CEO explains purchase, and plans for old Hudson's Bay site
The new owner of the Pen Centre is optimistic the mall will keep flourishing for a long time to come.
Henry Zaviryev is CEO of Monteal based Layed firm, which just bought the mall for $140-million, and says the main priority is filling the old Hudson's Bay area, of which there is a lot of interest.
He adds there were some hurdles over the last few months. "Mainly being the tariffs that were affecting the Niagara region, that complicated the transaction, and more recently the bankruptcy of HBC. But, we're very confident in the centre for the next several decades."
He says with the growth of Niagara, the Pen is the busiest centre in the region.
There were many reasons to buy it, along with being impressed with statistics about the mall. "Busiest in the Niagara region... serves a trade area of several hundred thousand people... very strong sales, about $650 a foot for the last 12 months, and we think that number will just keep going up."
He says there were multiple private and public companies looking at the mall.
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