WVP unveils plan for former industrial lands

WVP unveils plan for former industrial lands

West Village Partners announced it has concluded the purchase of the 72-acre former industrial site at 70 Mississauga Road South in Port Credit. WVP, a joint venture of Kilmer Group, Dream Unlimited Corp, Diamond Corp, and FRAM + Slokker, plans to transform the lands into a complete, vibrant and diverse waterfront community where people can live, work and play. 

Canada Newswire

Calgary’s office vacancy rate keeps climbing

It seemed like a good idea when oil prices were cresting $140 per barrel: build a record number of office towers to cash in on Calgary’s oil-fired bash. However. Alberta’s biggest city now has nearly a quarter of its downtown office space – 10 million square feet – empty, with more surplus space being shoved back onto the market every month

Business In Vancouver

RioCan, Killam JV on Gloucester City Centre

RioCan REIT (REI.UN-T) CEO Ed Sonshine calls Ottawa’s Gloucester City Centre “a perfect storm” for a real estate investor and developer. In a good way. So after the announcement RioCan has partnered with Halifax-based Killam Apartment Real Estate Investment Trust (KMP.UN-T) to develop the 7.1-acre site in the city’s east end, the two are moving forward at full speed. 

Property Biz Canada – Motley Fool

Enwave grows into thermal energy powerhouse

Residents of the GTA likely immediately think of Enwave Energy Corporation as a provider of green, chilled water to Toronto’s skyscrapers drawn from the depths of Lake Ontario. It turns out there is so much more to the Toronto-based company.

Property Biz Canada

Fortress sells two development sites

Fortress Real Developments has closed on the sale of two land transactions. The Towns on Hall project in downtown Richmond Hill received OMB approval in early 2017 for 22 luxury three-storey freehold townhouses and includes an existing heritage home that will be relocated and restored. The Brock Village project in north Pickering was recently reimagined as a 59-unit townhouse project.

Canada Newswire

B.C.’s surging industrial a sign of good gov’t: Beedie

Industrial real estate is a good barometer for B.C.’s economic health. When the market is strong, the impacts are measurable. They include an increase in well-paying jobs, expansion of the property tax base (which reduces the property tax burden on residents), an increase in general tax revenue from expanded economic development and an increase in property transfer tax receipts.

Vancouver Sun

Home Capital’s swoon has former investor fearing contagion

The escalation of Home Capital Group Inc.’s (HCG-T) distress last week has led one of its largest former investors – Mawer Investment Management Ltd – to rethink the prospects of troubles spreading through the rest of Canada. The alternative-mortgage lender set up a $2 billion credit line to offset a run on deposits last week.   

Bloomberg – Financial Post – Financial Post – Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

SmartCentres Place transforming Vaughan

The City of Vaughan’s bold vision for its new downtown is unfolding with the 100-acre SmartCentres Place forming a critical piece of the evolving live-work-play community. The first office building, the 14-storey KPMG Tower, is complete in the joint venture between SmartREIT (SRU.UN-T) and Mitchell Goldhar, SmartCentres founder, chairman of the board of SmartREIT and its largest unitholder. 

Daily Commercial News – Property Biz Canada – Property Biz Canada – Property Biz Canada

Another CRE property bites the dust in Toronto

As developers search for more land for housing, Toronto continues to rezone industrial lands to residential. As each factory is demolished, it’s a tacit admission large commercial properties have simply become too costly for the type of sprawling industrial developments that once fuelled the city’s economic growth. 225 Birmingham St., is currently being demolished on behalf of Menkes Developments Ltd.

Daily Commercial News

Niagara high-rise partners eyeing Asian clientele

The architectural drawings look stunning but groundbreaking for the $500-million, 1.3-million-square-foot River Road Niagara Falls Luxury Resort project remains a couple of years away at least as the project partners continue to piece together a development plan. 

Daily Commercial News

Foreign buyers feast on Canadian AI startups

Another Canadian artificial-intelligence startup has made a quick exit by selling for a relatively modest sum to a U.S. buyer. Toronto-based Outside Intelligence Inc. (better known as OutsideIQ), a seven-year-old provider of AI-enabled software to help financial institutions perform due diligence and compliance tasks, has been snapped up by New York-based Exiger LLC.

Globe and Mail

Discount grocers have room to grow: report

There is plenty of room for discount food retailers such as No Frills to play a bigger role in Canada and the U.S., a new Boston Consulting Group report suggests, given that low-cost supermarket chains such as German chains Aldi and Lidl now account for close to half of the grocery market in some European countries.

Financial Post

Landcor boss keeps company on crest of big-data wave

Thirty years ago, veteran land trader Rudy Nielsen set up a database to manage information on the properties he was handling through Niho Land and Cattle Co. Ltd. With the rise of digital data management, Nielsen combined with BC Assessment Authority data and launched Landcor Data Corp, which found a niche estimating the values of credit union properties.

Business In Vancouver

Expo 67’s remains still exude magic

Expo 67 may have opened a half century ago today, but it’s 2017 that seems kind of old by comparison. The art and architectural legacy of Montreal’s 1967 International and Universal Exhibition — few, but impressive — litter Canada’s landscape like the ruins of a fantastical future to which we somehow, somewhere lost the thread.     

CBC – Montreal Gazette – CBC – CBC

N.A. banks reduce lending to U.K. CRE

North American banks cut new lending for U.K. commercial property by more than half last year as a market slowdown reduced the number of big deals being done. Banks focused more on refinancing existing loans than extending new credit, a trend that favoured domestic firms, according to a survey of 77 lenders by De Montfort University.

Bloomberg

Market Trends and Research

Fort Mac fires will have economic impact on Alberta

Repairing damage from the Fort McMurray wildfires will boost economic growth and create an extra 9,000 jobs in Alberta this year, The Conference Board of Canada says. But the most expensive disaster in the country’s history will also likely mean higher insurance premiums and larger government debt to cover the costs.

Edmonton Journal

Can a streetcar save Detroit?

Detroit’s civic leaders are counting on a new streetcar route to boost the city’s comeback from bankruptcy. But critics argue the transit project will do nothing for average residents – most of them poor and black. ‘It’s just going to be the hipster express,’ one says

Globe and Mail

Real Estate Companies

Starwood launches new hotel brand

Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group this week launched Uptown Suites, an upscale take on Starwood’s InTown Suites extended-stay brand. The firm will open its first property in Concord, N.C., with plans to open 10 more properties by 2019. Starwood expects to build new hotels for most of planned properties, targeting “walkable” locations with nearby dining, retail and entertainment areas.

CoStar Group

Sable’s success benefits Eastern European youth

Sable Developments has a growing real estate portfolio, but president Sam Boguslavsky mostly wants to talk about his passion for the Humanitarian Aid Response Team (HART). Boguslavsky is a long-time board member of the Calgary-based organization founded in 1996 by Lloyd Cenaiko to help alleviate poverty and injustice in Eastern Europe.

Calgary Herald

REOC Financial Reports

Latest financial reports:

* Urbanfund Corp., (UFC-X), Marketwired 

Real Estate Investment Trusts

U.S. apartment REITs feeling pinch of rising supply

Publicly traded apartment REITs that have led the surge in downtown luxury apartment construction since 2009 are trying to adjust as rents in higher-end urban markets continue to decline, prompting some large developers such as AvalonBay Communities Inc. (AVB-N) to shut down new construction starts to pursue projects in better-performing suburbs. 

CoStar Group

Fiera Capital closing North American REIT Income Fund

Fiera Capital Corporation, manager of North American REIT Income Fund (NRF.UN-T), announced the fund will be closed on or about May 29. The manager may terminate the fund without the approval of unitholders if the manager believes it is no longer economically practical to continue the fund or that it would be in the best interests of the fund. 

Canada Newswire

REITS the new money market funds

It used to be you could put $1 million into an insured savings account and earn interest of about $50,000 a year. Today, the same $1 million would generate between $100 to $500 a year. For years, REITs have paid dividends 50 to 100 times what money market funds have paid. But many conservative investors have avoided REITs.

Forbes – Forbes

Consider Dream Office or Killam Apartment

Dream Office REIT (D.UN-T) is primarily focused on office locations in Canada’s major metro areas. A large chunk of Dream’s holdings is located in the core of Toronto, where rents are high and vacancies are low. Killam Apartment REIT (KMP.UN-T) is a great pick for investors looking at a residential-focused REIT. Killam operates more than 200 properties.

Motley Fool – Property Biz Canada

Retail

Indochino launches new store; plans U.S. expansion

Custom tailor Indochino opened its newest store in Metrotown Burnaby on Friday, marking the Vancouver-based company’s second showroom in Metro Vancouver. “We opened Edmonton at the start of the month, then Calgary thereafter and now Metrotown,” Indochino CEO Drew Green said. “We’re in negotiations on some other opportunities and our next five stores will be in the U.S.”

Business In Vancouver

At Sobeys, ‘change is imminent’

Michael Medline was on the job for just a few hours as chief executive officer at Sobeys Inc. (EMP.A-T) when he met with about 600 employees to talk about what he had in mind for the struggling grocer. The most frequent question posed to Medline was whether plenty of change would be coming to Canada’s second-largest food retailer. 

Globe and Mail

Blackstone’s GSO snaps up J. Crew debt

GSO Capital Partners, private equity firm Blackstone Group LP’s credit arm, is acquiring more of J. Crew Group Inc’s debt, hoping for a profitable trade that could also give the U.S. fashion retailer more time to stave off bankruptcy, sources said. Sales have been declining as J. Crew struggles with its $2.1 billion US in debt.

Reuters – CoStar Group

Restaurants and Eateries

Cafe owners pulling the plug on WiFi

When HotBlack Coffee opened in downtown Toronto a year ago, it took a risk few businesses take in today’s online-driven world: it turned off the WiFi. “Every day people come in and ask for it,” says Jimson Bienenstock, the café’s co-owner.  HotBlack is among a growing number of independent coffee shops choosing to ditch or limit Internet use. 

Globe and Mail

New Development

Montreal unveils plans for new public square

The City of Montreal has unveiled a plan to build a new $67- million public square that will be used as an urban terrasse in the summer and a skating rink in the winter. The 5,000-square-metre space on Clark Street between Ste-Catherine Street and De Maisonneuve Boulevard is situated right next to Place des Arts and the Quartier des Spectacles.   

CBC – CTV – Gazette

Infrastructure

Quebec to replace part of Mercier Bridge

The Quebec government has announced it will build a new section of bridge to link Montreal and the South Shore. The new structure is to be constructed next to the Honoré Mercier Bridge and will replace the span that carries traffic in the direction of Kahnawake, the provincial government said in a statement Sunday. 

Montreal Gazette

Technology

Robotic fruit pickers may be on the way

Harvesting Washington state’s vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, and many of them work illegally in the U.S. That system eventually could change dramatically as at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market. The robotic pickers don’t get tired and can work 24 hours a day.

Windsor Star

Other

CN Tower recognized for architectural excellence

The CN Tower is being honoured by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), in partnership with the National Trust for Canada, as a recipient of the 2017 Prix du XXe siecle, for its national significance to Canada’s architectural legacy. Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden (WZMH) Architects, along with John Andrews Architects International, worked with engineers and contractors on the structure.

Daily Commercial News – Daily Commercial News

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