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RESERVE POWER

Indian community looks to retail to secure its future

By Susan Thorne

The site’s location at a strategic highway junction is ideal, says the band’s Chief Lawrence Paul.

A Native American Indian community in Nova Scotia, Canada, is looking to shopping center development to provide a much-needed boost to the economy of its reserve.

The Millbrook Mi’kmaq band near Truro, Nova Scotia, has prepared an 80-acre site on its reserve lands for Truro Power Centre, a mixed-use development that will combine retail and business uses with an interpretative center about American Indian — or First Nation, in Canada’s terminology — life in Atlantic Canada. The center officially opened in January 2001 with buildings housing an A&W restaurant, Needs brand convenience store, Tim Hortons doughnut restaurant and an Ultramar gas center. A cinema and hotel are under construction. But management has even more-ambitious plans for additional retail and commercial tenants.

Hopes for a large and lucrative expansion are based upon Truro Power Centre’s fortuitous location at a strategic junction of Highway 102, the main connector route between Nova Scotia and the mainland, with its own direct access from the highway. It is a 90-minute drive from Halifax, the provincial capital with about half a million inhabitants, and an average of 22,000 cars pass the site daily — 40,000 on weekends.

The center also enjoys some unique advantages because of its position on the Crown land of the 900-acre Mi’kmaq reserve. Retail stores there are exempt from Nova Scotia’s Sunday shopping ban. The band’s own bylaws permit stores in its territory to open seven days a week. Developments located on the reserve also avoid certain charges that are levied elsewhere in Nova Scotia, such as county building permit and business occupancy taxes, though the band has its own business taxation system. Merchandise purchased by First Nations customers with a native status card is sales-tax free as well — a significant benefit, given the 40,000 Mi’kmaq in the Atlantic Provinces.

Annual rental rates for a retail site are set at C$4 to C$6 ($2.50 to $3.80) per square foot, depending on the position in the center. Under certain circumstances, the Millbrook band will provide a business grant to businesses that want to locate on the reserve.

The band’s economic development arm, Millbrook First Nation Economic Development Corp., hopes these benefits will attract retail and other businesses to Truro Power Centre, providing a source of income to support the Mi’kmaq community.

Over the years, the band has struggled to achieve a reasonable living standard. Chief Lawrence Paul, head of the administrative council, recalls working to establish the first water and sewage lines to the reserve in the 1970s, and a large number of residents still depend on social assistance for at least part of the year, he said. But under Paul’s leadership, the Millbrook band’s lot has improved greatly over the past decade through various commercial enterprises. These include gaming facilities on the reserve, the development of a 49-unit apartment building, a gas station and a convenience store in Cole Harbour near Halifax, and a fishing operation that uses the band’s own fleet. Profits from these activities and the power center go into the reserve’s budget. Each of the 1,100 band members received individual payments of C$2,000 last year from this source.

“That way they don’t have to do without things like they used to,” Paul explained.

Yet his ultimate goal is not handouts, but self-sufficiency and equality for his community within Canadian society.

“We have a small beginning in the field of economic development, and I think the future looks rosy,” Paul observed. “I hope that someday, down the road, we’ll have financial independence and our band members will be able to walk with their heads held high.”

Thus far the center has made a modest start toward its goals. An important first step was the June 2000 signing of a 40-year lease with the Sobeys Group (a subsidiary of national grocery retailer Sobeys Inc.), Stellarton, Nova Scotia, for the three-acre site occupied by the current retail stores.

Ray Merriam, the center’s marketing and promotions consultant, says work has begun on a Super 8 motel, the first in Atlantic Canada, and Empire Theatres (a subsidiary of Empire Co., New Glasgow, Nova Scotia) is opening a multiplex cinema in December.

The community has also received a commitment from an aquaculture operator to establish a facility for the farming of arctic char, a relative of the salmon. In addition, Peace Hills Trust, an Alberta, Canada-based First Nations financial institution, has gotten the green light from its administrators to negotiate a lease for a bank at the power center. Among other prospective tenants is a naturopathic medicines laboratory.

Future plans focus principally on a “retail village” in the power center based on the theme of First Nations history and culture, targeted at Canadian and foreign tourists.

“We want to take the aboriginal content and make something out of it,” Merriam said. “There’s a lack of tourism based on aboriginal themes, yet the Japanese and Europeans are very interested in this aspect of Canada.”

A 40-foot bronze statue of Glooscap, a hero of Mi’kmaq legend, has been commissioned; it will stand in front of an interpretative center with displays and information about the mythology of Glooscap and Mi’kmaq history in Millbrook and beyond.

A master plan has been drawn up for the new configuration, and Merriam envisions a retail strip or cluster with themed restaurants alongside shops featuring Atlantic Canadian and national merchandise. A Halifax brew pub retailer has already proposed an exclusive brand of Glooscap beer, he said. Such a conglomerate would entice tour buses and leisure travelers off the highway, Merriam predicts, estimating that 50,000 to 100,000 visitors could turn off each year to see Millbrook Retail Village at Truro Power Centre.

Gaming and retail businesses are typical financial ventures for First Nations communities in both Canada and the United States, and there are other examples of native groups leasing land to shopping centers or becoming mall owners themselves. The Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians, which plans to buy a mall in California, recently joined ICSC. The 255,000-square-foot Viejas Outlet Center in Alpine, Calif., is owned by the Kumeyaay Indians, and British Columbia’s Campbell River Indian band has developed a thriving 385,000-square-foot power center called Discovery Harbour Centre, in Campbell River on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The southern mall portion of Vancouver’s upscale Park Royal Shopping Centre is located on land leased from the Squamish Nation tribe (ICSC members who attended the 2001 Whistler Conference received a blessing by a Squamish Nation chief). Roughly 3 percent of Canada’s population belongs to First Nations groups, including both Inuits and Indians.

Truro Power Centre is the first such project by a First Nations community in eastern Canada. But can it attract the necessary tenants to create a thriving retail destination? Merriam says interest is building now that some retail stores are in place, but he acknowledges that it was initially difficult to persuade retail companies to commit to a lease on a First Nations reserve.

“Because it’s a new thing, there’s a certain hesitation,” he said. “Sobeys took two years [to negotiate], but their presence shows other companies that this is a good place to do business.”

Another question about Truro Power Centre is whether its collection of very mixed uses can achieve a clear identity of its own.

“Whether you’re doing retail or light industrial or other uses, it’s important to let the market know what your focus is,” said J.M. Chambers, president of Chambers Developments, a retail consulting firm in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and a past director for the Atlantic Provinces Division of ICSC. “[Truro hasn’t] done that,” he added. “If the project has a focus, it’s not apparent. They have to decide where they’re going.”

By trying to expand in too many directions at once, the power center is compromising its potential as a retail center, Chambers noted. “Obviously, you’re not going to be able to get a department store to go in if there’s an aquaculture facility next door,” he said.

The power center’s remoteness from the town of Truro is another drawback, Chambers added. “It has a roadside presence, not a community presence,” he said. “It’s not a shopping destination, but a roadside destination where you can gas up, get a coffee at Tim Hortons and drive on.”

This may be an accurate description at the present time, but one Truro-based business consultant maintains that the center’s planned additions will give it a distinctive personality. Richard Martin, president of Truro-based Best Management Practices Network, a leadership development and mentoring consultancy, says the vision for the center will make effective use of its First Nations character to attract visitors.

“It has a perfect location beside a highway with the highest traffic density in Nova Scotia,” said Martin, who has no connection to the tribe. “It’s visible from the highway, and the Glooscap statue will automatically create a unique, visible cultural and market identity.” Martin also sees public appeal in the values of Mi’kmaq culture, which include stewardship of nature and a community structure that is managed by consensus.

“Businesses survive long-term by having a unique identity,” he said. “You see IBM and think computers. You see this center with its statue and you think aboriginal culture.” Features such as the interpretative center will build on that, Martin predicted.

The nearby non-native community would be pleased to see the power center expand and thrive, according to Bob Baxter, managing director of the Truro and District Chamber of Commerce, which serves a region of 52,000 inhabitants. He regards the center as a complementary attraction rather than as competition.

The Chamber is very supportive of the power center,” he said. “We hope it gets new types of stores and attractions that will enhance Truro’s ability to be a shopping destination and bring people to our area to stay a day or two.”

Truro presently has a downtown retail district and two shopping centers, one an enclosed mall, within the city limits. There is also a Wal-Mart at the superhighway junction nearest to the Truro Power Centre exit.

Chambers repeated that there is general goodwill toward the First Nations initiative, while there is no negative reaction to its special advantages, such as Sunday shopping.

“I haven’t heard any sounds of resentment whatsoever,” he said. “In my opinion, if they can get a break to help them produce a sustainable economy there, I wish them well. If [the center] works, it can help this group.”

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