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Originally Posted by Spocket
It's true that the market doesn't support a lot of office construction now but it also depends on which class of space we're talking about.
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Well, class AA isn't in such great demand. Furthermore, TNS will command rents 30-50% higher than high quality competitors. Although they are seeing some lease-up, Winnipeg has never seen such rates so effectively the demand is zero.
The good news is that this helps push rates up, and Winnipeg needs that desperately. Our rents currently do not support the cost of construction.
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Originally Posted by DowntownBooster
It seems that most major cities in North America continue to grow and with that the increase of demand for more office space and subsequent development of more towers. Why is it that Winnipeg seems to be the exception to the rule? We always seem to hear that Winnipeg is growing yet we also hear that if any new buildings go up it only means that existing companies are relocating from older buildings to newer ones. What seems to be the reason that Winnipeg can't seem to grow its office demand like other cities instead of just the reshuffling that goes on? Is there no hope for Winnipeg in that regard? Maybe the desire to be like other growing cities just isn't a reality for Winnipeg. The population may likely continue to grow but perhaps we just won't be a city that gets larger in terms of office demand/development.
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Bad planning is a major one. Winnipeg sprawled and sprawled. U of M should never have been anywhere but also in downtown. The principle of a development fee from Bowman is rich, just because nobody cocked this up but the city of Winnipeg, and thereafter he didn't even plan to (initially) exempt downtown from these fees.
Originally... air travel. Those damned Wright brothers gave everyone who went through Winnipeg a way around/above it. Prov and Feds thought grain would make Winnipeg strong regardless. No, that's oil in Alberta, turns out.
Companies lost the need for a Winnipeg presence and it slowly deflated as other cities grew... Vancouver with it's forestry and coastal location, AB with Oil, TO because it's TO, Ottawa because it's the capital and of course (along with Montreal) the St Lawrence (and sheer size and established presence).
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Originally Posted by 1ajs
part of the problem is realistate agents pushing the 24$ a sqft saces in the new suburban developments harder to get them to respond to u for a smaller sqft space downtown or any space at all its weird
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Higher rents in suburbia are good, because they justify higher rents downtown. Nobody likes the suffering of a long lease-up period, but a higher rate precedent needs to be set.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spocket
Winnipeg does all right in terms of office space. We're not really that out of the ordinary. If you compare Winnipeg to somewhere like Calgary, well...we'll always be far behind. In fact, Calgary is a real outlier in global terms for a number of reasons but the least of which is how much office space it requires. Those days may well be over with the price crash at the same time as an accelerated push to alternative forms of energy.
Most cities in the world build themselves around a dense residential core. The North American model is definitely the odd one out. It's actually a good thing that we're heading that way now instead of the old model of spreading out forever.
Remember that when those companies leave for newer buildings, somebody eventually comes along and takes the space they've vacated. When they don't then somebody has to repurpose the space. There's nothing inherently good about office buildings except that they tend to be taller than residential.
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The world is proven to be oil thirsty for a while, so Calgary will rebound.
But this isn't physics. If Company A vacates a space, it's not like company B suddenly fills that vacuum involuntarily... Winnipeg's downtown has had a relatively uninspiring vacancy despite not only low supply, but no NEW supply.
The principle of repurposing is good, but that's normal to lease up another office space. Repurposing for residential is fantastic, and while the trend in Winnipeg is moving in the right direction, it's still moving slowly.