Excerpts from the Globe and Mail, January 18, 2011

Shopping malls see future in Canadian winter

In late December 2010, Bayfield and a joint partner, RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust, announced it closed on the $94-million purchase of a 50-acre regional shopping centre in Mill Woods, Alta., near Edmonton. Mill Woods Town Centre has an enclosed mall with a Zellers, Canadian Tire, Safeway and a medical office Building. It also includes about six acres of developable land.

“We’re trying to take advantage of the economic times by buying things that we thought were below market value,” Mr. Spring says.

In addition to Mill Woods, Bayfield owns multiple enclosed second-tier and community malls, such as Garden City Shopping Centre in Winnipeg and Confederation Mall in Saskatoon.

In the late 1990s Mr. Spring began acquiring and redeveloping shopping centre and street retail properties, and for the past 20 years has built Bayfield’s corporate net worth to more than $350-million. That doesn’t include the $150-million in deals he and his team pulled together in 2010 .

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