Walmart, which is investing about $20 million in the project, says it plans to hire about 300 employees.
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Walmart is coming to Marché Central.
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The US retail behemoth will be opening a new 140,000 square foot Supercentre near the Guzzo cinemas at Acadie Blvd. and Highway 40 in the summer of 2023, Jay Camacho, senior vice president of Eastern Canadian retail at developer QuadReal Property Group, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. Walmart, which is investing about $20 million in the project, plans to hire about 300 employees to work at Marché Central, according to a statement issued Tuesday.
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Topped by a 125,000 square foot green roof, the new facility will expand Walmart’s 71-store Quebec footprint. It will also ramp up competition in the big-box retail category at Marché Central, which is already home to Costco and home-improvement retailer Réno-Dépôt.
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“Montreal is an extremely important market for us and we’re incredibly excited to be growing in Quebec,” Cyrille Ballereau, Walmart’s regional vice president for Quebec, said in the statement.
Walmart will anchor Marché Central’s sixth retail phase, which is located on an adjacent 30-acre parcel of land that has been set aside by QuadReal for development. Marché Central’s first five retail phases, which have 60 tenants, cover a gross leaseable area of more than one million square feet.
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Vancouver-based QuadReal is a global real estate investment, operating and development company. It oversees more than $67 billion in assets.
QuadReal has density rights for more than 600,000 square feet of additional commercial space on the property, Camacho said.
The Walmart addition “is the first of hopefully many announcements for new tenants that we are going to have” at Marché Central, Camacho said. “We hope to announce another big tenant in the next several weeks.”
Marché Central “is our prized possession in the Montreal area,” he added. “It has a regional and very dominant draw. We’re sitting on this beautiful parcel of land, but with a hole in the middle. It needs to be integrated into the rest of the property.”
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