Sale of Edmonton’s long-vacant Army & Navy raises excitement for new life on Whyte Avenue

July 12, 2024 Canuck

“Sold” written in big red letters on Whyte Avenue’s venerable Army & Navy store is the latest sign of new life in Edmonton’s rapidly evolving shopping and entertainment district.

Significant commercial turnover and new development have visibly changed the Old Strathcona district in recent years, with attention now turning to how the 1950s-era discount store will be reinvented, more than four years after it shut its doors.

“At this point, we haven’t spoken to anybody that’s interested in [leasing] the entire box,” said Kevin Petterson, vice-president of real estate with Leder Investments, the company that purchased the building at 104th Street and 82nd Avenue.

“And we think that there’s also more character, charm, more local businesses, more different things to do if we turn it into smaller little units. So that’s the current plan.”

A man in a purple shirt stands outside a building, with the sidewalk and road in the background. — Kevin Petterson, Leder Investment’s vice-president of real estate, says the firm bought the former Army & Navy building for about $2 million. (Madeline Smith/CBC)

The building has close to 30,000 square feet of space, and the basement, which is about 15,000 square feet on its own, has potential for entertainment uses, Petterson said.

The sale closed last month, according to a representative from real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap.

Army & Navy’s pandemic closure was initially temporary, but it became permanent when the entire company shut down. The Edmonton Christmas Market used the space for its seasonal market for a couple years. But it mostly sat vacant — and at times, boarded up — in the heart of one of Edmonton’s busiest shopping districts.

Old Strathcona Business Association executive director Cherie Klassen said the small-spaces concept the new ownership is pursuing is a growing trend in the neighbourhood.

The new Station Park development, with shipping container-sized stores in a building along Gateway Boulevard, is a prime example, Klassen said. Other businesses now have storefronts and patios in alleys.

“We’re also seeing a new development that would have been commercial on the main floor, but now they’re doing townhouses so that people could eventually have a retail space on the main floor and then they live upstairs,” she said.

“I think we’re seeing a little bit of that coming back, and just really new, innovative ways of parcelling up spaces.”

A man holding a microphone stands on the sidewalk across the street from a large building with a sign that says "Station Park". — City of Edmonton planner Andrew McLellan speaks about the Station Park, along Edmonton’s Gateway Boulevard, during a tour of new development and historic sites in the Old Strathcona area. (Madeline Smith/CBC)

Klassen said that a big box store would be the most likely scenario if a single tenant were taking over the Army & Navy space.

She’s hopeful about the potential for more independent businesses if the building is divided up instead.

The City of Edmonton continues to work on a plan for broader changes to Old Strathcona, with items like wider sidewalks and a new park to replace Gateway Boulevard parking lots under consideration.

In 2018, city council passed an overarching approach to local development that set limits for building heights along the street. That was meant to preserve the area’s heritage character while also reducing the risk of shadows being cast on Whyte Avenue patios between March and September.

The six-storey Raymond Block development at Whyte Avenue and 105th Street, approved before those guidelines were put in place, wouldn’t have been allowed under the four-storey cap.

Historic connections

New construction continues to change the look of Old Strathcona.

Just one block south of Whyte, three new towers are under construction — the tallest planned for up to 20 storeys — directly across the street from the Strathcona Garage, a provincial historic resource built in 1912.

Petterson said he’s conscious about preserving some of the character of the Army & Navy building. Current plans are to keep the brick panel along the building facade and maintain some of the other original elements.