1946 – 2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Clearspring Village mall is home-grown product

MAY 7, 1980—Clearspring Village Shopping Centre in Steinbach, which just opened its doors to the public, just 10 months after construction began, will certainly achieve the goal its two local developers set for themselves when they first sat down to plan the project. It will provide for the Southeast a marketplace large and attractive enough to ensure that a large part of the region’s shopping dollar stays at home.

Quite apart from the fact the building is the largest shopping mall in the province outside of Winnipeg, the concentration of large and small stores is a splendid example of a meticulously planned project, seemingly sparing no expense in providing rural shoppers with amenities usually associated with big-city living.

Thirty-four years earlier, a grocer with a young family sold almost everything the family owned in Saskatchewan, just to scrape together enough money for the down payment on a small grocery store on Main Street in Steinbach.

Jim Penner was six years old when his father bought Modern Grocery in 1946 and cannot help but be reminded of that when he talks about his latest business venture, a half-interest in a multi-million-dollar shopping complex with a supermarket, where the meat coolers could swallow up J.A. Penner’s first store, with room to spare.

For Jim Penner, co-developer of Clearspring Village and owner of Penner Foods with a chain of five stores in three centres, the grocery business has come a long way from the days he cut and wrapped meat in the family store after school.

The other half of the Clearspring Village story is also one of a humble beginning, some 24 years ago, when A.K. Penner of Blumenort decided to open a small lumber store to serve the village and provide work for his sons.

The A.K. Penner boys have learned well from their father, for Ernie and Abe went on to establish a highly-diversified company specializing in timbering, commercial, residential and agricultural construction, land development and, of course, the building of the sprawling Clearspring complex, which opened May 7, 1980.

Ernie Penner, 43-year-old soft-spoken president of the A.K. Penner and Sons conglomerate, represents the second 50 percent interest in the shopping centre.

Together, Jim and Ernie Penner (the two are not related) packaged a retailing centre probably unequalled in rural Manitoba for size and range of stores and services.

At a time when shopping malls were usually developed and built by national, and even multinational giants, the accomplishments of these two local entrepreneurs stands out as even more significant.

It was no coincidence the owners of the Clearspring complex were also two of the three largest tenants. It was planned that way from the very beginning, when the possibility of joining forces in a single mall was first discussed.

Jim and Ernie Penner realized they had a problem in common: both had more customers than their stores could adequately serve, a predicament many a businessman might wish to be in. Both realized they needed to offer their customers better merchandising through larger and more convenient premises.

It made good economic sense to plan to build the new stores under one roof and it took just one step more to expand the idea into a large, enclosed mall housing a greater variety of retail outlets.

Studies undertaken several years earlier by a national department store chain indicated southeastern Manitoba could use several times the retailing floor space it presently has. The proposal appears to have been well-founded.

“Shopping must be an enjoyable experience,” Ernie Penner says of the planning behind Clearspring Village.

Jim Penner, remembering what his father used to tell him, puts it another way, “you have to treat people right.”

The Steinbach developers felt the Clearspring Centre, with its 20 stores, would fulfill these aims, and at the same time, help to bring shoppers back to Steinbach.

They were hopeful the mall would manage to recapture the market share Steinbach merchants had more than two decades ago, when shoppers from the Southeast, more and more, started shifting their spending to urban shopping centres.

Carillon editor Peter Dyck agreed with the optimism of Jim and Ernie Penner in an editorial comment coinciding with the opening of the mall.

“Southeastern Manitoba is the province’s major growth area; a shopping facility like Clearspring, being both attractive and offering a wide variety of services and outlets, is a tribute not only to its developers, but also to the region’s economic optimism.”