REGINA -- It could be considered an early Christmas miracle for the Centennial Market.
U-Haul was scheduled to take possession of the old Sears Outlet building on Board Street this week and begin turning it into a self-storage facility, however, the company pulled out of the deal, giving the Market a new lease on its current location.
“We got a phone call on the day they were supposed to take possession that just said the deal was off, the buyer pulled out last minute and it was going to revert back to the way it was before,” Matt Thompson with the Centennial Market board said.
In a statement to CTV News, U-Haul said, “After careful consideration, it concluded the Centennial Shopping Centre location was not ideal for its self-storage product at this time.”
City Council had voted to change the zoning by-law for the property to pave the way for the self-storage facility.
Colliers International, who is selling the historic building, told CTV News that it’s back up for sale or lease.
After a few months of uncertainty, the Market’s vendors are happy they can continue to make the facility their home.
“It’s huge stress relief, there was a lot of uncertainty of what was going to happen, we weren’t getting many details or anything from the buyer, so we had an estimate of how long we might be here, but it wasn’t guaranteed,” Thompson said. “Now we’re back in familiar territory where we are here with the same owners that we had before.”
The Market had initially lost vendors and customers after U-Haul’s plans were announced, but they said they have already had vendors reach out about setting up at the Market again.
“We’re a big family here,” Debroah Mathias, a vendor at the Market, said. “We know that there’s always different movement for the future, but for now we’re here, we’re happy and we’re staying.”
With this new development, it will be a while longer before the Centennial vendors need their own moving trucks.
