PC Urban builds industrial strata in Burnaby Brentwood

PC Urban builds industrial strata in Burnaby Brentwood

PC Urban will take its successful industrial strata concept into a fourth Metro Vancouver neighbourhood, announcing Monday it will build a 100,000-plus-square-foot development in Burnaby. IntraUrban Brentwood will redevelop an aging 50,000-square-foot industrial / office building into small-bay, light-industrial strata on Regent Street, just east of Willingdon, in the Still Creek industrial area. It will be the first new small-bay, industrial-strata development in the Brentwood area in more than 20 years.

Property Biz Canada

Montreal plays a losing game with real estate

The residential real estate market in Montreal was charting an upward course as the new millennium began, and nowhere more so than in Rivière-des-Prairies. Construction in the district had slowed during the market downturn, but had never sputtered the way it had in other parts of Montreal, thanks to the availability of cheap municipal land.

Montreal Gazette: Part I – Montreal Gazette: Part II – Montreal Gazette: Part III – Montreal Gazette: Part IV

Montreal Gazette: Part V – Montreal Gazette: Part VI – Montreal Gazette: Part VII

Devimco plans largest-ever $3B Montreal development

Devimco Immobilier is planning a $3-billion project in the Griffintown area of Montreal, which would be the company’s biggest-ever development. It will be “an extremely exciting” mixed-use project that will surpass the Devimco-created Quartier Dix30 and Solar Uniquartier in size, Devimco president Serge Goulet told RENX. “It will be the biggest project Devimco has ever done.”

Property Biz Canada

Once ignored, Winnipeg’s CRE draws outside investment

Call it a silent boom. While real estate has soared in other major Canadian cities over the last several years, Winnipeg has been quietly having a bull market of its own. Rather than being fueled by a mix of local, national and international investors — often the case in Canada’s largest cities like Vancouver and Toronto — Manitoba’s growth has largely been driven by home-grown money.

Property Biz Canada

Revitalizing brick-and-mortar Montreal’s priority

Guy Cormier, president and CEO of Desjardins Group, tabled a report by the advisory committee on the City of Montreal’s commercial development plan today. “The committee sat down with merchants and business owners to listen to their concerns, and is making realistic recommendations . . . Now it’s up to the City of Montreal to give a clear sign that it’s committed to supporting brick-and-mortar shops in Montreal,” said Cormier.

Canada Newswire

Paul Taggart remembered as ‘an entrepreneur at heart’

Like many a gifted entrepreneur, Paul Taggart had an uncanny knack for seeing business opportunities in places most others never would have thought to look. Taggart, the president of Taggart Realty Management and a key figure in one of the first families of Ottawa business, died unexpectedly late last month of heart failure. He was 61.

Ottawa Business Journal

Summit adds five industrial properties in GTA, Calgary

Five more warehouse and logistics properties in the Greater Toronto Area and Calgary are about to enter Summit Industrial Income REIT’s (SMU.UN-T) ever-growing portfolio. Summit announced the acquisitions in Markham and Burlington, Ont., and in Calgary, on Wednesday. Together, the buildings total 798,673 square feet of gross leasable area and also offer the potential for expansion or development. The total purchase price is approximately $127 million.

Property Biz Canada

Château Laurier architect defends modernist addition

The architect behind the maligned Fairmont Château Laurier addition is defending his latest design, and hoping once it is built people will come to believe the beauty of the original historic building has been preserved. Peter Clewes is best known for the skyscraping condominiums he’s designed in Toronto. However, in Ottawa his repeated attempts at designing an addition to the iconic Château Laurier hotel have been publicly panned. 

CBC – CBC

N.S. town’s core begins a new chapter

Truro has suffered the same plight as many other North American towns and cities: a mass exodus of shops and services to power centres on the perimeter. But in this Nova Scotia town, the tide has turned on the trend that is emptying downtown cores of their vibrancy.

Globe and Mail

Squamish attracts new population and hip businesses

At Backcountry Brewing, the long and wooden communal tables tucked inside a Squamish business park are packed with young families and their kids, wolfing down thin crust pizza that locals like to say rivals anything on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. “I don’t know if we would have been as successful as we are if we had opened a few years ago,” says co-owner and brewer John Folinsbee.

Vancouver Province

Abbotsford tower owner seeks rezoning

The Krahn Group of Companies, the owner of the Mill Tower in Abbotsford, B.C., hopes to be allowed to rent office space to an expanded range of companies after finding it hard to fill the building over the last decade. The tower was converted from a grain mill to an office tower in 2008-’09, with five of its eight floors slated to be used for companies that serviced industrial businesses.

Abbotsford News

Tokyo world’s most traded real estate market

Tokyo overtook London as the world’s busiest real estate market in the first quarter of 2018, with mega-deals and an unusually positive economic outlook driving demand. Investment volumes in the Japanese capital more than doubled to US$9.1 billion in the three months to March (2017: US$4.3 billion), just beating New York (US$9 billion) and way ahead of third-placed London (US$5.9 billion).

The Investor JLL

HNA sells Minneapolis City Center complex for $320M

HNA Group continues to shed U.S. assets to pay off its debt burden, with the Hainan-based conglomerate this past week having been reported to have sold the Minneapolis City Center mall and an adjacent office building for $320 million. The Chinese transportation giant’s Minnesota sale came just one week after it was said to have sold an office building in San Francisco for $290 million.

Mingtiandi

Marina Crossings Chicago’s biggest spec development since 1905

The largest industrial market in the nation by square feet is about to swell again as walls go up on Marina Crossings, the biggest speculative industrial development under construction within Chicago’s city limits since 1905. That was the year the storied Central Manufacturing District began to spring up on a 265-acre site along Pershing Road and a branch of the Chicago River.

CoStar Group

Rockefeller Group, Mitsubishi sell Boston trophy tower

With the help of real estate investment management services firm TA Realty LLC, Rockefeller Group U.S. Premier Office Fund LP and Mitsubishi Estate New York have sold 28 State St., a 579,000-square-foot office tower in downtown Boston. The joint venture pocketed $418 million on the disposition of the class-A building. The buyer was Heitman Capital Management, according to the Boston Business Journal.

CP Executive

Market Trends and Research

E-commerce growth benefits the industrial sector

E-commerce hit brick-and-mortar stores heavily and, at the same time, boosted the industrial sector. According to Amherst Capital Management’s 2018 Market Outlook, strong warehouse demand coming from e-commerce tenants is most likely to exceed supply this year. As expected, construction is picking up, with metros such as Chicago and Atlanta leading the way. Amherst Capital Management’s Abbe Franchot provides insight on the industrial sector.

CP Executive

U.S. cities with the most affordable office space

Albuquerque, N.M., has the most affordable office lease rates in the nation, according to a new market research report published by Los Angeles-based CBRE Group Inc. The report found Albuquerque took the top spot for the cheapest office space at $15.59 per square foot.

Bizwomen

Real Estate Companies

Minto files amended preliminary prospectus for IPO

Minto Properties and Minto Apartment REIT Friday announced it has filed an amended and restated preliminary prospectus in respect of the REIT’s previously announced initial public offering of trust units. The number of units to be sold and the price per Unit have not yet been determined. Minto Properties, one of The Minto Group of companies established in 1955, is a fully integrated real estate enterprise.

Canada Newswire – Property Biz Canada

Real Estate Investment Trusts

REITs are defying the odds

Sometimes things don’t always go according to plan in the investing world. Take REITs, for example. They’re interest-sensitive securities that are supposed to tank when rates rise. But so far at least, they haven’t got the message. As of this writing, the S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index was ahead 3.1 per cent for the year. Contrast that with another interest-sensitive sector: utilities which is down 10.8 per cent so far in 2018.

Toronto Star

Retail

Inside the nasty proxy battle for DavidsTea

DavidsTea Inc. (DTEA-Q) chief executive Joel Silver is making an impassioned pitch for stability as the battle for control of the struggling tea retailer comes to a head this week. Despite winning raves over the years for its range of creative tea products, distinctive packaging and airy, bright stores, the Montreal-based company has been grappling with a rapidly shifting consumer marketplace, poor financial results and all-too-frequent management upheavals.

Financial Post

Costco e-commerce business drives sales growth

During the third quarter of its fiscal 2018, Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST-Q) saw tremendous growth in e-commerce sales, which helped drive strong growth in net sales. For Q3, e-commerce sales grew 36.8% across all operations – which includes sites in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Korea and Taiwan – compared with the same period a year prior. Year-to-date growth was 36.1 per cent.

Canadian Grocer

IKEA calls off plans for big box stores in three U.S. markets

After opening 27 stores in the U.S. in the past 15 years, iconic Swedish component-furniture retailer IKEA has called off expansion plans in three markets while it considers making potentially far-reaching changes to its growth plans in a rapidly changing retail environment. The three stores the retailer had planned to open but decided against were in Glendale, Ariz., Nashville and Cary, N.C.

CoStar Group – Toronto Star

Restaurants and Eateries

Tim Hortons franchisee group threatens protests

Some Tim Hortons (QSR-T) franchisees are threatening a public protest if management does not agree to overturn a decision to revoke the licence of a restaurant owner who was critical of the company. Dissident franchisees are drawing a line in the sand over the case of Mark Kuziora, a restaurant owner who this spring became a flashpoint figure in the escalating battle with the coffee-and-donut chain.

Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

New Development

Work underway on Balmoral Hall arts centre

Balmoral Hall School, a private boarding school for girls in Winnipeg, has broken ground on a $6-million initiative it hopes will land more young women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Construction began Thursday on an 18,000-square-foot building, which will serve as a centre for arts and design. The project has received no public money.

Winnipeg Free Press

Technology

Technology’s impact on the future of CRE

Across the commercial property board, access to information once limited to CRE brokers who paid fees for such data is now available to the general public for free. This has removed barriers between commercial real estate owners and prospective tenants. For example, the website 42Floors provides office space rentals and commercial real estate listings for owners and prospective tenants.

Forbes

Other

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