CPP, Hudson Pacific buy ‘trophy’ Seattle office tower

RENX  Commercial  •  Office  •  International

CPP Investments is partnering with Los Angeles-based Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. (HPP-N) to purchase a “trophy” 36-storey Seattle office tower for about $810 million Cdn, the investors announced Monday morning.

Crown Realty Partners sells Mississauga office campus

RENX  Commercial  •  Office  •  Toronto / GTA

Three years after purchasing 2300 Meadowvale Blvd. from its owner-operator, Crown Realty Partners has sold the office campus in Mississauga to an institutional buyer. The $75.5-million sale values the three-storey, 240,000-square-foot building at $315 per square foot.

Larco proposes two-tower addition to Chateau Laurier

Commercial  •  CTV  •  Ottawa Citizen  •  RENX

Larco Investments has filed a new application to build a 159-room, two-pavilion addition at the back of downtown Ottawa’s historic Fairmont Château Laurier. According to the application, the 128,000-square-foot addition would include pavilions of 10 and 11 storeys, respectively.

Sandpiper succeeds in ousting Artis REIT CEO, trustees

RENX  Commercial  •  Office, Industrial, Retail  •  National

UPDATED with Sandpiper interview: Sandpiper Group has succeeded in ousting senior managers and longtime trustees of Artis REIT (AX-UN-T). Trust co-founder and CEO Armin Martins and CFO Jim Green will retire; board chairman Edward Warkentin and two trustees have resigned.

Ottawa office vacancies to remain among lowest: AY

Commercial  •  Ottawa Business Journal

Despite a recent spike in the amount of space available for sublease as companies look to shed real estate during COVID-19, Avison Young’s 2021 market forecast is predicting Ottawa’s office vacancy rate will remain among the lowest in the country in 2021.

The face of Quebec retail changing at breakneck speed

Commercial  •  Montreal Gazette

As more sales shift online, observers have begun to question the future of shopping centres, especially after the first pandemic wave forced mall owners to shut their doors for several weeks this spring. Enclosed malls were hit particularly hard.

The Apartments Broker › The fine art of exiting an apartment building partnership

Ramona Ursu: Partner and Broker at Baron Realty

Cottage country home prices rise across Canada

Residential  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)  •  Canada Newswire  •  Toronto Star

Home prices have spiked in resort towns, cottage country and tourist areas across most of Canada, as the pandemic’s work-from-home trend pushes buyers to escape the city for nature and more space, according to a report from Royal LePage.

Rogers Centre owner pauses plans for stadium

Commercial  •  Daily Commercial News  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)

Rogers Communications Inc. says it was exploring the future of its Toronto stadium before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but the virus has caused it to put those plans on hold.

Great Canadian Gaming defends Apollo takeover bid

Commercial  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)

Great Canadian Gaming Corp. is warning its GTA-area casinos represent a big risk for investors and says Apollo Global Management Inc. is doing them all a favour by offering to take on the danger itself through its $2.1-billion takeover bid.

Ag ministers to launch probe into grocery store fees

Commercial  •  Financial Post

Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial agriculture ministers agreed to probe the tattered relationships between food producers and supermarkets. “We all recognize that these fees, recently imposed by some retailers, are really worrying,” federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said

Will T.O. need transit megaprojects post-COVID?

Commercial  •  Toronto Star

Before the pandemic, the urgent need for TTC’s Bloor-Yonge $1.5 billion station expansion was evident to anyone who witnessed the crowds on its Line 1 subway platform on a weekday morning. However, during the pandemic, those crowds have thinned dramatically.

HBC’s big plan to survive COVID-19 may be to go small

Commercial  •  CBC

“I think if  they could snap their fingers and say we have half the number of stores and all of them were half or three quarters the size, they’d be doing great,” Retail analyst Mark Satov said of reeling HBC.

Amazon goes on a hiring spree without equal

Commercial  •  Toronto Star

Amazon has embarked on an extraordinary hiring binge this year, vacuuming up an average of 1,400 new workers a day and solidifying its power as online shopping becomes more entrenched in the coronavirus pandemic.

European hotelier betting big on U.S. lifestyle hotels

Commercial  •  Bisnow

Hotel giant Accor SA has inked a deal to merge its properties with that of London-based hotel operator Ennismore to form a new venture that will include 73 hospitality properties, specifically lifestyle brands.

California offices to fill up post-pandemic: CBRE

Commercial  •  Orange County Register

Lew Horne, CBRE’s president for Southern California, Arizona and Hawaii, doesn’t believe the pandemic will spell “the end of the office as we know it.” Nor does he think things will be the same once a vaccine is finally deployed.

Condo market pain won’t last long: Soper

Residential  •  Financial Post

VIDEO: Royal LePage CEO Phil Soper speaks with Financial Post’s Larysa Harapyn about how the pandemic has changed and actually benefited Canadian property markets.

GTA new single-family home sales soar: BILD

Residential  •  Toronto Star  •  Globe Newswire

New-construction home prices and sales of new single-family homes in the GTA continued to climb year-over-year in the double digits in October, as consumers search for more space to physically distance and work from home during COVID-19, BILD announced today.

Average new mortgage tops $300,000 for first time

Residential  •  Financial Post

Consumer debt in Canada rose 3.8 per cent in Q3 to $2.041 trillion, Equifax Canada’s latest report reveals. Mortgage balances were up 6.6 per cent from 2019 and the average new mortgage loan rose 8.6 per cent to exceed $300,000 for the first time.

Trinity to preserve heritage gas station in Ottawa project

Residential, Commercial  •  Ottawa Business Journal  •  RENX

Trinity Development Group Inc. is proposing a nine-storey mixed-use building at a prominent Ottawa heritage site, saying it plans to preserve the shuttered 1930s-era gas station currently on the property and incorporate it into the new development’s design.