Historic former department store building on Sparks Street up for sale

November 21, 2024

The six-storey building on Sparks Street is fully leased to Scotiabank, which purchased it in 1983 and sold it to a private ownership group a few years ago.

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A historic downtown building that was once home to one of Ottawa’s best-known department stores is on the market. The six-storey building at 118 Sparks St. is fully leased to Scotiabank, which purchased it in 1983 and sold it to a private ownership group a few years ago. Ottawa broker Nick Pantieras, who is helping to market the property on behalf of the owners, said there has already been “a lot of interest” in the 65,000-square-foot building, which is more than a century old. He said he expects a private company or owner-operator to acquire the property, which occupies a prominent location a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill. “It’s a little small for institutional (owners), but the national covenant of Scotiabank could lead some smaller corporate buyers or institutional buyers to look at it as well,” Pantieras told OBJ on Thursday. “But chances are it’s going to be a private deal.” Originally opened in 1910, the building was owned by prominent Ottawa resident Frederick W. Carling and was reportedly one of the first structures in Eastern Ontario to use reinforced concrete. For more than six decades, it was home to the Murphy-Gamble department store, a fixture in the capital’s retail scene. The Robert Simpson Co. acquired the building in 1972, rebranding it as a Simpsons department store which continued to operate until the chain’s new owners, the Hudson’s Bay Co., shut it down and sold the building to Scotiabank in January 1983. Scotiabank’s lease on three of the floors expires at the end of 2025, but the bank plans to continue occupying the remainder of the building. Pantieras said that as efforts to revitalize Sparks Street pick up steam, a new owner might look at “all sorts of alternative uses” for the available space, from museums to art galleries or other forms of entertainment. “It doesn’t have to be office space,” he said, adding the property “will stand the test of time. It’s a cool building.” Pantieras, the senior managing director of real estate firm Institutional Property Advisors' Ottawa office, said he’s seeing a “general uptick in activity” across all sectors in commercial real estate as interest rates fall. “The (office market) is cautious, but there is still some demand,” he said. “The institutions and large (private investors), Ottawa is still very much on their radar.” On the retail front, Institutional Property Advisors recently helped broker the pending sale of the Avalon Centre shopping plaza on Tenth Line Road in Orléans. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year. Pantieras said there were a “significant” number of bids on the 85,000-square-foot property, which is anchored by a Farm Boy food store. “There was a huge amount of activity on that,” Pantieras said. “We haven’t seen that in a couple of years. Necessity-based retail is still very much the strongest asset class right now.”