Chinook Center Progress

Of course one might argue that with all the infusion of money in the pockets of those that fled Hong Kong, any location in Vancouver BC would be better than Calgary

Not sure why the original poster seems to think the Apple Store will take the space of Reitmans in the Chinook Mall. It was somewhat widely know that the free space under the food court, right beside the mall entry doors was going to be Apple’s new home. Just before the Xmas season started, they repainted, frosted the glass, did everything…. but for Christmas, the mall already had an outstanding offer to “The Christmas Store” so Apple couldn’t use the spot until January.

I think you’ll find Apple takes this store location, not the Reitmans’s spot. Thus, I doubt HIGHLY that it won’t be open until fall 2007. I think it’ll be open before spring.

The Christmas store is no longer occupying the space and they had previously painted/frosted where needed. All they need to do now is move equipment in and train staff. Voila.

Those changes were not completed by Apple, they were completed as temporary work to make the store suitable for Spirit of Christmas. All they did was paint the walls green and ‘frost’ the glass with a cheap spray product to obscure the innappropriately large window display. No work was done to the store fittings or the flooring. In any case Sephora is opening a store at the mall and IMO that location is far more suited to that operation than Apple store…

or Park Royal, Oakridge, etc.

Likely it is taking a long time because Vancouver has a good bunch of resellers, MacStation, Westworld, and Macs in all London Drugs locations, as well as Best Buy and Future Shop. Apple probably doesn’t want to go up against them unless with a high profile downtown flagship store, that will ad to the mix rather than take sales away from the existing resellers.

As for tourism in Vancouver and Calgary, Vancouver Airport (YVR) has a facility for tour buses to wait for incoming tour groups, it holds maybe 60-70 buses. Calgary’s airport bus holding area can hold four or five buses.

Vancouver sees 1 million cruise ship passengers alone through the airport and cruise ship terminal. 2,000,000 people go to Whistler each winter, and a million+ go there in the summer.

I was in Calgary for 5 days at the end of August-beginning of September this last summer, you could fire a cannon downtown and not hit anyone. The place is deserted. Try that any day downtown Vancouver, sometimes it is difficult to walk around in a hurry, it is so crowded.

If numbers matter, 50,000,000+++ people go through the Eaton’s Centre a year - they’re not waiting for a cruise ship or looking to ski.They are shopping…. and they all have to go by the Apple store.

go Calgary!

Apple didn’t choose Calgary due to tourism, Vancouver has more than twice the tourists compared to Calgary’s 4.3 million, about 10 million per year. Actually, according to tourism Alberta, Edmonton is Alberta’s number 1 tourist destination. Vancouver has Whistler, the busiest and top rated ski resort in Canada!

Vancouver and the lower mainland (Fraser valley) have just over 2.5 million people compared to Calgary’s 1.1 million.

It is location that holding up the Vancouver store - Apple has been actively looking. Don’t forget, Vancouver has Robson street, this is where Apple wants to locate, and Robson is one of the busiest and most expensive (rental/lease rates) in Canada.

The real reason Calgary is getting an Apple store before Vancouver is that “today, Chinook has the 3rd highest sales per square foot of any mall in Canada, at approximately $805 (numbers from June 2006). Only Toronto Eaton Centre and Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto have higher sales. As such, it is home to many higher-end stores, many of which are not found anywhere else in Alberta.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_Centre)

Thus if you look purely at sales figures across all malls in Canada, it is clear why Apple chose Calgary and specifically Chinook Centre as its next location. It’s all about making money, and Apple’s betting there’s lots to be made in Chinook Centre!

SEPHORA is going into the former Spirit of Christmas location.

“Go Apple Go!!! (looking forward to seeing Steve in ‘the white hat’…)”

I would be surprised if Steve ever came to Calgary to get a white hat.

I am glad that Apple is moving forward with opening a store in Calgary. They will undoubtedly do well at a Chinook centre location. And it really doesn’t matter what any of us think about Apple opening a store in Calgary instead of Vancouver as it won’t make any difference anyways. If Apple feels they can do well opening a store in Vancouver and find a suitable location they will eventually do just that.

The decision for Apple to locate in Chinook Mall has nothing to do with the many reasons postulated in this comment stream.

The retail industry follows some numbers that are generated by the property managers of the various malls around the country that measure the value of their real estate by the square foot. These numbers include many factors but basically represent the actual dollars spent per person divided by the square footage.

Chinook Center has the highest throughput of paying shoppers per square foot than ANY other malls in all of CANADA except one location- Eaton’s Center in Toronto (which is the home of an Apple Store). A Calgary Herald article re-iterated this fact a couple of months ago.

This is the number that all retailers - including Apple looks at when deciding where to put a store.

If Apple wanted the premium spot in CANADA with the highest rate of return (and cost to lease !) - it would be Chinook Center.

Also, if a single store was to located in Calgary - its location would be Chinook Center. Williams-Sonoma is but one example of this.

The fact that Calgary has good tourism - is enjoying the biggest boom in Canada currently -with the province registering a 6 Billion $ surplus - all are built into the number that represents the voracious appetites of the Calgary consumer per square foot at Chinook Center.

My source is a previous lease administrator that worked at Cadillac Fairview (owner of all malls in Canada with Apple Stores) during part of last year at the head office in Calgary.

Also, Calgary used to be the spot for large Enterprise accounts for Macs. Examples include - Northern Telecom (Nortel), ESSO (Imperial Oil) and merged Texaco Canada, TransCanada Pipelines, TransAlta Utilities, parts of Gulf, and Chevron. We are talking about 500 + seats for each of these companies.

There are a lot of older employees that remember those times and still use Macs personally - and may be an opportunity for some oil companies to consider switching back (partially) sometime in the near future.

I believe that Apple chose Calgary over Vancouver because Alberta is the wealthiest province in CANADA. Also, as mentioned by others we have 1 million residents in the city alone plus for 10 days every single summer - the Calgary Stampede gets 1 million visitors. Do the math -

Vancouver is getting a store in a building that has not been built yet - Jameson House on West Hastings. There are already plenty of Apple dealers in the area anyway. Broadway street alone has two.

Went to an Apple seminar today in Calgary and was told by a retailer attending the seminar that Apple and Chinook have cancelled their deal. This retailer mentioned that Chinook kiboshed the deal. This blows if true.

Reitman’s at Chinook is still relocating to a lesser location. But its not APPLE that’s replacing it…it looks like Chinook signed a deal with BEBE (trendy women’s wear) for the space instead. Will be the only BEBE location in Calgary, and they were probably able to work a better deal.

I was at chinook today, the old Reitman’s store is covered in the white drywalling, though the Reitman’s logo has not been obscured, there is a black tarp to make sure you don’t peek through from above into the store. From what I could see in the dim lighting through the crack between the double doors going in there is a hardwood floor in place.
Putting Apple in the location that Reitman’s used to be in makes sense, it is right beside Williams Sonoma and across the hall from Aritzia, down the hall from Sephora, and Banana Republic. It is right near the hub of the mall, the food court, so it is a high profile location.
I talked up some customer service reps at the mall, they maintain that they have no idea if an apple store is planned for the mall (seemed as if they’ve answered this question before…), they also did not know who was going into the empty space.
Lets hope that Apple gets a Calgary store soon, if they don’t move into Chinook, lets hope for a flagship (a longshot, I know, but I can dream can’t I?)