Eau Claire Market is on the market – again.

Proprietary Industries Inc. of Calgary, the merchant bank that bought the market in 2002, has hired CB Richard Ellis to find a new owner.

The 200,000-sq.-ft. festival market opened in 1993, modelled after the Granville Island market in Vancouver. However, it failed to meet those expectations.

Proprietary said earlier this month that a potential sale to Harvard Developments Inc. for $31.5 million, announced last September, would not proceed.

The sale’s falling through had nothing to do with the mall itself or the deal, said Graham Garner, executive vice-president of Proprietary.

The company had said that the sale to Harvard Developments Inc. would not proceed because Harvard and the project’s existing lender were unable to agree on refinancing terms within the delays set in the conditional purchase.

Harvard Development is owned by the Hill family of Regina.

Garner said Proprietary now has an “opportunity to point Eau Claire in the right direction.”

An eventual purchaser should have attributes including retail expertise and understanding of the role that Eau Claire can play in downtown Calgary, he said.

The new landlord would likely be an existing owner of quality retail property – people who have managed and may even have developed property similar to the market, suggested Geoff Mar, a vice-president with the CB Richard Ellis investment sales team.

“It’s like any retail property. It requires expertise to attract and retain tenants,” said Mar.

With more people living downtown, the potential for success is there.

Calgary’s downtown has historically been empty after 6:30 p.m., as good transportation put cheap single-family housing within an easy commute. In most major cities, you can’t buy a $275,000 house in the suburbs and commute easily to downtown.

But in the last five years, there has been a demand for downtown housing with high-rise condominiums starting to mushroom in the core.

And there will be a growing demand for downtown retail services, said Mar.

“All of a sudden, downtown living ain’t so bad,” he said.

“That’s what will make Eau Claire that much more viable.”

Retail servies usually follow in the footsteps of residential development, but Mar said Eau Claire evolved the other way around. The market used to draw downtown office workers, but now there is also a growing community of residents who remain in the core after hours.

HOUSING CHILL

The residential construction industry continued to look cooler in Calgary as 2003 wrapped up. The city reported selling building permits worth $164.8 million, a decrease of nine per cent from $180.2 million recorded at the same time a year earlier.

Residential permits issued in December decreased 14 per cent to $122.7 million as compared to $142.2 million. Of this amount, building permits for new single-family dwellings totalled $82.2 million, an increase of 16 per cent from the previous December’s $71.1 million.

Non-residential permits rose in value by 11 per cent, totalling $42.1 million as compared to $38.1 million. Permits for the year totalled $2.44 billion, an increase of seven per cent from $2.28 billion in 2002.