The Financial Post reports in its Saturday edition that the grand old dame of real estate investment trusts, RioCan, is a retail landlord that owns 200 properties with an enterprise value of $12.7-billion. The Post's Joe O'Connor writes that it has long been associated with traditional shopping malls and big-box stores. Under relatively new chief executive officer Jonathan Gitlin's leadership, RioCan and partner Allied Properties put the finishing touches on a project just before Christmas that involved a good deal of out-of-the-box thinking. The Well in Toronto has been garnering accolades from urban designers and city builders. It is an example of the transformative power of a retail-focused REIT in the e-commerce age. At The Well, some of those shoppers live and work in the residential towers and commercial offices above the shops, which open to the surrounding neighbourhood, drawing the wider community to a pedestrian-accessible space that harks back to the small town main streets of old. The Well is a beast of an entirely different sort. The mixed-use development is set on eight acres just west of the city's financial core. "It is unique," Mr. Gitlin said. "It is not homogeneous; it is not like the Eaton Centre."