November 9, 2023 – Arbutus Properties, owners of Pitchfork Market + Kitchen in Saskatoon’s Rosewood neighbourhood, was planning to construct an additional $6 million Pitchfork grocery store in the Midtown Plaza, until it received an unexpected lease termination notice from the mall owners Monday, November 6.

Arbutus was scheduled to begin construction in January, 2024, with plans for the grocery store to open in late summer/early fall 2024. All planned construction has been cancelled following the termination notice.

Arbutus President Jeffrey Drexel admitted the company is roughly one year behind schedule on the grocery store, primarily due to the extra time and resources it invested into its Rosewood affordable housing units that will be completed in early 2024.  

“We are behind in our plans for a second Pitchfork location due to our Saskatoon affordable housing initiatives, but the need and demand for us to build a downtown grocery story is strong and we were fully committed to proceeding,” he says.

Over the past months, Arbutus has been attempting to re-negotiate with the mall, who asked the company to make them a proposal. Drexel said high interest rates, high food costs and economic uncertainty in the restaurant business put pressure on the future Pitchfork, but he feels the company made a fair proposal to the mall for leasing its approx. 20,000 square feet location.

“Our Meadows Pitchfork Market + Kitchen has proven to be popular and is seeing increasing success in what are tough market conditions for grocery stores and restaurants, so we are confident we would have success in a downtown location. However, we were looking for some concessions from the landlord – they asked us for a proposal and we made a fair one. Next thing we know, we got a lease termination notice. There were no discussions, no negotiations.”

“Our proposal was very fair based on our knowledge of the western Canadian market,” says Drexel. “We see this decision by Midtown Plaza as a significant blow to the success and growth of Saskatoon’s downtown, particularly at a time when we all need more good news stories for city centres.”

Drexel says once constructed, the mall would have benefited for decades from having a large anchor tenant such as Pitchfork Market + Kitchen.

“The other huge benefactor of this project was the growing population base in the downtown and surrounding neighbourhoods who have been without a significant grocery store for 20 or more years.”

Drexel said his company does not have a “plan B” for a downtown grocery store location as it was very confident it was going to be able to build in Midtown. For now, he says, the company will put its resources into the affordable housing projects it has underway in the Rosewood neighbourhood, as well as its other housing, commercial and retail projects throughout the city.