First Capital Realty Inc. continues to mix it up at the Shops at New West.

The company purchased the commercial and related parking in the Plaza 88 development Shops at New West from the Degelder Group in 2012. The development is built around and over the New Westminster SkyTrain station.

article continues below

The company, which develops, owns, and operates urban shopping centres and commercial properties across Canada, stated at the time of the $100 million-purchase that it was excited to add “this urban and unique asset” to its Vancouver portfolio.

“We are always looking to make improvements to the Shops. This is a fairly unique centre. There are lots of TOD – transit oriented development – centres, but this one, wrapping around the station as it does, is a bit novel. And being on three levels is a bit novel,” said Ralph Huizinga, First Capital Realty’s vice president of acquisitions and development in Western Canada. “We are sort of learning it as we go and determining what works and what doesn’t. We have continued to invest money in improving it in ways we think make sense.”

In addition to making physical improvements to the Shops at New West, such as installing a rain screen to keep visitors dry in rainy weather, Huizinga said First Capital has attempted to make the commercial space a destination, rather than a place that commuters pass through.

“The challenge there is you have significant commuter traffic and not a lot of focused shoppers,” he said. “The cinema there is good, Safeway does well and a number of other tenants do well, but a number of original tenants did not do well. They didn’t do well from all the traffic there, so we have mixed things up a bit. The Hub (restaurant) was important and the gym was important. Those are the kinds of uses we thought were necessary to bring people to the centre - not just the commuters.”

The latest change being planned for the Shops at New West would see a new three-storey building built at the corner of Eighth and Columbia streets and connected to the existing commercial space. In addition to providing another access point into the Shops at New West, First Capital believes the CRAFT Beer Market would be a place that would draw people to the downtown site.

“CRAFT is a brew pub – it’s food primary but it’s obviously got that cache as a microbrewery as well, which gives it a bit more of a unique character and a larger format,” Huizinga said.