Gilmore Place gearing up to be Brentwood's 2nd largest retail hub

Gilmore Place gearing up to be the second largest retail hub of Brentwood district in Burnaby

Construction progress of Gilmore Place's first phase, as of May 30, 2024. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Later this month, the new plaza spaces of the first phase of the Gilmore Place mixed-use development will open for public access.

This is a linear plaza that cuts diagonally through the city block, following the path of SkyTrain’s elevated guideway, providing pedestrians with a new accessible, convenient, and shorter route to walk between SkyTrain Gilmore Station and Lougheed Highway.

This plaza will be activated by restaurants, cafes, and other food/beverage establishments and types of tenants that will bring people into the area.

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“We’ve always held off on spaces that are located around that plaza to ensure that we get the type of tenants that are going to create activity. We don’t want to put a tenant in there that doesn’t draw a lot of people,” John Middleton, the senior vice president for leasing at Onni Group, the developer behind the development, told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview on Thursday.

gilmore place brentwood burnaby construction may 29 2024

Construction progress of Gilmore Place’s first phase, as of May 30, 2024. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

He says the outdoor retail concept and activated plaza spaces of Gilmore Place are inspired by the success of the main plaza of the recently opened The Amazing Brentwood outdoor mall.

The first phase of Gilmore Place — almost entirely located to the west of the SkyTrain station — will contain about 180,000 sq ft of retail and restaurant space within the first three levels.

The retail and restaurant uses of Gilmore Place’s first phase alone will make it the second largest retail hub within the Brentwood Town Centre district of Burnaby.

While Gilmore Place’s retail component will still be dwarfed by The Amazing Brentwood, it will be considerably larger than the 95,000 sq ft of retail at Solo District (anchored by Whole Foods Market) and the 100,000 sq ft of retail at Madison Centre (anchored by Save-On-Foods and Winners) located within the immediate vicinity. This provides a substantial commercial bookend to the western side of the Brentwood district, whereas The Amazing Brentwood serves as the district’s eastern commercial bookend.

Just last week, it was formally announced that T&T Supermarket will anchor the first phase of Gilmore Place, occupying 55,000 sq ft of space. This is a larger store size for the Asian grocery chain, providing the ability to offer the full range of offerings and services. It will open in Summer 2025.

Middleton says T&T Supermarket takes up 90% of the retail and restaurant space on the first floor of the first phase, and its main entrance will activate an outdoor space on that particular level.

Artistic rendering of T&T Supermarket at Gilmore Place in Brentwood Town Centre, Burnaby. (T&T Supermarket)

Artistic rendering of Gilmore Place integrated with SkyTrain Gilmore Station. (Onni Group)

On the second level, the company has several commercial retail units ranging between 30,000 sq ft and 40,000 sq ft in size, which could be leased to entertainment and fitness tenants. On this same level, there are four sizeable purpose-built restaurant units — each between about 4,000 sq ft and nearly 10,000 sq ft, not including the major outdoor patio opportunities for each unit.

“I would say there’s some restaurants we’re working with that are not so much your quick service restaurants, but are sit down and cater more to a younger demographic, which is similar to the demographic buying homes in our projects in Brentwood,” he said.

Other smaller food/beverage businesses publicly confirmed for Gilmore Place’s first phase entail Kinton Ramen, Trees Cheesecake, and KFC.

Overall, says Middleton, about 60% of Gilmore Place’s first phase of retail is now leased, including a newly signed lease just last week for a large golfing simulation business. A number of other potential tenants are also near finalizing their agreements.

Construction progress of Gilmore Place’s first phase, as of May 30, 2024. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Construction is now approaching completion on the first phase, with the developer and their main contractor now working to begin the step of handing off the shell commercial spaces to the separate contractors of the various businesses to build out their purpose-designed interior spaces. Middleton says they are hopeful that by early 2025, many of the tenants will be open.

Wedged between the retail and the residential floors within the upper levels of the first phase’s base podium is about 80,000 sq ft of office space. He says none of the office spaces have been leased to date, but there has been some potential interest. These are sizeable office spaces with floor plates reaching up to 40,000 sq ft, which is a rare size suitable for larger tenants looking for continuous open space for their workers.

And there will be significantly more retail, restaurant, office, and residential uses for Gilmore Place’s future phases east of the SkyTrain station.

With tens of thousands of homes proposed, planned, or under construction, in addition to the thousands of homes built in the area over the past 20 years, Middleton told Daily Hive Urbanized his company is confident with the long-term demand for significant new additional commercial retail, restaurant, and job space within Brentwood.

“I think it’s clear with the amount of projects underway, recently completed and on the books made, the population growth in the area will be significant. That increases demand for retail, and there’s a lot of retail types that aren’t in this market yet,” he said.

“So I think the demand for retail, just given our experience since the retail interest in this project is very hot, I can’t imagine that it’s not going to maintain that same type of velocity moving forward with all of the additional residential being built.”

He adds that typically, smaller food/beverage tenants — such as fast food outlets and cafes — wait for the landlord to announce the confirmed anchor businesses. But in the case of Gilmore Place, these businesses were willing to sign leases in advance of the big reveal due to the expected foot traffic from the on-site SkyTrain station and the residential density.

Construction progress of Gilmore Place’s first phase, as of May 30, 2024. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Site plan for the Gilmore Place redevelopment, May 2024. (Onni Group)

Overall, Gilmore Place will be carried out in four phases across the 12-acre development site, with construction generally progressing eastward towards the Madison Avenue edge of the property. The second phase will be a parcel immediately east of the SkyTrain station, but there is no firm date for the start of construction at this time.

The second phase will introduce three residential towers with a mixed-use commercial base podium containing some office space and another sizeable retail component, although Middleton does not expect it will be nearly as large as the first phase’s retail and restaurant component.

The third phase will complete two towers at the southeast corner of the site, fulfilling the remaining new Dawson Street frontage, while the fourth phase will add two towers by redeveloping the existing office buildings and car dealership at the northeast corner, fronting Lougheed Highway. The precise scope and design of the future phases have yet to be finalized.

Above the first phase’s commercial uses, there are three residential towers reaching 64, 47, and 43 storeys, including the base podium, containing a combined total of over 1,500 homes. The 64-storey tower reaching a height of 708 ft earned the title of Metro Vancouver’s tallest building last fall when it topped out in its construction ascent.

Construction progress of Gilmore Place’s first phase, as of May 30, 2024. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

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