Jadco Group has spent $126 million to purchase Galeries Laval, a 591,000-square-foot shopping mall in the Greater Montreal city of Laval.

The transaction represents the second-largest shopping mall sale in Quebec this year, according to Joe Rullier, executive vice-president and commercial real estate broker at Colliers Canada in Montreal, who brokered the deal. In September, Primaris REIT acquired the one-million-square-foot Les Galeries de la Capitale in Quebec City from Oxford Properties for $325 million.

Galeries Laval is located on Le Corbusier Blvd. close to Highway 15 (Laurentian Autoroute) and the Montmorency metro station.

Built in 1974, Galeries Laval was formerly owned by the Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, which paid $85 million for the mall in 2011. The capital development fund, which was created by the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec trade union, manages $20 billion in assets.

The Galeries Laval shopping centre

Galeries Laval includes a retail portion of about 530,000 square feet, with more than 40 stores and services and major tenants IGA Extra, Tanguay and Rona, as well as 61,000 square feet of office space. The overall vacancy rate is seven per cent.

The sale represents a per-square-foot price of approximately $213.

“It’s almost fully rented” and the mall “is in great condition,” Rullier said.

Galeries Laval’s off-market sale came with a 30-day closing date and had “a price that was competitive so, we couldn’t pass on it," Rullier said. "We didn’t go to market."

The location is zoned for commercial, retail and residential uses and “would be a great site” for residential development. "Eventually, it’s a land cover,” he added. “I’m sure (Jadco’s) planning to do some redevelopment on it,” given that the developer “is sitting on two million square feet of land, all rezoned.”

Due diligence completed in 30 days

Rullier said the transaction was a good one for both sides and represents the quickest and easiest of the $400 million in deals he has concluded this year.

“I’ve never seen a site this big traded in 30 days," he said, discussing the diligence period. "The transaction was flawless on the purchaser side and I’m sure it’s some sort of record to close on a site that big in 30 days with that many tenants. On my side, I’ve never seen a transaction as flawless as this.”

Prior to the FTQ acquisition, Galeries Laval was owned by Tony Accurso. Accurso, who once led the construction firms Simard-Beaudry Construction and Constructions Louisbourg, became known to the public through his participation in the Charbonneau Commission, which investigated corruption in Quebec’s construction industry.

He was found guilty in July 2018 on five counts of fraud and corruption in a Laval trial and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Jadco and its developments

Jadco was founded by Edmond Doudak in 1987 and is still led by the Doudak family.

Jadco and its institutional partners have accumulated more than $1.2 billion in investments in Quebec. The company also acts as a property manager.

Its residential multifamily developments in the Montreal area include Equinoxe-branded properties in Laval and Côte Saint-Luc, the Monarc in Saint-Laurent and Westpark in Pointe-Claire. It also plans to build Montfort, a luxury rental development in downtown Montreal near Place Bonaventure.

Jadco also built the 303-unit The Met multiresidential development at 180 Metcalfe St. in downtown Ottawa.

In 2023, Jadco and CellCarta announced a $350-million investment to create Inspire bio innovations, a major life sciences centre at the former Montreal Chest Institute at 3650 St-Urbain St., in the downtown area.

Phase 1, currently under construction, will house the headquarters of CellCarta, a provider of specialized precision medical laboratory services to the biopharmaceutical industry.

The second phase will bring together researchers and health technology companies in a nine-storey building that matches the height of the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, located just to the north.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was edited after being published to clarify two facts: the $213 figure represents the sale price per square foot, not the mall's annual sales; and the 30-day reference discusses the diligence period, not the entire process of receiving the offer and selling the property.