200 West Esplanade, the Esplanade Theatre building, a 5-storey retail and office building in the Lower Lonsdale area of North Vancouver has been sold by Colliers for $12,350,000 to First Capital Realty.

The building has a net rentable area of 38,628 SF, of which about 30,000 SF is cinema space and the balance is retail and office. The building was built in 1990 and is on a 17,928 SF site.

Deloitte Real Estate’s recent Crane Survey highlights a trend in retail mall ownership: there are few opportunities to buy malls, leading prospective mall owners to either build new developments or to reinvest in existing assets.

The report notes that a handful of groups own the majority of large retail assets in Metro Vancouver.

“Most of the larger shopping centres in Canada are owned by a select few groups, and they haven’t been sellers in recent years,” Andrew Evans, who co-authored the report, told Business in Vancouver.

Courtesy BIV. Read more: http://www.biv.com/article/20121113/BIV0111/121119994/0/small-business-confidence-continues-slide-in-june/mall-sales-scarcity-forcing-owners-to-reinvest-or-expand