Despite just a handful of stores, owners say New Horizon is no ghost town

New Horizon slowly fills up Just 11 of New Horizon Mall’s 500 units are occupied. Kathy Le has details on what’s going on at the mega mall.

Officials in charge of a new shopping mall just north of Calgary city limits say that even though only 11 out of the over 500 spaces have been occupied, they aren’t concerned.

In late July, the first business in the mall opened its doors and since then, only 10 more have opened for business.

The developer and manager of New Horizon says that it’s perfectly normal for businesses to take this long to set up at the location.

Eli Swirsky, president of the Torgan Group, says that there is still a process where the titles are being transferred to the owners.

“We’ve now started the process of filling the mall, so the mall can be filled either with tenants or owners,” he said. “This is exactly the same process that unfolded in the Pacific Mall.”

The company also manages Pacific Mall in Markham, Ontario and Swirsky says that it was two years before things got into full swing there.

“With 18 months, it was substantially filled, maybe 75 percent.”

Swirsky says that the pace is picking up, but it will be a while before the mall starts to fill up.

“With 500 stores, it looks like an empty mall with 39 stores. Even if we had 100 stores, it would look like an empty mall. Even with 200 stores open.”

The mall’s manager Stephen Wong says that setting up a new business isn’t as easy as many people think either and it also takes a lot of time.

“They are all shop owners. Some have never done business before, some of them have but most of them don’t. It’s takes them time to get used to it. I love the entrepreneurship.”

He adds that Pacific Mall is only made up of Chinese businesses and Chinese owners, but New Horizon Mall won’t have that same focus.

“When you focus on one ethnic background, it should take more time. New Horizon Mall is only 30 percent purchased by Chinese and other ethnic backgrounds, some East Indian, some Middle Eastern, if they open a store, we have a mixed background.”

Wong says that will help the mall fill up faster.

Sabi Mattu, who first spoke to CTV Calgary earlier this year, opened his fragrance store recently.

“I’ve done a lot of sales so far and I have regular customers already.”

He says he wanted to provide a life for his wife and his three children so that, one day, they could be an owner operator at New Horizon Mall.

“I don’t have to work anywhere else, I just manage my own store.”

Mattu says that having a majority of the rest of the mall empty isn’t hurting his business because he has the right products that people want.

Swirksy says there are advantages to getting in on the action now rather than taking your time.

“In order to get people moving sooner rather than later, we have put a program in place where anybody that has a unit occupied whether himself or a tenant, gets a $5,000 incentive, plus we pay the costs of the condominium fees for that unit.”

By the end of October, there will be 39 stores open at New Horizon Mall.

(With files from Kathy Le)