge," said Craig, who admitted RioCan'sstrategy is a "big gamble."

"I'll be honest; if we do one or two of these and theybomb, then the program will be shut down and instead of doing 20 across the country we'll only do a couple. Butwe're fairly optimistic that won't happen and we think there's a demand in the larger markets."

Residents who studied howWestgate Shopping Centre's site could look in the future worried about keeping their amenities, living through years ofconstructionand available transit.

"It's a good idea to havemaybe a grocery store in there and really get business going. It will be good for the community," said Risa Upton, who lives nearby and regularly uses the traditional mall with its long hallway and shops.

"But then it will be sad, because people won't be able to hang out there."