First Capital REIT announced a redevelopment that will convert Edmonton’s Westmount Shopping Centre into an open-air retail centre, featuring an interior “flip” that exposes storefronts to exterior streets and parking. The project followed a March 6, 2026 announcement and is scheduled to begin soon with phased work keeping key anchors open. Construction was planned over roughly 18 to 24 months with building permits already in place.
The plan calls for demolition of large enclosed portions—including the former second-floor cinema and central food court—and replacement with an open breezeway, new façades, refreshed landscaping and upgraded pedestrian routes. Site changes also include a new west-side parking area, reconfigured east parking and enhanced connections to nearby transit and community amenities. Anchors such as Safeway, The Home Depot, Shoppers Drug Mart and Scotiabank are expected to remain operational during redevelopment.
For shoppers this return-to-open-air approach restores Westmount’s original 1955 outdoor format while aligning with a broader Canadian trend of repositioning ageing malls for convenience-oriented tenants. The reconfiguration aims to improve access, lower operating complexity and better integrate retail with transit and local civic uses, supporting everyday shopping needs for nearby residents and students.
Image Credit: First Capital REIT
What Makes This Trend Stand Out
- Enclosed-to-open Retail Conversions
- Repurposing enclosed malls into open-air formats highlights opportunities for modular facade systems, prefab breezeway components and phased-construction techniques that lower disruption and speed redevelopment.
- Transit-integrated Retail Nodes
- Closer integration of retail sites with transit stops and pedestrian routes reveals potential for micro-mobility hubs, last-mile logistics lockers and data-driven footfall optimization tools tailored to transit-linked shopping corridors.
- Convenience-oriented Tenant Mixes
- A shift toward everyday service anchors and convenience retailers suggests demand for compact-format store designs, flexible pop-up footprints and shared-service back-of-house systems that prioritize efficiency over large specialty spaces.
Sectors Adopting This
- Commercial Real Estate Development
- Redevelopment projects of aging shopping centres could spur innovation in adaptive reuse finance products, risk-sharing joint-venture structures and standardized retrofit design kits for rapid market repositioning.
- Retail Property Management
- Managing blended open-air environments points to opportunities for integrated tenant-facing digital platforms, dynamic leasing arrangements and operational tech that optimize mixed-anchor portfolios.
- Urban Transit and Mobility
- Enhanced connections between retail sites and transit networks make room for coordinated scheduling, curb management solutions and multimodal passenger-retail analytics that align mobility flows with consumer demand.
