Behind the Renovation: CTM’s Tenant Improvement Playbook at Heritage Co-op Minnedosa

For the Heritage Co-op Minnedosa Food Store renovation, CTM Design delivered fully integrated design services that modernized the store while it stayed open; serving customers for nine straight months over the course of 2025.

The team pulled off a carefully choreographed, multi-phase construction sequence that kept key departments running, involved temporary dual refrigeration systems, and leveraged Matterport 3D scanning to plan with confidence.

The result is a flagship example of CTM’s Tenant Improvement (TI) and Commercial/Retail Design expertise; showing how full-service design can dramatically reduce risk, stress, and disruption for operators while upgrading brand and infrastructure.

The Making of the Minnedosa Makeover

The revitalized Heritage Co-op Minnedosa Food Store in Manitoba is now a brighter, more welcoming community hub with a fresh look inside and out that reflects its local roots. After a nine-month renovation, the store marked its official reopening with a community celebration on October 2, 2025.

Key upgrades were focused on the customer journey: a brighter customer service area, new self-checkout stations, updated display cases, and reworked floor layouts that better support current product mix and shopping patterns.

The bakery and deli were also expanded with more offerings, transforming everyday grocery runs into a more enjoyable, fresh-focused experience.

Behind the scenes, the renovation tackled critical building systems that had reached the end of their lifecycle: aging refrigeration equipment was replaced, HVAC and deli/bakery equipment were upgraded, and building envelope components were refreshed.

All of these upgrades worked together to give the store a modern backbone to match its refreshed look.

The challenge: stay open

The real challenge, however, was to turn sections into construction zones, without ever turning customers away at the door.

For a single-location food store, staying operational during a nine-month renovation turns a simple remodel into a live, high-stakes tenant improvement project. CTM’s mandate was clear: keep customer impact low, maintain public safety, and protect daily operations while the building evolved around them.

To make that happen, the project was broken into carefully sequenced phases so that only one major department (dairy, produce, deli, and others) was disrupted at any given time. Across the entire store, up to six major areas were completed at different times, fitting together like puzzle pieces to create the finished space without ever fully shutting down.

How do you renovate around active shoppers?

Executing phased construction in an active grocery store required precision planning and a lot of choreography. Construction zones were fully enclosed with temporary walls to keep the public safely separated from work areas, while also maintaining sightlines and wayfinding for shoppers. Less disruptive tasks, like ceiling painting, were pushed into evening or off-peak hours to keep the daytime environment as normal as possible.

CTM coordinated closely with store management on everything from product movements to delivery tweaks so shelves stayed stocked and transitions felt smooth to customers. Supply chain planning sometimes involved sister locations stepping in—for example, handling bakery production and shipping fresh goods to Minnedosa—so the store could keep offering fan favourites even while equipment was being swapped out.

Timing was just as important as tactics. Work was strategically arranged around peak retail periods to protect revenue and avoid major disruptions during the busiest times of the year.

CTM turns scans into smart design choices

CTM’s integrated design team brought architecture, engineering, and planning under one roof, allowing faster decisions and tighter coordination across disciplines. Before any demolition began, the team completed a detailed building audit using Matterport 3D scanning, capturing high-resolution imagery and point cloud data of the existing conditions.

That data was transformed into a 3D Revit model, giving the team an accurate digital twin of the store to design within. This upfront due diligence reduced surprises in the field, streamlined coordination between trades, and helped minimize risk, change orders, and schedule slippage for the owner.

CTM also completed permitting due diligence early, mapping out the right sequence of approvals for phased construction so both client and municipality knew what to expect.

Refrigeration: the high-wire act

The refrigeration switchover was one of the project’s most complex, and critical, engineering challenges. New compressor racks and rooftop condensers had to be installed while the existing system stayed fully operational, effectively running two refrigeration systems in parallel for a period. CTM first confirmed that the building’s power infrastructure had enough residual capacity to safely carry both systems before any tie-ins were attempted.

To accommodate new refrigeration cases, crews saw-cut existing floors and trenched in new power, sanitary, and refrigeration lines, all while protecting ongoing store operations. The new system was then brought online zone by zone, with old zones carefully decommissioned in phases to avoid product loss and downtime. CTM coordinated closely with the owner’s equipment vendors to ensure new cases, racks, and related equipment integrated smoothly into the overall design, utilities, and construction schedule.

CTM also oversaw adjustments to primary utilities—power, water, sanitary, storm, phone, and data—and added in-floor grease interceptors to bring the retrofit up to current code standards.

CTM: Cut the chaos with one integrated partner

For store operators, one of the biggest wins of working with CTM is having a single, full-service partner guiding the entire journey. CTM Design Services Ltd. and CTM Architecture Ltd. work together as an integrated group, covering commercial architecture, engineering and design, municipal approvals, and site renovation under one umbrella. This structure supports standardized processes, stronger quality control, clearer accountability, and better budget visibility; especially valuable for owners who want to reduce risk and keep expenses predictable during a live-store renovation.

CTM works with both independent operators and corporate brands across Canada and has delivered thousands of locations nationwide, including gas bars, convenience stores, and QSRs.

The Minnedosa project is a strong example of how that experience translates into practical risk management on real-world Tenant Improvement projects.

Ready to plan your tenant improvement project?

If you are planning a tenant improvement or live-store renovation, CTM can help streamline city ordinances and building approvals, de-risk your schedule, and align your design with brand and operational goals. Learn more about CTM’s Commercial and Retail Design and Construction Management Services to see how integrated design can simplify your next project.

CTM provides engineering design services in jurisdictions across Canada, including Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, supporting both single-site upgrades and multi-location rollouts.