Ian Lee says, “There aren’t many rich people here.
A business professor at Carleton University says that Nordstrom was never a good fit for the nation’s capital and that its closing could mean the end of a large anchor store in its downtown mall.
Last week, Nordstrom said it was closing all of its 13 stores in Canada, including the Rideau Centre and Train Yards stores in Ottawa. The store plans to be done liquidating by the end of June. For now, the stores will stay open.
Ian Lee, an associate professor at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business, said that Ottawa doesn’t have enough money to pay Nordstrom’s higher prices.
Lee said, “There aren’t a lot of rich people in Ottawa.”
Lee said that he thinks the Rideau Centre will give up on the idea of a big anchor store because most of the stores there are doing poorly.
He says that the mall should “split it up and make it more appealing to middle-class people who work and shop downtown.”
Jamie Boyce of the real estate consulting firm CBRE doesn’t necessarily agree.
He said that the company that runs the mall, Cadillac Fairview, has a lot of experience and will know what’s best for the space.
He said, “We have a good number of national brand stores that want big spaces in downtown Ottawa.”
He thinks that Cadillac Fairview will likely look for holes in the local business ecosystem that need to be filled. Still, he said that Nordstrom leaving the market was a loss.
“When Nordstrom came to the market in Ottawa, I thought it was a great thing for us.”
Cadillac Fairview said in a statement that it’s too soon to guess what will happen with the space. The company is making plans for a288-unit residential building on that side of the mall.
Prof. says that Ottawa’s market is too small
Lee thought that Nordstrom should have only had stores in Toronto and Vancouver.
“Ottawa is a city of public servants, middle- and upper-middle-class people, but not rich people who own companies through stock options,” he said.
He said that the loss of Nordstrom might have an immediate effect on stores near it, but it won’t have a big effect on the economies of Canada or Ottawa.
He also said that its leaving could be part of the downtown core’s future revitalization.
“Those sales don’t just vanish into thin air when Nordstrom goes out of business,” he said. “Because of those sales, people who used to shop at Nordstrom will now just go to other stores.”