New Westminster News Leader – Breathing life into New Westminster’s main streets.

Lots of places to eat and drink, few storefronts that aren’t retail oriented, and at least some representation of chain outlets are all signs of successful main streets, according to a university term paper written by a New Westminster councillor.

Along with sitting on council, Jonathan Coté is also an urban studies student at Simon Fraser University, and has written the paper “Reviving New Westminster’s Main Streets,” which looks at what makes a main street work and what New West’s streets need in order to improve.

“New Westminster has a tremendous advantage in that we have traditional main streets already in existence. For most municipalities in the Lower Mainland these don’t exist except in Vancouver. We have the bones in place. The challenge is how do we bring these to life and make sure these are neighbourhoods our residents want to shop in.”

Coté found the highest vacancy rates were on Twelfth Street (11.6 per cent) and East Columbia in Sapperton (11.4), while Columbia in the Downtown area was just 6.4 per cent and Sixth Street was 8.7. The latter two compared favourably to a pair of Vancouver’s most dynamic retail streets, Robson (6.9) and Denman (5.4).

Read more: http://www.newwestnewsleader.com/news/186342442.html

Richmond Review – Ball in Walmart’s court for Richmond development.

City hall’s planning and development department is beginning the new year with a fat file on its desk that won’t go away.

Plans for a Walmart-anchored shopping mall in West Cambie are back in planners’ hands, after city council’s planning committee late last month ordered staff to do more work on the file.

Proponents first pitched their plans 10 years ago, spawning dramatic change in a neighbourhood largely untouched by redevelopment.

Read more: http://www.richmondreview.com/news/185953841.html

From Bloomberg:

Loblaw Cos. (L)’s planned real-estate spinoff is giving Canada’s largest grocery chain leeway to do acquisitions.

Loblaw plans to put more than C$7 billion ($7.1 billion) of property into a real estate investment trust that will be sold through an initial public offering by mid-2013. While Loblaw will still own more than 80 percent of the REIT, it may receive C$670 million from the deal, according to Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Buying Safeway Inc.’s Canadian unit is logical as Loblaw faces more competition from Wal-Mart Stores Inc.  and Target Corp., said Veritas Investment Research Corp. Safeway, a grocer that got 15 percent of its $44 billion of sales in 2011 from Canada, is undervalued after falling 14 percent last year, Bank of Montreal said. Safeway trades at the cheapest price relative to revenue and earnings among North American food retailers larger than $1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Edward Jones & Co. said closely held Overwaitea Food Group, the western Canadian chain, is another option for Loblaw.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-03/loblaw-buying-canada-safeway-no-pipe-dream-real-m-a.html