Jeremy Klaszus

Jillian MacPherson lost her job when the TD Square store she worked at didn't get its lease renewed

TD Square is a giant construction site these days. Ceilings have been ripped open, exposing wires and vents overhead. Many storefronts have been replaced by bright green walls boasting of “exciting new stores” arriving soon.

Calgary Eaton Centre, TD Square and the former Sears building — known collectively as The Core — are all getting a serious facelift. The new mall is being pitched as “a premier shopping destination unlike anything Calgary has seen before,” a “collection of better quality and high-end fashion and lifestyle retailers.” Holt Renfrew will triple its size, and American clothier Brooks Brothers is also moving in.

Designed by Toronto-based firm MMC International Architecture (Calgary-based Gibbs Gage Architects is the associate on the project), the renovated mall will be covered with a giant skylight that spans three city blocks — the world’s largest skylight, according to the ads.

But while new stores are coming in, others are leaving, and the changes have left some people like Jillian MacPherson jobless in hard times. For just over two years, MacPherson managed an art import store in the mall. Art of My Heart was in TD Square for about 17 years. It spent most of that time on the third floor, but last June it moved downstairs near the HMV on a month-to-month lease. “We had to move if we wanted to stick around,” says owner Howard Yarrow.

In January, Yarrow and MacPherson received word that their lease wouldn’t be renewed. The store closed by the end of February. “There was no choice,” says Yarrow. “They’re renovating, and that’s the end of it.”

Yarrow’s shop isn’t the only one that’s been pushed out by the redevelopment. Stores as varied as Eddie Bauer and mmmuffins have also gone, leaving owners looking for new locations and employees looking for work. “I don’t think they took into consideration the livelihoods they were wiping out,” says MacPherson. “There are a lot of people who do retail jobs for a living. I’m one of them. Not all of us are teenagers who can go get a job at McDonald’s.”

Cindy Turnquist, marketing director for 20 VIC Management Inc. — the project’s property manager — says leases are negotiated by her company’s head office in Toronto. “When every lease becomes available, there’s certain key elements that the leasing team has to look at, one of them being sales,” she says. “Are they thriving in the shopping centre or not? Obviously, you want to work with retailers who the shoppers want in the shopping centre.”

Some retailers, says Turnquist, left the mall for logistical reasons. “Basically, we have to get in and access those areas of the mall so that we can put in the steel beams that are going to be supporting the skylight and everything like that,” she says. “So it would have been virtually impossible for a lot of those tenants to stay in business while this is happening.” Some stores, like The Body Shop, will return to the mall. Others, like Eddie Bauer, are in lease negotiations. Still others, like Art of My Heart, aren’t returning at all.

For MacPherson, the changes at The Core are puzzling — especially given the current economic climate. “Who’s going to be shopping in these high-end stores with everything that’s going on?” she wonders. Independent stores, argues MacPherson, gave the mall its character and distinctiveness. “Instead of developing that, they’ve just cleansed that out and decided that’s not valuable.”

Despite the recession, the redevelopment — worth “hundreds of millions” of dollars, says Turnquist — is still on track for a fall 2010 completion. “We’re just trying to develop the best merchandising mix possible for the shoppers,” Turnquist says. For MacPherson and Yarrow, the hunt is on for a new location, or new jobs. “Workers still have to pay their rents and bills while they’re restructuring,” says MacPherson.