Town Centre sold to unknown buyer

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This article was published 05/04/2023 (943 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An owner of The Town Centre has confirmed that the property has been sold and wants to set the record straight regarding its viability.

The downtown mall is in good shape, fiscally and physically, despite a city document that seemed to call its future into question, said Mazergroup president and CEO Bob Mazer.

“Business-wise it chugs along very nicely,” Mazer told the Sun earlier this week.

The Town Centre’s sale was publicly revealed by a seemingly unlikely source, Brandon Police Service Chief Wayne Balcaen, during Monday’s city council meeting as council voted to withdraw $25,000 from the protective services building reserve to establish a satellite police office at The Town Centre, which the force can use free of charge.

Balcaen told council he had spoken to Town Centre general manager Alan Cruise, who informed him of the sale to a “very reputable” company.

Given the request for the $25,000, Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 7) asked the police chief whether there was a guarantee the force could remain in The Town Centre for some time in light of the sale.

“I did speak with the general manager today and he assures me that there will be no closure for us having the office space and that we would be able to sign a two-year lease with them,” Balcaen said.

By that point, Mazer and Cruise had already confirmed the sale with the Sun, a deal that Mazer said will officially close on May 15.

While news of the sale itself is now public, none of the parties spoken to by the Sun so far would disclose the identity of the buyer. They also didn’t comment on plans for the property because they said either they didn’t know, or believed that information should come from the new owner.

The future of The Town Centre came up as the city approved funding for the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba to pursue a conceptual design for a new building that would house the gallery, the Brandon General Museum and Archives and the Western Manitoba Regional Library. That building would be on the 900 block of Princess Avenue on one of two sites owned by the city and the Brandon Downtown Development Corporation.

That plan is an alternate to another proposal to renovate the existing space in a city-owned building attached to The Town Centre, which is currently home to the gallery and library, so it would also house the museum and create a “cultural hub.”

A city administration report to council prepared for Monday’s meeting stated one of the reasons for pursuing the conceptual design for an entirely new building was, “Following completion of the conceptual redesign, the future of the adjacent Town Centre has become less certain.”

In an interview on Sunday, Mayor Jeff Fawcett pointed to the fact that The Town Centre had been up for sale for a number of years, and said the city was looking into all options by considering a new building.

At Monday’s council meeting, Berry criticized both the city and the Sun for not confirming the status of The Town Centre with its management or owners, given that the motion for a conceptual design for the new building was based on an apparent uncertainty over The Town Centre’s future when in fact it had been sold, as indicated by Balcaen moments before. (The Sun had based its reporting on the city administration report.) Berry asked whether the city had previously reached out to Cruise.

“Yes,” Fawcett responded, then referred to Balcaen’s statement regarding the police office at The Town Centre. “The new owner has plans that obviously they seem to be fine with for two years, and we don’t know any further than that.

“I think that we’ve had discussions with the new owner and are looking at options, and that’s why we have this other item on the agenda,” the mayor added, referring to the call for support of the new building conceptual design.

Fawcett told Berry the sale of The Town Centre was a private one, so it wasn’t up to council to publicly discuss what the new owner will do.

Even with news of the sale, the city’s general manager of development services, Mark Allard, told council it would be prudent to move ahead with the conceptual design for a new building for the gallery, museum and library. He said the conceptual design could be completed by the end of the calendar year.

Despite the concerns expressed by Berry, he and other councillors voted unanimously in favour of supporting the drafting of the conceptual design, and the use of $25,000 from the library/arts building reserve for that purpose pending funding through the grant.

Meanwhile, both Cruise and Mazer had taken exception at the description of The Town Centre’s future as uncertain. Cruise said the centre’s future would be bright even if it wasn’t sold.

“There is no uncertainty of The Town Centre. In fact, it’s been sold to a reputable company and more details will come out … but as far as The Town Centre goes, the future looks bright,” Cruise told the Sun on Monday prior to the council meeting.

If any tenants were to call him to ask about the future of the mall, he said he’d tell them it’s “business as usual.”

According to Mazer, he and two other prominent Brandon business people have owned the centre since 2000, explaining the partners purchased the building to retain local ownership and maintain it as a centre for the downtown community.

“We felt that it was the heart, and still is the heart, of downtown,” he said. “Truly, it wasn’t really necessarily a business decision as far as revenue property.”

When asked why the group is selling now, Mazer said revenue property is not his primary business, nor is it for the other members of The Town Centre ownership group. Noting he is in his 70s, Mazer said the sale is a matter of the partners’ wanting to clean up their estates.

The Town Centre is doing fine financially, he said, even with vacancies, and the 40-year-old building is in good shape as the other owners have spent millions of dollars on maintenance.

While the buyer hasn’t yet been publicly identified, Mazer did note the purchaser is a Winnipeg individual with success in repurposing properties.

» ihitchen@brandonsun.com