Winnipeg councillors voted Thursday to protect a 92-year-old Hudson's Bay store downtown and sell a 105-year-old theatre to developers who plan to maintain the performance space.
The six-storey Bay store on Portage Avenue and Colony Street will be added to Winnipeg's list of historic resources.
It was built in June 1926 and is one of the city's iconic buildings, the city's historical buildings and resources committee says. Hudson's Bay is against adding the building to the city's list of historical resources.
Franco Perugini, a Hudson's Bay vice-president, said in December that defining elements of the building are too expensive to maintain and restore.
Calgary Co-op is cracking down on plastic overuse by charging for plastic bags and introducing a compostable option.
Under the banner “together for good,” Calgary Co-op says it is taking three specific actions. First, it will be introducing a new 100 per cent compostable shopping bag on April 22 (Earth Day) that members can use for Calgary Co-op purchases for 10 cents a bag. The same day, Calgary Co-op will implement a five cent fee for conventional plastic bags. And it will do more to encourage members to use reusable shopping bags (Calgary Co-op says the average member already has 15-20 reusable bags). Three cents will be donated to Calgary Co-ops Community Foundation every time a member uses a reusable shopping bag.
(Grocery Business Magazine)
Calgary is leading the country in cannabis retail with 24 licensed pot shops — more than twice as many outlets as the next highest jurisdiction — despite the province’s decision last fall to stop issuing further store licences.
“We’ve had remarkably little problem with the retailers here,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said Thursday. “We have 24 private retail outlets in Calgary, which is by far the largest in the country.”
The mayor said that despite the city’s free-market approach to regulation, the province’s decision last November to halt licensing due to a shortage of cannabis supply has left some Calgary entrepreneurs in limbo.
The city has now approved development permits for 167 stores in Calgary, more than a dozen of which are stuck waiting for the province to lift a moratorium on new licenses.
The owner of the former Sears building in Grande Prairie is changing how it plans to market the empty space. Vice President of Northern Alberta Leasing for Artis REIT Randy Mudryk says they are following in the Prairie Mall’s footsteps.
“We are marketing the space for lease and will look to demise the space for multi-tenancies.”
The mall made the same decision after Target shuttered all of its locations in Canada in 2015. The space sat empty for two years before management decided to split it up into multiple retail locations.
Manitoba Liquor Marts have announced new security measures, including staff with the power to detain suspects, aimed at tackling the problem of liquor store robberies.
The Manitoba government is opening up the retail cannabis market by expanding to seven rural communities.