- Hub staff
The Heritage Place Shopping Centre on 16th Street East was built on a 35+ acre property in 1987 and expanded in 1989. According to their website, it has a footprint of more than 300,000 sq. ft., with 24,000 sq. ft. currently available to lease. The mall is the largest, and only, enclosed shopping centre in Grey and Bruce counties.
In 2020 – in what turned out to be a particularly crushing year for most bricks and mortar retailers – Heritage Place was sold to the Sterling Group, a Canadian company whose head office is in Montreal.
The management calculate the mall's trade area is over 150,000 people. They say 40 per cent of them live within a 15 minute drive from the centre, although we've never understood that math, as it would be 60,000 people – the population of Owen Sound, Georgian Bluffs, Meaford, Chatsworth and Grey Highlands combined – and most of those couldn't get to the mall in 15 minutes without risking a major speeding ticket.
Food Basics, SportChek, Giant Tiger, Leon's and Goodlife Fitness are the anchor tenants at the mall, most accessible from either the mall or external doors. Popeyes and Kelsey's are also on the property.
The relocation of larger offices of Service Canada and Home and Community Support Services of Grey and Bruce and the addition of a new washroom, are meeting the accessibility and transportation needs of those public services.
Pop-up stores and community events have been filling vacant spaces, including a high school art show, family trick-or-treating for Hallowe'en and a Christmas market.
"Established in 1998," according to their website, "the Sterling Group today owns and manages over 1.7 million square feet of real estate distributed over 70 properties. The Group's portfolio, currently concentrated in Eastern Canada, comprises a mix of shopping malls, unenclosed power centres and strip malls, office buildings and industrial buildings.
"The Group has also invested in strategic parcels of land and is currently holding in excess of 840 acres of land for greenfield development."
