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CBRE Sells a Suburban Calgary Retail Centre to Salthill Capital

November 5, 2026 4 Minute Read

Richie Bhamra and Geoff Mar in front of an aerial view of the Sage Hill community

CBRE’s National Investment Team – Calgary has sold Sage Hill Quarter, a grocery- and pharmacy-anchored shopping centre in Northwest Calgary, to Salthill Capital. Richie Bhamra and Geoff Mar represented Calgary-based Ronmor Developers in the transaction.

The 174,963 sq. ft. Sage Hill Quarter, built between 2019 and 2021, is anchored by FreshCo (replacing a Calgary Co-Op food store) and Shoppers Drug Mart, and is 91% leased. The retail centre is part of a mixed-use development that includes Q Condos, a 173-unit project completed in 2023 that’s sold out.

“Ronmor delivered this project during the pandemic, which makes the fact that they were able to lease up the bulk of that retail space all the more impressive,” says Bhamra, noting that the developer had to be aggressive with rental rates in order to entice tenants to occupy the centre.

Sage Hill Quarter is located in one of Calgary’s fastest-growing residential nodes. “Directly to the north of the centre there are about 7,500 homes that are going to be delivered within the next five years,” Bhamra says. “So you have a captive number of consumers right there and traffic for the centre will grow in a massive way in the coming years. So that was a big draw for investors.”

The price per square foot that Sage Hill Quarter was sold for “is extremely attractive just based on the fact that you are getting what is essentially a new-generation retail centre,” Bhamra says. “It would be very difficult to get this kind of deal for a project built today, where average rents would have to be in the $45 psf range. Average rents here are significantly lower than that.”

Sage Hill Quarter

Strong Investor Interest

Sage Hill Quarter generated a fair bit of interest from potential buyers, according to Bhamra. “We had seven offers from a mix of institutional and private groups, all of them Canadian,” he says, noting that they went to a second round of bidding with the top groups before ultimately selling to Toronto-based Salthill Capital.

CBRE had advised Ronmor prior to launching marketing for the retail centre. “We told them where values are, and given where the market was, we said that this is not something we should be selling off-market,” Bhamra says. “We said let’s do a full launch on this because there is a ton of capital chasing grocery- and pharmacy-anchored centres. So the timing was good.”

Bhamra’s team is currently working on ~$500 million worth of retail transactions for 2026 that are either closed or conditional. “Industrial and retail, those are what is keeping us busiest from a deal volume perspective,” he says. “Capital is being most aggressive for those two asset types.”

"Traffic for this retail centre will grow in a massive way in the coming years. So that was a big draw for investors." — Richie Bhamra, National Investment Team - Calgary

Belief in the Market

While the bulk of Sage Hill Quarter’s retail space has been leased, ~9% of the property sits vacant, with some of the premises having never been leased before. “So a big focus for us was convincing prospective investors that this area is only growing,” Bhamra says.

“We emphasized that investors should believe in the market not where it’s at today but where it’s going to be in five years when you have that additional density of 7,500 residential units. That was the key to selling the asset at the price we sold it for. We really had to educate prospects on the long-term viability and population growth in the area and in Calgary more broadly.”

Another big selling point was that commute times in Calgary aren’t as brutal as in other major Canadian cities. “People who do live out here in the suburbs, they can commute to the inner city relatively quickly because of the infrastructure we have in place,” Bhamra says.

Sage Hill Quarter is one of the larger retail developments that Ronmor has built, according to Bhamra. “I think this deal will roll into more deals but this one was a big one for them,” he says. “It was very important for Ronmor that this sale was executed the way it was.

“And they’re very happy with what we were able to achieve for them here.”

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