Loblaws City Market has been announced as one of the anchor retail tenants of The Post — the ambitious mixed-use redevelopment of the city-block sized old Canada Post building in downtown Vancouver.

The mid-market grocery store chain will be opening a location within the lower floors of The Post, taking up 50,000 sq. ft. of the heritage building podium’s 185,000 sq ft. of retail space.

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There will be multiple entrances into the store, with the main entrance located on the Hamilton Street side and secondary entrances from the indoor shopping mall-like retail concourse on the Homer Street side.

This will be the largest City Market store in Metro Vancouver, and the retailer’s fourth store in the region after other locations at Park Royal in West Vancouver, Lonsdale in North Vancouver, and Arbutus Ridge in the Vancouver Westside.

City Market within The Post will also be the largest grocery store within the downtown peninsula, but will be smaller than the chain’s 85,000-sq-ft flagship location within Maple Leaf Gardens in downtown Toronto.

Loblaws owns a number of Canada’s largest grocery store chains, including Real Canadian Superstore, T & T Supermarket, No Frills, and Freshmart.

“With a focus on fresh, local, quality food, we look forward to bringing our love of food and unique chef inspired meal options to The Post and Crosstown community,” said Mark Van Doodewaard, VP of Real Estate Development for Loblaws, in a statement.

Other known retail components within The Post include a 20,000-sq-ft world-class food hall designed by New York-based AvroKO and 20,000 sq. ft. of traditional restaurant space.

Tenants for the restaurant and remaining retail spaces have not been made public yet.

Above the retail podium — within the upper levels of the heritage building and two new office towers perched on the rooftop — will be 1.13 million sq. ft. of office space, including 416,000 sq. ft. of office space for Amazon’s latest expansion into the city.

The building’s office and retail spaces are expected to generate employment for over 7,000 people, with 3,000 of those jobs being Amazon positions.

Parking for office workers and shoppers will be located within several levels — in the basement, as well as the heritage podium’s upper levels between the retail levels and office towers. The upper parking levels will be accessed by a unique circular ramp going through the core of the building.

Initial concepts for the redevelopment included condominiums, but a later concept eliminated all of the residential space in favour of greater office uses.

When fully complete in 2023, the activity generated by The Post will have a profound economic impact in downtown Vancouver as it will be a major catalyst for the continued eastward expansion of the Central Business District.

It is also the single largest infusion of new retail space within the downtown peninsula since the 2000 opening of International Village Mall.

QuadReal Property Group is the developer behind the project, and Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership is the architect.

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