Save On Foods will be moving into Pine Centre Mall.
The chain will be setting up shop in the space left empty when Lowe's closed down in early 2019, mall marketing director Jessica Brown said Wednesday. She said Save On will take up 38,000 square feet, roughly a third of the 110,000 square feet the big box home improvement store occupied at the mall's east end.
"We've got lots of plans for the additional square footage, one of them being ample parking for Save On Foods," Brown said. "It's going to open up the space, make it nice and easy around that corner, make it nice and safe."
Work is scheduled to begin midway through this year and be completed sometime in 2022. Exact dates are up in the air, Brown said, due to the COVID pandemic.
Brown said the grocery chain will make a good fit in part because of the recent development of the apartments and hotels along Recreation Road a short distance to the east. Bringing in a grocery store has also been the most highly-requested addition by shoppers surveyed by the mall since the old Extra Foods closed down in 2007, Brown added.
Save On confirmed indirectly that it will be moving out of its location at Parkwood Place shopping centre, saying the company looks forward to relocating to Pine Centre.
Brown said the mall is also in the process of securing more tenants for the Winners-HomeSense wing, "which we look forward to announcing later in 2021."
Whether there will be more tenants secured for the Save On side, Brown could not say.
"Right now, we're just working on the transition from Lowe's to Save On Foods and developing the tenants in the Winners wing," she said.
