Never mind being No. 1. Ed Sonshine is too busy trying to Amazon-proof his Canadian shopping-mall empire by turning them into hip urban oases.
The chief executive officer of RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust has inked deals to sell 19 assets in the past four months, part of his drive to unload about C$2 billion ($1.6 billion) worth of properties. At the same time, he’s tearing up some of his malls to develop apartments, trying to capitalize on the rental boom and insulate RioCan from the rise of e-commerce. By 2020 he wants more than 90 percent of rental revenue to come from Canada’s six major urban markets, up from about 75 percent now.