Faubourg Boisbriand
Boisbriand, Quebec
Boisbriand is a bustling suburb located approximately 20 miles north of downtown Montreal. With no large, open-air centers to accommodate big-box retailers in the immediate area, Kimco saw an opportunity to serve this growing community by developing a new shopping center on the site of a former General Motors plant. The Faubourg Boisbriand center, which was completed in 2009, sits adjacent to a new 1,700-unit residential community and is surrounded by major highways that take weekend homeowners and skiers from Montreal to the Laurentian Mountains.
With 687,000 square feet of retail space already completed, Faubourg Boisbriand is home to 60 stores, including Costco, grocery anchor IGA and Canadian retailer Zellers, which will become one of the first Target stores in Quebec in 2013. The center also features a variety of restaurants, and draws traffic from a nearby multi-rink ice hockey complex.
Jointly owned with Sun Life Financial and development partner North American/Centrecorp, Faubourg Boisbriand continues to add tenants – occupancy rose 360 basis points in 2011 – and the center is now 95 percent occupied. Kimco plans to add up to 300,000 square feet in the next several years. The expansion will meet the needs of a growing suburb, which, after adding a planned rail link to Montreal, promises to grow even further.