Primaris REIT continued its disposition and capital recycling program with the Dec. 19 sale of Calgary’s Northland Village shopping centre and adjacent Northland Professional Centre for $154 million.

Although the purchaser wasn’t named in a Primaris media release and was only identified as a Canadian institutional investor, a source with knowledge of the transaction told RENX it was acquired by an affiliate of Canada Life.

TD Cornerstone Commercial Realty and RBC Capital Markets Real Estate Group acted as the exclusive advisors for the sale. Northland Village and Northland Professional Centre were both unencumbered at the time of the transaction.

The Northland complex occupies 31.81 acres in northwest Calgary at the intersection of Crowchild Trail and Northland Drive, a location that provides very good visibility to traffic of more than 75,000 vehicles per day. It’s a five-minute drive from the Brentwood light rapid transit station.

Redevelopment preceded sale

Northland Village went through a redevelopment earlier this decade that transformed the former enclosed shopping centre into a largely open-air retail centre. It was opened in 1971 as an enclosed, one-level indoor shopping centre, expanded in 2003 and 2005, and then went through its most recent transformation.

Ledcor was the contractor for the approximately $120-million redevelopment, which involved demolishing 240,000 square feet of the enclosed mall structure, constructing six new stand-alone retail buildings, totalling more than 200,000 square feet of mixed-use space, and retaining and renovating selected existing structures.

The shopping centre was 97.8 per cent occupied when it went on the market in early September, with major tenants including Walmart, Best Buy, GoodLife Fitness, Dollarama, Winners and Spinelli Italian Centre Shop. The retail component occupies 30.32 acres, comprises 383,041 square feet of gross leasable area and has 720 surface parking stalls.

The property also includes a separately titled 52,379-square-foot office building on 1.49 acres at 4600 Crowchild Trail NW that’s 82 per cent occupied. The retail and office components had a combined weighted average lease term of 6.7 years and an average in-place minimum net rent of $24.10 per square foot.

The property provides flexibility for future intensification, mixed-use redevelopment or a strategic phased repositioning over time.

Primaris sold two acres of the Northland property in 2022 to a residential developer that built a 219-unit rental complex along Northland Drive NW.

Primaris’ 2025 dispositions

“Primaris is very pleased to close out the year with the strategic disposition of Northland, continuing to demonstrate our track record of disciplined capital allocation and capital recycling,” Primaris chief executive officer Alex Avery said in a media release announcing the sale. 

“Executing $400 million of non-core asset sales in 2025 underscores Primaris’ commitment to maintain a best-in-class balance sheet while continuing to leverage the competitive advantage our management platform provides, for acquiring, owning and managing market-leading Canadian malls.”

Proceeds from the sale will be allocated to the repayment of debt, repurchase and cancellation of units under the REIT’s normal course issuer bid and general trust purposes.

Here are Primaris’ 2025 dispositions, which encompass 1.74 million square feet of gross leasable area:

• four acres of excess land in Medicine Hat, Alta. sold for $2 million on Feb. 21;
• Sherwood Park Mall and Sherwood Park Professional Centre in Sherwood Park, Alta. sold for $107 million on Feb. 28;
• St. Albert Centre in St. Albert, Alta. sold for $60 million on March 31;
• the Lansdowne industrial centre in Peterborough, Ont. sold for $9.9 million on May 30;
• the Carry Drive, Dunmore Plaza and Park Plaza strip plazas in Medicine Hat, Alta. sold for $12.7 million on July 21;
• Northpointe Town Centre in Calgary sold for $54.5 million on July 23;
• and, Northland Village and Northland Professional Centre in Calgary sold for $154 million on Dec. 19.

Major Primaris acquisitions

Primaris has made a number of large enclosed shopping mall acquisitions over the past couple of years, including:

• Promenades St-Bruno on Montreal’s South Shore, acquired from Cadillac Fairview for $565 million this year;
• Lime Ridge Mall in Hamilton, Ont., acquired from Cadillac Fairview for $416 million this year;
• Galeries de la Capitale in Quebec City, acquired from Oxford Properties for $325 million in 2024;
• Halifax Shopping Centre and the adjacent Annex, acquired from OPB Realty Inc. for $370 million in 2023;
• and, Conestoga Mall in Waterloo, Ont., acquired from Ivanhoé Cambridge for $270 million in 2023.