Thunder Bay, Ontario
Thunder Bay's whole office-building assessment is $27.6 million - less floor value than a single mid-size tower elsewhere - and the property that mattered most downtown, the city-owned Victoriaville Centre, was demolished in 2025 after running deficits since it opened in 1980; what is left at scale belongs to outsiders, with Montreal's Leyad buying the 456,430 sq ft Intercity Shopping Centre from the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan in June 2026, an affiliate of Connecticut's Atlas Holdings holding the pulp and paper mill since 2023, Alstom holding the 553,000 sq ft railcar plant, and the grain terminals held by Richardson, Viterra, Cargill, G3 and Canada Malting.
8 buildings · 7 with an owner established · 15 sources · 4 tier A · 4 tier B · prepared 2026-10-03
Ontario's land registry is the official record of who owns what: ServiceOntario states it "contains the official records of property ownership and other legal interests such as mortgages, transfers and leases", covers "more than 7.4 million parcels of land", that its services "are only available online", and that on OnLand "You can do a self-search for a fee" - $37.10 for a copy of a parcel register under the bulletin effective 2 November 2026. There is no bulk ownership extract at any price, no open assessment roll (MPAC's values are login-only and still pegged to 1 January 2016 current values for 2026 taxes) and no price-paid dataset. In Thunder Bay that produces a particular gap: the largest single land uses in the city are the harbourfront grain terminals and the industrial waterfront, which are held by private grain and forestry companies that publish no property lists, so the elevators below are identified by operator from a public inventory rather than by registered title.
The marquee buildings
The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.
| Building | Use | Owner | Owner type | Last price paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intercity Shopping Centre 1000 Fort William Road 456,430 sq ft |
Retail | Leyad Leyad announced on 3 June 2026 the acquisition of "a 456,430-square-foot retail asset in Thunder Bay, Ontario, serving as the dominant shopping destination for Northwestern Ontario" from the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, which considered it a non-core asset; Avison Young ran the process. 88 tenants, more than 2,000 parking stalls, 94 per cent CRU occupancy excluding the former Sears box, 5.6-year weighted average lease term. Leyad takes over property management from Morguard, will build a larger Sport Chek, and acquired an adjacent lot for quick-service restaurant pads. Built as a strip mall in 1982 and demolished for the present centre in the 1990s. |
Private company | —A |
| Victoriaville Centre (demolished) Victoria Avenue between Archibald and Brodie streets |
Retail | City of Thunder Bay The city owned the enclosed mall built over Victoria Avenue in the south core and voted to demolish it. The city announced in late January 2025 that demolition would begin in April, reopening Victoria Avenue between Archibald and Brodie streets as a public street with plazas on either side and design features allowing closure for events; the city's engineering manager is quoted on the tender timetable. Reconstruction was to begin in spring 2026 and finish in autumn 2026. The mall opened in 1980 and had run operating deficits throughout. |
Government | —A |
| Alstom Thunder Bay plant (former Canadian Car and Foundry / UTDC / Bombardier works) Montreal Street, Thunder Bay 553,000 sq ft (51,400 m2) |
Industrial | Alstom "Alstom operates a 553,000 square feet (51,400 m2) plant in Thunder Bay which manufactures mass transit vehicles and equipment, employing approximately 500 people. The plant was built by Canadian Car and Foundry to build railway box cars in 1912, began building passenger railcars and transit cars from 1963 onwards. Alstom acquired the facility from Bombardier in 2021, which had acquired it from UTDC in 1992, and from Cancar in 1984." The plant has built vehicles for the Toronto Transit Commission and GO Transit. Alstom's own Canadian page lists Thunder Bay, ON as a site but states no floor area, so the figure is Wikipedia's, citing a Bombardier site fact sheet. |
Public company | —B |
| Thunder Bay pulp and paper mill Mission Island, Thunder Bay |
Industrial | Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper (an affiliate of Atlas Holdings) "Resolute Forest Products Inc., a subsidiary of Domtar Corporation and a part of the Paper Excellence Group, today announced that, on August 1, 2023, it completed the previously disclosed sale of the Thunder Bay (Ontario) pulp and paper mill to an affiliate of Atlas Holdings". The sale was a requirement of the consent agreement between Domtar and the Canadian Commissioner of Competition registered with the Competition Tribunal over Domtar's acquisition of Resolute. Resolute continues to supply the mill with wood chips and biomass. Resolute was previously the city's largest private employer at over 1,500 people. |
Private equity | —A |
| Keefer Terminal, Port of Thunder Bay Keefer Terminal, Lake Superior waterfront 320,000 m2 site |
Industrial | Thunder Bay Port Authority "The Thunder Bay Port Authority manages Keefer Terminal, built on a 320,000 square metre site on Lake Superior." The Port of Thunder Bay is described as the largest outbound port on the St. Lawrence Seaway system and the sixth-largest port in Canada. The port authority's own site returned 404 on every article path tried, so the figure and the management statement come from the one source; a Canada Port Authority holds federal real property under letters patent, which is why this is entered as government rather than as a company. |
Government | —B |
| Richardson International grain terminals (two) Current River harbour, Thunder Bay |
Industrial | Richardson International A public inventory of Canadian grain elevators lists Richardson International with two terminal elevators at Thunder Bay, among major terminals also operated by Canada Malting, Cargill, G3 and Viterra (A and B elevators), with Parrish and Heimbecker's decommissioned. Richardson's own locations page lists Thunder Bay but gives no capacity or address. Storage capacity per elevator is not stated in any source opened, so no figure is entered; the Port of Thunder Bay has the largest grain storage capacity in North America on the port's own claim, which could not be opened. |
Private company | —B |
| Viterra A and B elevators intercity waterfront, Thunder Bay |
Industrial | Viterra Listed in the same public grain-elevator inventory as "Viterra A and B elevators", photographed on the intercity waterfront in August 2021 and September 2023. No capacity, acreage or address is stated, and no Viterra filing or property page was opened, so only the operator is named. Viterra's Canadian assets have changed hands more than once - 19 elevators went to Richardson in 2013 when Glencore bought Viterra - and this record does not attempt to establish the corporate chain above the operating name. |
Private company | —B |
| Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre 980 Oliver Road |
Institutional | Not established the register is open, but this building was not matched "Thunder Bay has one major hospital, the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre", one of four employers in the city with over 1,500 staff alongside the City of Thunder Bay, the Lakehead District School Board and the Government of Ontario; it has a helipad. The hospital's own about page rendered as navigation only with no statement of property, and no document naming the registered owner was opened, so the owner is blank rather than assumed. |
Not established | —A |
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
Thunder Bay was absent from the province's 2025 Financial Information Return file at the time of writing, so these are the 2024 figures - the city's own return under s.294(1) of the Municipal Act, published as bulk CSV under the Open Government Licence - Ontario. Two numbers define the place. Its entire office-building class is assessed at $27.6 million, the lowest of the five Ontario cities in this batch by a factor of twelve. And because Thunder Bay is a single-tier municipality with no regional government above it, its own levy is 88 per cent of every tax dollar raised in the city - the opposite of Kitchener, where the city gets a third.
Who owns the town
At this scale the significant owner is rarely a trust or a fund: it is one or two local holding companies, a family in its second or third generation, and often the land around the town rather than the buildings in it.
Thunder Bay's land is harbourfront. The city's defining holdings are the grain terminals strung along the Kaministiquia and the Current River harbour and the industrial waterfront behind them - and they belong to grain and forestry companies that publish no property lists, so this section names operators from a public inventory of elevators and says so, rather than pretending to title. The municipality is the other large holder, and in the one case where it acted as an owner it demolished the asset.
| Name | Type | Holdings |
|---|---|---|
| City of Thunder Bay The city owned and ran the Victoriaville mall from 1980 until council voted to demolish it; the demolition was tendered in March 2025 and the street beneath reopened as part of a south-core rebuild finishing in autumn 2026. The city is also one of four employers in Thunder Bay with more than 1,500 staff. No municipal property inventory is published, so no figure beyond the named assets is entered. |
Government | Victoriaville Centre (demolished 2025), city hall, parkadesA |
| The grain terminal operators: Richardson International, Viterra, Cargill, G3 and Canada Malting From a public inventory of Canadian grain elevators: "The city of Thunder Bay hosts a number of large grain terminals that store grain for shipment over Lake Superior. Most of the large grain elevator companies have their own elevators here or share space with other companies." The list is of operators, not registered owners, and no acreage or capacity is stated for any of them. The city's article records that many Thunder Bay elevators have been closed and demolished since the 1970s as grain shipping shifted to Pacific ports, and that the Kaministiquia River was abandoned by industry and shipping. |
Private company | Richardson two terminals; Viterra A and B; Cargill, G3 and Canada Malting one each; Parrish and Heimbecker decommissionedB |
| Atlas Holdings / Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper Holder since 1 August 2023 of the mill that for a century was the anchor of the city's forest-products economy; Resolute, the seller, still supplies it with chips and biomass. The site area is not stated in any source opened. |
Private equity | the pulp and paper mill siteA |
| Alstom The 1912 Canadian Car and Foundry works, continuously in production through Cancar, UTDC and Bombardier ownership and held by Alstom since 2021. About 500 employees. The site acreage is not stated in any source opened. |
Public company | 553,000 sq ft plantB |
| Thunder Bay Port Authority The largest single piece of waterfront whose area is actually stated anywhere that could be opened. |
Government | 320,000 m2 at Keefer TerminalB |
Who builds the houses
New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.
The most striking number in this record is a builder number. Twenty-eight companies hold a current HCRA licence at a Thunder Bay address, and between all twenty-nine licensees with a directory record they have delivered 311 homes in the whole 2016-2026 window - against 1,873 for St. Catharines-licensed builders, 3,292 for Kitchener, 5,343 for Oakville and 11,107 for Burlington. The largest single builder in the city has delivered 98 homes in a decade. There is no production-housing industry in Thunder Bay in the sense the rest of southern Ontario means it. Figures are total possessions 2016-2026 from the Ontario Builder Directory's own API.
| Name | Type | Possessions 2016-2026 |
|---|---|---|
| C. Kelos Homes Ltd. 1515 East Arthur Street, Thunder Bay; HCRA-licensed since 20 August 1998 and in no umbrella group. All 98 possessions freehold. The largest home builder licensed in the city, at an average of about nine homes a year. |
Private company | 98A |
| 733515 Ontario Inc. 800 Norah Crescent, Thunder Bay; licensed 10 October 2013. 32 freehold possessions. The directory records no operating name, so the numbered company is named as it stands. |
Private company | 32A |
| Beverly Balmoral Development Inc. 640 Beverly Street, Thunder Bay; licensed 3 January 2012. 4 freehold and 27 condominium possessions - the only Thunder Bay licensee whose output is mostly condominium. |
Private company | 31A |
| Syncor Contracting Limited 4115 Mapleward Road, Thunder Bay; licensed 10 April 2013. 24 freehold and 5 condominium possessions. |
Private company | 29A |
| Di Gregorio Developments Inc. 665 Hewitson Street, Thunder Bay; licensed 18 November 1992, the longest-standing of the city's active builders after C. Kelos. All 28 possessions freehold. |
Family / private | 28A |
| Habitat for Humanity Thunder Bay 660 Squier Street; licensed 2 March 2006. Five freehold possessions in the decade. Included because in a market this small a charity's five houses are 1.6 per cent of everything the city's licensed builders delivered. |
Institution | 5A |
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
Every large commercial owner established in Thunder Bay is from somewhere else, and two of the three biggest changed hands in the last three years: a Toronto pension plan sold the mall to a Montreal private firm in 2026, and a Montreal-headquartered forestry group was ordered by the competition regulator to sell the paper mill to a Connecticut private-equity firm in 2023. The one durable local institution on the list is the federal port authority.
| Name | Type | Floor area / land |
|---|---|---|
| Leyad Montreal-based and privately owned; RENX describes it as a retail-focused investment and development firm that also holds a large multi-residential portfolio, seven industrial properties and two hotels across Canada, and that in the same year bought a seven-store Loblaw portfolio, Winnipeg's 900,000 sq ft St. Vital Centre and Lloydminster's Lloyd Mall. Its president called Intercity "the dominant retail centre in northwestern Ontario" and "an essential piece of retail infrastructure". |
Private company | 456,430 sq ft (Intercity Shopping Centre)A |
| Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (former owner) Recorded because the exit is the fact: HOOPP sold Intercity Shopping Centre in June 2026 having, on Leyad's account, treated it as a non-core asset it wanted to sell. It was Leyad's second acquisition from the same pension plan. Morguard was the outgoing property manager. |
Pension fund | no established Thunder Bay holding after June 2026A |
| Atlas Holdings (Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper) An affiliate of Atlas Holdings completed the purchase on 1 August 2023 under an agreement dated 26 May 2023, as a condition imposed by the Commissioner of Competition on Domtar's acquisition of Resolute. No price and no floor area appear in the announcement. |
Private equity | the pulp and paper millA |
| Domtar (Paper Excellence Group) "Domtar operates three sawmill[s] in the region, one in Thunder Bay/Fort William First Nation, one in Sapawe near Atikokan and one in Ignace." Paper Excellence Group bought Domtar Corporation in a $3-billion deal in late 2021 and Resolute Forest Products for $2.7 billion two years later, then rebranded the mills under the Domtar name; corporate offices remain in Fort Mill, S.C., Richmond, B.C. and Montreal. |
Private company | three regional sawmills, one in Thunder Bay/Fort William First NationA |
| Thunder Bay Port Authority A federal Canada Port Authority holding and managing the general cargo terminal on Lake Superior. Its own website returned 404 on every article path attempted, so nothing beyond the terminal site area is claimed. |
Government | Keefer Terminal, a 320,000 m2 siteB |
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- What Leyad paid for Intercity Shopping Centre. Neither party disclosed it; Leyad's president told RENX only that it was in the tens of millions of dollars.
- Whether Leyad also owns Grandview Mall in Thunder Bay. A search summary asserted it, but no source that could be opened states it, and Leyad's own portfolio page names only four assets, of which the Thunder Bay one is Intercity. Not claimed.
- The registered owners, acreages and storage capacities of the Thunder Bay grain terminals. The Canadian Grain Commission's licensed-elevator list would not resolve; the names used are operators from a public inventory, not registered owners. The port's claim to the largest grain storage capacity in North America could not be opened on the port's own site.
- Who owns the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, Lakehead University's campus, Confederation College, or the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital and the other St. Joseph's Care Group facilities. No document naming a registered owner was opened for any of them.
- The site area of the Alstom plant and of the pulp and paper mill, and the price of the 2023 mill sale. None is stated in any source opened.
- What the demolition of Victoriaville Centre cost and what will be built on the site. The city named a contractor and a schedule in reporting that could be opened, but no contract value was.
- Any link between a property holding and elected office in Thunder Bay: nothing was established and the record carries none. Checked: every source opened for this record, in which council appears only as the decision-maker on the Victoriaville demolition.
- Assessed value of any individual Thunder Bay parcel. MPAC's values are login-only and frozen at 1 January 2016; the city's 2025 provincial return had not been published at the time of writing, so the aggregates here are 2024.
Sources
- Overview: land registry — Government of Ontario (ServiceOntario) · openA
- Bulletin 2026-04: Land Services Fee Changes effective November 2, 2026 — Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, ServiceOntario, Land Registry Services Branch · openA
- The Assessment Cycle — Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) · openA
- Financial Information Return (FIR) multi-year CSV data, fir_data_2025.csv and fir_data_2024.csv (Schedule 22, Taxation and Payments-in-Lieu Summary) — Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing · openA
- Ontario Builder Directory (/api/builders, /api/buildersummary, /api/builderProperties) — Home Construction Regulatory Authority (HCRA) · openA
- Leyad buys Thunder Bay's Intercity Shopping Centre from HOOPP — Real Estate News Exchange (RENX) · openA
- Transformation of Thunder Bay's south core set to begin with demolition of Victoriaville mall — CBC News · openA
- Thunder Bay (economy, port, industry and health sections) — Wikipedia · openA
- Resolute Completes Sale of Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper Mill — Resolute Forest Products Inc. via PR Newswire · openA
- Thunder Bay - major grain terminals — Grain Elevators of Canada · openB
- Resolute sawmills to adopt Domtar name — NWONewsWatch (Dougall Media) · openA
- Leyad Acquires Intercity Shopping Centre in Thunder Bay — Leyad via CNW / Newswire · openA
- Thunder Bay's Intercity Shopping Centre has new owner — Northern Ontario Business · openA
- Alstom in Canada (site list including Thunder Bay, ON) — Alstom · openA
- Leyad - portfolio — Leyad · openA