[roryn1]

I’ve heard North Prairie (aka Canwest) bought that lot as more of a long term land investment versus actually building it out. Their current inventory in both the north and south suburbs isn’t selling out fast enough to build this project so they’ve been making construction “coming soon” announcements just to scare away other prospective developers that are both local and from out of province. Getting articles written about prospective projects are the best line of defense when your current inventory isn’t selling in the burbs and you don’t want to see any new inventory enter the market. Newer developers that do research on Saskatoon after seeing news about our city being the fastest growing also see these articles and get scared away about an influx in inventory when we actually have one of the tightest vacancy markets in Canada. To be clear, we have one of the most competitive downtown rental markets in the country because of a lack of new projects in the past 30 years. Many businesses would move downtown if we had more developers like Victory Majors and Urban Capital with some balls. Companies like North Prairie/Canwest are nothing but a very dark detriment to this city that could easily be replaceable with better alternatives.

The solution: we need to dramatically increase taxes to vacant lots after 3+ years in areas that owners are using as solely land speculation / Parking revenue. This isn’t rocket science. So many people own vacant lots downtown solely as land speculation and that is not what makes a great downtown. The whole downtown doesn’t need to suffer much longer all because North Prairie’s owners had some extra pocket change to blow... North Prairie is a disgrace, and that’s how I’ll talking to other about their company and anyone associated to them. They’re not the only one’s downtown though. We should make a list of these people and publically shame them. The downtown’s vacant lots aren’t their playground for blue chip investments. There are plenty of out of province developers who would develop these lots if they were given the opportunity.

I think we’re going to see a few suburban companies move downtown with the new space being made available with a soon to be large vacancy in Saskatoon Square, and most likely cheaper per sq ft rates at the old police station.