With outlet centres now one of the hottest sectors of commercial real estate in Canada, Avison Young has added two specialists in the area—Lisa Quier Wagner and David Hinkle—to their team as principals, to focus on outlet centre strategic direction, marketing and management, as well as providing leading guidance and tenant advisory expertise. In an interview with Bisnow, Lisa and David—with a combined 50 years of commercial real estate experience—both acknowledged the growth potential for more outlet centres in the GTA. (Shopping is the new national sport.) Last week, Ivanhoe Cambridge opened the new, 520k SF Outlet Collection in Niagara Falls, hot on the heels of the Simon Property Group’s Toronto Premium Outlets just west of Toronto.

Lisa and David most recently served as partners of the US-based Outlet Resource Group, a specialty retail consultancy firm, which they co-owned and co-founded. Both say through the years they have acquired extensive knowledge of how the outlet industry has evolved in Canada, having worked on outlet projects in Windsor and Kingston, to the point now where the industry is “really starting its maturation process,” Lisa says. “I wouldn’t want to say where [the growth potential in the GTA is] because there are too many developers looking at the area and I don’t want to tip our hand.”