MEG looking to offload Calgary office space

MEG looking to offload Calgary office space

MEG Energy Corp. (MEG-T) needs less than half the office space it is on the hook for in downtown Calgary after it paused its ambitious growth plan last year. MEG, which recently moved its headquarters into a newly built office tower, has hired JLL Commercial Real Estate to sublet 307,000 square feet of space it no longer needs.

Financial Post – Property Biz Canada

Europro purchases Windsor landmark

One of Windsor’s most prominent buildings, One Riverside Drive, has been sold to a Toronto-based company expanding its presence in the city. Europro Real Estate bought the building that houses Chrysler Canada for almost $32.3 million from Dundeal, which had purchased it in 2012 for $33.2 million. Windsor Asset Management paid $47.7 million for the property in 2004.

Windsor Star

Strategic Storage enjoys Canadian competitive advantage

Self-storage players such as Strategic Storage Trust II, Inc. (SST II) are looking to capitalize on trends such as Toronto’s condo boom, where downsizing empty-nesters or those starting a family suddenly face a space crunch. In the downtown core, however, finding any suitable space for the right price is extremely difficult, said Michael Schwartz, Strategic’s chairman and chief executive, 

Property Biz Canada

New office towers won’t help Montreal: Opinion

Last fall’s inauguration of Cadillac Fairview’s Deloitte Tower on the southwestern edge of downtown Montreal seemed like a reason to uncork the champagne, ending a 20-year drought in new office construction. It also marked the escalation of a war for tenants between real-estate rivals Cadillac Fairview and Ivanhoé Cambridge.

Globe and Mail

Cowper to oversee Cresa’s new Montreal office

Cresa, the world’s largest commercial real estate firm specializing in tenant/occupier representation, has opened a Montreal office headed by industry veteran Bruce Cowper. “I’ve known of the Cresa brand and had respect for them for some time,” said Cowper, the new branch’s managing principal.

Property Biz Canada

Hybrid trains planned for Toronto-Montreal corridor

Via Rail will ask the federal government by year’s end to climb aboard a plan to run new “high-frequency,” electric-hybrid trains in the busy Windsor-Quebec City corridor, says the head of the Crown corporation. With any luck, the $4-billion project will be “shovel ready” a year from now, says Via president and CEO Yves Desjardins-Siciliano.

CTV News

Alberta budget bets on infrastructure spending

Alberta’s NDP government intends to spend nearly $8.5 billion this year to build and modernize key public infrastructure in hopes of jump-starting the province’s slumping economy. The government announced last fall it would spend more than $34 billion over five years to build and modernize roads, schools, housing facilities, hospitals and flood mitigation projects.

Calgary Herald – Canada Newswire

Markham, Ontario: Engine of growth

The City of Markham is the largest of nine communities in York Region, with a population of over 349,000 and a land area of 212 square kilometres. There are more than 400 Canadian head offices of the 10,200 companies in Markham, including over 1,000 technology and life sciences companies and there is a total workforce of 162,000.

Read more

Strathallen Capital acquires Pembroke Mall

Strathallen Capital Corp. announced the acquisition of Pembroke Mall on behalf of Strathallen’s fourth close-ended retail value-add (SRPF4), as of April. Pembroke Mall is a 220,588-square-foot food and drug anchored enclosed shopping centre, with major tenants including Food Basics (Metro), Mark’s Work Wearhouse (CT), Staples, Pharma Plus (Rexall), and Dollarama.

Strathallen Capital Corp. media release – Property Biz Canada

Sears Canada’s CFO stepping down

Sears Canada Inc. (SCC-T) announced today E.J. Bird, executive vice-president and chief financial officer, will be leaving the company effective June 30. Bird has made this decision in order to pursue other opportunities. He assumed the role of CFO in March 2013. A search by the company is currently underway for a new CFO.

Canada Newswire – Wall Street Journal

IKEA finalizing biggest overhaul in decades

In two medieval Dutch cities, IKEA‘s most senior executives are finalizing the biggest overhaul at the Swedish-born furniture empire in over 30 years. The aim is to help the world’s largest furniture seller better adapt to changing consumer tastes, manage its increasing size and avoid the fate of other dominant retailers overtaken by new market entrants.

Reuters

MPAC’s new online system has a few bugs

Dear MPAC;

Kudos on catching up with the digital age by turning the annual Property Income and Expense Return from a pile of paper to a digital submission form.

If only your team had made this move with a little more field testing

Read more

Abbotsford rethinks its future

Abbotsford, where the vehicle is king and surface parking lots eat up more real estate than the strip malls they service, is about to undergo a revolution. If all goes according to plan, B.C.’s largest city by land mass will be transformed into a denser urban environment where residential and commercial towers replace car parks and the city grows up, not out.

Vancouver Sun

Graham Avenue matters to downtown Winnipeg

The story of downtown Winnipeg’s commercial health has often focused on diminishing crowds at department stores and the gradual exodus of major shops and chain stores to Polo Park and suburban shopping malls. But the retail heart of downtown was also home to countless specialized services, boutiques and restaurants, which cropped up on side streets such as Graham Avenue.

Winnipeg Free Press

Brutalist movement part of history

The newly opened Met Breuer museum is an odd hunk of concrete and granite. It stretches its brawny bulk up between the dowager apartment-houses of Manhattan’s genteel Upper East Side. It’s an example of the current in modern architecture known as Brutalism, which Canadians know well, and often dislike.

Globe and Mail

Market Trends and Research

New York CRE goes cold after record year

Deals for a piece of New York’s iconic skyline are drying up. About $14 billion of commercial real estate changed hands in the biggest U.S. property market in the first three months of the year, the lowest tally since the third quarter of 2014, data from Cushman & Wakefield Inc. show.

Bloomberg

‘Too much capital chasing too few deals’

As quickly as it takes to spend a dollar, forces are shifting in net lease capital markets, driving participants to find new and creative ways to stay in the game. “The problems of CMBS are starting to filter down,” asserts Ralph Cram, president & managing member, Envoy NNN.

GlobeSt.com – GlobeSt.com – GlobeSt.com

U.S. retail market makes slow progress in Q1

CBRE Group’s latest quarterly report released on Friday about the U.S. retail property market, offered a glimmer of better times for the long-beleaguered property type. According to the report, neighbourhood, community and strip retail centers all continued their steady recovery in the first quarter of 2016.

Commercial Property Executive – CNBC

Real Estate Companies

Little Potato Company building U.S. plant

Edmonton’s Little Potato Company is eyeing a major expansion with its first plant in the U.S. The homegrown success story is building a processing, packing and storage facility that will also serve as its U.S. headquarters in DeForest, Wis. As well as sorting and bagging the firm’s signature spuds, the site will also prepare microwave- and broiler-ready cooking kits.

Edmonton Journal

Some CPPIB investments might surprise you: Opinion

The Canadian Pension Plan is one of the world’s 10 biggest national retirement funds and is seen as a model of good management. To grow and prosper, it has to look anywhere and everywhere for investments. In fact, two-thirds of what our pension plan owns is outside Canada. That includes student dorms, cruiseship lines and film distribution companies.

Toronto Star – IPE Real Estate

Fengate completes Oakville consolidation

Fengate Capital Management, on behalf of its investors, announced the closing of two separate real estate transactions in the first quarter of 2016. The properties acquired are comprised of six income-producing industrial and office buildings, representing 530,000 square feet on 35 acres, located at QEW and Highway 403 in Oakville, Ont.

Canada Newswire

REOC Financial Reports

	REITs & REOCs – Fourth-quarter 2015 report
	RENX has prepared a table with a convenient list of the companies and a summary of links to their reports that will be updated quarterly. Fourth-quarter results are now arriving. Canadian REITs & REOCs – Fourth-quarter 2015 report

 

Real Estate Investment Trusts

975393 Ontario Inc. invests in Partners

75393 Ontario Inc. announced it has entered into an agreement to purchase 2,100,000 units of Partners Real Estate Investment Trust (PAR.UN-T). These units represent approximately 6.3% of the 33,547,277 issued and outstanding units of the REIT. 975393 and its joint actors now have ownership and control over 4,571,736 units of the REIT, approximately 13.6% of the outstanding units.

Canada Newswire

REIT buyout wave unlikely: Blackstone exec

Private real estate funds sit on record piles of cash, leading some observers to speculate a wave of public-to-private real estate investment trust takeovers is on the horizon. But the Blackstone Group’s (BX-N) real estate head Jonathan Gray disagrees. “What you need is a sustained period of underperformance,” Gray said at NYU’s REIT Symposium.

The Real Deal

Retail

Thrifty Foods acquires two liquor stores

Thrifty Foods, the Victoria-based subsidiary of Sobeys (EMP.A-T), has finalized a deal to buy Metro Liquor locations at Tuscany Village and University Heights Shopping Centre in Saanich. “Liquor has been one of our banners in the West, particularly Alberta, for a number of years now . . .,” said Keri Scobie, Sobeys communications manager for Western Canada.

Victoria Times Colonist

Benitah retail empire straining under bankruptcy filings

The empire of retail magnate Isaac Benitah is showing more cracks. Last month, its International Clothiers men’s wear chain filed for court protection from creditors under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, with an intention to draw up a restructuring plan. About a week earlier, another trio of Benitah’s fashion retailers settled a separate bankruptcy restructuring with creditors.

Globe and Mail

Restaurants and Eateries

International strategy serves Pita Pit well

It’s a happy coincidence Nelson Lang developed a taste for pita sandwiches well before a wave of healthier-for-you establishments, such as Freshii, began infiltrating the fast-food sector. When Lang and former business partner John Sotiriadis opened their first Pita Pit in Kingston, Ont., their chief goal was to be a destination for students on the go.

Financial Post

New Development

Simon planning luxury hotel, high-rise

A luxury hotel and high-end residential tower will be the newest additions to The Galleria in Houston by owner Simon Property Group, which has already spent at least $250 million transforming the city’s 46-year-old iconic shopping centre in the past few years.

Commercial Property Executive

Sports Venues

Aging SaskTel Centre at a ‘crossroads’

Only four of the 47 venues pop star Katy Perry played during her 2014 world tour were built before Saskatoon’s SaskTel Centre. All four of those older venues are either being replaced or renovated, according to information on its way before city council’s governance and priorities committee on Monday.

Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Renovation and Restoration

Edmonton mall revival stymied by lease: Group

Red tape is all that stands between a run-down strip mall in Edmonton’s southwest and a bustling community hub. “We just want to see activity. We want to see businesses that are going to encourage people in the community to support them,” said Ian Hicks, who heads up an advocacy group attempting to revitalize the Petrolia Mall.

Edmonton Journal

Infrastructure

Hydro One concludes secondary offering

The Ontario government has concluded a secondary offering of Hydro One (H-T) shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange, raising $1.71-billion. More than 72.4 million shares in Hydro One were sold at $23.65 apiece. Crown-owned Ontario Power Generation bought nine million shares, representing about 1.5 per cent of stock in Hydro One, a former Crown corporation.

Globe and Mail

Technology

Fresh St. Market rolls out click-and-collect service

Vancouver supermarket Fresh St. Market has raised the bar in Canadian grocery ecommerce by opening 24-hour refrigerated pickup lockers for online customers. Customers can order online, then punch in a code to pick up their frozen or refrigerated orders at their convenience from lockers in Fresh St. Market’s West Vancouver and Surrey store parking lots.

Vancouver Sun

Other

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