[Neil]

We went to this. It was not a real focus group of any kind, although it was unclear if the people running it know what real focus groups are. It resembled more a real estate early sales cycle meeting.

The concept of a 25 story condo apartment tower sharing costs and facilities with a hotel seems quite smart. It allows the advertised maintenance fee to be lower, with residents paying extra for amenties they use and avoiding paying for those they don't.

There are so many overlapping facility possibilities that I found the whole idea pretty exciting. Why buy that extra bedroom for your once a year guests if you have connected access to hotel room for those inlaws? Why pay a 24 hour doorman for your condo when the hotel already has desk clerks?

And what about having built-in access to laundry and maid services? That helps the hotel rationalize their staff and the tenants would get discount access to reliable services.

I can see potential for issues such as when visitors swarm the place during Grey Cup and Agribition, mucking up the gym and the halls. But it would be a small inconvenience compared to having cost shared facilities the rest of the time.

They appear to be giving strong consideration to geothermal and some consideration to different LEEDS levels.

The survey was really a pretense rather than genuine interest in getting input. Someone did ask about the Gardens on Rose project and the developers had never heard of it. The boss/leader then piped in and said "We actually don't want to be tainted by any uninformed local opinions on past failures."

I looked over quick to see if he was joking because of the strong language, but he was actually serious. I chuckled to myself since he was pretty much outwardly admitting they actually had no interest in local feedback.

The first survey question was what style of building is preferred, but they later revealed the style had already been determined. It was like that with several things.

Another example is they asked questions about things that are easily chosen on the final week before possession... things like what kitchen faucet you prefer.

The survey looked a bit generic, possibly used for other projects perhaps and then customized for this one.

It was a bit strange they had floor plans with prices but emphasized to just ignore the prices. Thinking about it afterward, if they didn't want the prices to be considered it would have been simple to erase them.

A one bedroom 500 sq foot unit was $200,000 ranging up to 1200 sq foot (?) for $600,000. This is just going off memory though.

They were offering $2000 discount certificate for anyone attending. I figured if we ever cross the bridge of buying a unit we'll just negotiate the right price at that time. If it all sells out at full asking price then kudos to the developers I guess.

This is a much bigger project and idea than I've seen around here. They gave the impression this was pretty much business as usual for them in Toronto and elsewhere though.

So once I got past the realization that the focus group was just pretense, it's still an interesting and ambitious project. There was an abundance of confidence in this going ahead which was a bit contagious.