Factory Outlet Winnipeg - Outlets of Seasons

Outlets of Seasons

It looks like the development across the road from Seasons of Tuxedo will be known as Outlets of Seasons. Forster Projects and Harvard Developments look to open the first part of the new factory outlet mall in summer of 2015.

It is a race to see who gets their factory outlet mall up first. The factory outlets of Tanger indicated they were interested in building in Winnipeg in 2011 and are only now starting to build across Canada. They may be beaten the punch by Outlets of Seasons.

The area across from Seasons of Tuxedo is 117 acres and has been zoned for residential as well as commercial. The retail available for leasing is a shade over 850,000 square feet. Just over 330,000 square feet is set aside for factory outlet stores.

To put that into perspective, the 100 stores of the Albertville Premium factory Outlet mall in Minnesota occupy 400,000 square feet. Best guess is that Winnipeg could be hosting upwards of 80 factory outlet stores in the configured space.

Outlets of Seasons across from IKEA

A typical factory outlet mall might have Nike, J. Crew, Pottery Barn, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Lacoste and Kenneth Cole. Some of these stores already exist, some don't in the Winnipeg market.

Factory Outlet in Yellow

The building of this factory outlet does not preclude the building of another but it is the rare city that hosts more than one.

The idea of a hotel and a movie theatre on the site seems unlikely now but there are a few places it still might be possible north or south of the Sterling Lyon.

A few key open spaces available

Some retailers like Target have been stung by not being ready for the Canadian market and have lost a bucket full of cash. Still others have been quite successful and U.S. retailers still look at Canada as an uptapped market.

If Winnipeg can only have one factory outlet mall, you can better believe the race to get started is well under way. Expect a lot of work between now and 2015.