Edmonton’s newly proposed airport outlet mall will help to fill a retail gap, says a University of Alberta expert.

“Edmonton is a fast-growing, relatively affluent, relatively young city and that means that we’re a good place for retail,” said Dr. Kyle Murray, director of the University of Alberta’s School of Retailing.

The Outlet Collection at EIA — the 85-store outlet mall planned for 2016 on land near the Edmonton International Airport — will draw crowds because Edmonton is already under-retailed, he said, and with expected growth trends to continue, the new mall should fair well without drawing business away from existing retailers.

“It’s always hard to say until they’re built and you see what traffic patterns are like, but South Edmonton Common right now is an incredibly busy shopping environment by almost all of the measures you normally look at,” explained Murray.

“A lot of the stores in that development are doing the most sales per square foot than they do as a chain in Canada. And West Edmonton Mall is sort of the same.”

He said the new outlet will probably attract business from smaller regions south of the city and possibly bring more traffic to the city from the north.

“It makes it much easier as you’re flying through Edmonton to maybe stay over one night and do a bunch of Christmas shopping on your way back to a more remote community that maybe doesn’t have much in the way of retail at all,” he said.

The potential doesn’t come without risk, however. Whether bricks and mortar is the way to go in the future remains to be seen.

“I don’t think real estate companies are giving enough credit to the threat of online shopping,” said Murray.

During the late 1990s, when worries escalated about the impact of Internet shopping on bricks and mortar stores, Murray said the impact was less than expected. But that only gave retailers and builders false confidence in physical stores.

“When you build something like this, it’s a long-term development. We’re talking 30-40 years would be the normal horizon for something like that,” he said. “When you talk to retailers now, they’re actually getting very nervous about the huge amounts of market share that are moving online in some categories.”

Some comfort may be found in population increases, though. Murray said if the population manages to double, the market could still handle more stores than exist today, meaning the outlet mall might not be the last of its kind to make Edmonton home.

david.lazzarino@sunmedia.ca

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