The White Oaks reimagine rolls along + Truss us, the robots have it

Weekly Regional Business Intelligence

Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

Westdell Development to add Marriott hotel, new businesses at White Oaks Mall

The makeover at White Oaks Mall keeps rolling. Westdell Development Corp., which bought the south London mall three years ago, announced on Thursday it plans will add a Marriott hotel on the south side of the property, plus bring a Splitsville entertainment centre (a bowling, arcade and bar chain) to the mall’s second floor. In addition, new Swiss Chalet and a Wingstop units will be added. It all joins the future Footlab, the AI soccer facility now under construction, plus the compact IKEA that opened in September. “We saw an opportunity here that the mall could thrive with our vision, knowing that it’s in a transit village,” Westdell president Iyman Meddoui said. “Shopping centres need to evolve, and our vision is to create a place that brings together shopping, entertainment, recreation, hospitality and eventually new residential opportunities.” Meddoui told CTV News London he is hoping to see the Marriott project break ground “over the next 12 months.”

The upshot: The great reimagining of White Oaks, post-Bay closure, is a prime example of how developers like Westdell are aiming to transform malls from places people visit primarily to shop into community gathering spaces where experiences drive foot traffic, encourage longer visits and create new revenue opportunities. As traditional retail faces growing competition from online shopping, mall operators are reimagining their properties as entertainment and lifestyle destinations, incorporating restaurants, immersive attractions, recreational activities and live events to draw visitors. And in related news, the mall reached a deal with the city to “maintain access to its property" for buses to use as a turnaround point, something that, apparently, will save the city around a million bucks. “White Oaks has been part of London's story for generations,” Mayor Josh Morgan said in a city press release. “By putting their own money behind it, they’re showing confidence not just in London today, but where we’re going as a city.”

Read more: CTV News London | London Free Press

Tricar marks 40 years with more than $600,000 in community giving

The Tricar Group turns 40 this year, and this week announced its charitable donations, sponsorships and community commitments for 2026 are adding up to more than $600,000. Included in that total is a $250,000, five-year pledge to Ronald McDonald House Charities Southwestern Ontario, plus a $70,000 program called 40 Years of Giving Back, which let residents of Tricar’s 14 rental properties vote on a local charity to receive $5,000 donation (the London Food Bank came out on top, with $40,000, but money also went to The Inn of the Good Shepherd in Sarnia and the Food Bank of Waterloo Region). “Celebrating 40 years gives us a chance to look back at what we've built, but even more importantly, at the relationships we’ve formed along the way,” said vice president Adam Carapella (pictured, left, with Joe Carapella). “We have residents who have called a Tricar building home for more than 25 years. Recognizing them and giving back to organizations that support our communities felt like a meaningful way to celebrate this milestone.” Founder Joe Carapella, who started the company in 1986, sat down with The London Free Press this week and reflected on the company’s four decades. He pointed to Picton Place and the Renaissance towers on King Street, built downtown more than 25 years ago, as two of company’s most significant developments. “Picton Place and the Renaissance buildings were quite a leap of faith because, at the time, downtown, especially in those areas, wasn’t seen as a nice place to live,” he said. “We brought people into downtown, and that’s allowed many Londoners to enjoy the downtown area and call it home.”

The upshot: Forty years, 80 completed developments across the region (with 43 of them in London) and more than 7,000 homes built. Hard to argue that Tricar hasn’t had a big influence on the built form of the city. The firm has also developed a solid reputation for its product — in London Inc.’s Best of London program, Londoners have voted it the city’s Best Apartment Rentals firm for three years running. Some of that success traces back to its early bet on rentals as a lifestyle choice, looking to attract empty nesters or folks not wanting the hassle of homeownership. Joe Carapella told the Free Press that when Tricar opened Westmount Place, its first rental building, the average London apartment was 700 to 800 square feet, while Tricar was building suites of 1,200 to 1,400 square feet. The company has also kept its concrete crew in-house for more than three decades, one of only two builders in Ontario to do so, Carapella said. “London probably has the best high-rise builders in the country. We’re very efficient. We really know what we’re doing when it comes to high-rise buildings,” Carapella said, adding that the rental construction sector is somewhat more competitive than it was in Tricar’s early days. “I guess there’s a little bit more competition than there used to be. The companies that have been around for a long time are well-financed. They’re all solid companies. They know what they’re doing, and, quite frankly, they’re all trying to be the second-best high-rise builder in the area.”

LTC looks at improved bus service to YXU

The London Transit Commission will look at improving bus service to the London International Airport now that Porter is set to start offering domestic flights (Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver) there next spring. Councillor Sam Trosow brought a motion to a recent transit commission meeting that asked city staff to report back on the possibility of creating a direct route from downtown. Right now, the airport is served by Route 36, which runs from Fanshawe College, and according to a a staff report at the same meeting, YXU isn’t served by nearby transit at all on weekends. “It’s generally felt in this city that the connections to the airport are very poor,” Trosow told CTV News London, following the meeting. “People are forced to take very expensive connections, or use a motor vehicle, so this would be a great opportunity for us to up our service.” None of his fellow commissioners backed it, however, opting instead to support Mayor Josh Morgan, who followed with a broader motion that directs the LTC to talk to the airport and city hall about likely passenger numbers and where those passengers would want to go, with the possibility that it might run a short bus link to the future BRT stop at Fanshawe College.

The upshot: It’s about as ‘municipal politics’ as you can get, seeing councillors vote down a simple and straightforward ask — run a bus from the airport into downtown — in favour of something much more vague and non-committal like Morgan’s motion to, in CTV’s words, “engage with the airport and city hall about potential passenger volumes.” But we suppose at this late election hour, council doesn’t want to make any commitments it might have to undo later. That said, it is hard to argue that a direct bus from the airport into downtown would be a good idea, as would Trosow’s subsequent amendment to Morgan’s motion that would include Tourism London and the RBC Place Convention Centre in the discussion as potential pickup and drop-off points for an airport route. When Porter’s flights start flying in spring next year, there will be a glaring lack of transit options, particularly on weekends (and stat holidays) when there are no buses running out to the airport. “We might want to use the front of the Convention Centre or some other downtown depot as a starting place for this,” Trosow said. “Let's make it easy for people when they get off the plane in London to see that there are alternative routes to get into downtown.”

Atlas Engineered Products opens Canada’s first robotic roof truss line in Huron County

Atlas Engineered Products has opened what it says is Canada’s first robotic roof truss manufacturing line, at a $20-million plant in Vanastra, just outside Clinton. Founder and president Hadi Abassi bought Clinton Truss in 2018 and started constructing the new facility two years ago, with support from a $4-million grant from Natural Resources Canada’s Investments in Forest Industry Transformation program. “The robotics go slower than human beings, but they’re consistent,” Abassi told CTV News London. Trusses are just the start; Atlas, with 10 factories across Canada, wants to build wall and floor sections the same way, and eventually ship whole pre-fab homes out to building sites in pieces. "We will take a set of plans. We will break it out. We build it like a jigsaw puzzle. Very simple puzzle,” Abassi said. “So instead of taking three or four months to build from the foundation up, we can do this with the installation crew in four to five days.” The plant will run a mix of manual and robotic production lines for now, and Abassi said the firm is hoping to expand its 40-person workforce in the near future. “We’re hoping that we can double that very soon," he said. “You cannot do it without human beings, but it’s a great complement to the human being. You still need the race car drivers, but you have an amazing car to drive now.”

The upshot: Abassi says the Atlas growth strategy is to acquire truss manufacturing plants from “owners of small- and medium-sized truss companies [who] are aging out and looking for opportunities to sell their businesses and monetize their lifelong commitment,” and then to modernize the facilities with robotics and other automation investments. Which is pretty much exactly what has happened at the Clinton plant, purchased in 2018. It’s also a good fit with Ottawa’s policy goal of more factory-built and wood-based housing manufacturing to support a faster build-out of new homes (although Atlas admits that right now, the market for homebuilding is “challenging”). There’s a nice parallel with the St. Thomas-based mass timber manufacturer Element5, which also got $4 million in funding from the same federal forestry program this year in order to improve its automation technology.

Sarnia Road build to meld student-aimed housing with affordable, sub-$1,000 units

Royal Premier Homes says it plans to offer sub-$1,000 per month rents in 17 units at its building at 801 Sarnia Road, which is set to see its first tenants move in next September. When council approved the proposal for the building, now being called ‘801 Western’ by the developer, it also passed a motion asking staff to talk to Royal Premier about a contribution to affordable housing. Royal Premier held an event earlier this week to announce the affordability commitment, where Mayor Josh Morgan credited a council decision last month that lets developers stack the city's Dollars to Doors grants with CMHC’s incentives. “When you put those two things together, you can actually drive a deeper level of affordability than what we’ve been seeing across the city,” he told CTV News London. It’s still a hard price-point to meet, though. “The challenge for our members is simply the cost to build these days has escalated so much that, unfortunately, trying to create units that are below $1,000 to rent per month is very challenging,” said Jared Zaifman, CEO of the London Home Builders’ Association. “Seeing close to 20 units here in this building is really amazing, but it wouldn’t happen without the partnership with the city, with the province and with the federal government.”

The upshot: It is hard to be critical of a plan to offer apartments under a thousand bucks a month, although the site might be an unusual match, one created by the incentive structures that are built around affordable housing grants. 801 Western is being pitched as very much a student building — a “resort-style building,” the website copy promises, one that “isn’t where you live between classes,” but rather “where you become who you’re going to be.” All of that is fine and dandy, however under the city programs Morgan cited, the affordable units will go to people currently on the city’s housing waitlist — a different demographic, often with different needs and lifestyles than the largely student demographic the building is being marketed to. (The city’s own housing needs study points to a shortage of one-bedroom units for singles and couples, so a cheap studio isn’t an unsuitable fit for everyone on the list.) At the media event on Tuesday, the developer seemed to downplay the student aspect of the building. “It’s going to be oriented to all renting groups, so we’re happy to welcome everyone when the doors open,” said Royal Premier Homes’ VP Dimen Noory. Designating a number of units as affordable like this often allows developers not only to access stacked grants but to secure CMHC-insured financing deals, so it is frequently an integral part of getting the money in order to build, but it will be interesting to watch how this matchup works out for the building.

Read more: CTV News London | 801 Western

Canada Life Place unveils $33-million expansion

Canada Life Place unveiled the results of its $33-million upgrade and renovation work at a ribbon cutting last week. The work, which started in June 2024 and took a little more than two years to finish, added around 10,000 square feet of space, including a bigger backstage area (now called the MNP District), two new lounges and expanded locker and training facilities for the Knights. The arena’s club section has a new name as well — it’s now Casey’s Club Lounge, sponsored by Casey’s Creative Kitchens. The city is putting in $26.7 million of the cost under a cost-sharing deal with OVG360, which runs the operations side of the rink. Kelly Austin (pictured, second from left), the arena’s general manager, says the payoff will come with the arena able to attract more major events. “When we have those national or international events, like the Junos or the Memorial Cup, prior to the expansion a lot of time we would have to build tents out in the parking lot or out on Dundas Street for example, to host media,” she told CTV News London. “Now we are able to bring them in-house, which makes us a lot more competitive when going after those bids.”

The upshot: It’s not the world’s flashiest arena upgrade story, as a good chunk of this investment (particularly Phase 2) was about improving back-of-house infrastructure that was in need of upgrading to keep attracting big touring acts. Phase 2 was also the more expensive phase from the city budget perspective, with the city chipping in an estimated $17.7 million for back-of-house improvements. While the whole renovation deal did include some alterations to the financial structure of the partnership the city has with OVG360, projections voted on by councillors back in 2023 suggest the city could see an additional $53 million in cash flow over the next 25 or so years, particularly once the arena’s operators recover about $2.1 million in pandemic-era losses still on the books. “Canada Life Place is a tremendous asset to our downtown and to the entire city,” said Mayor Josh Morgan in a press release. “It brings people together, attracts world-class entertainment and creates the kind of energy that helps our downtown thrive.”

Read more: CTV News London | Canada Life Place

Dispatch: October 23, 2026

A summary of recent business appointments and announcements, plus event listings for the upcoming week.

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