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Commercial Real Estate News
BridgePort, Colonnade to merge, become city's largest landlord
David Sali, OBJ Published on November 24, 2015 Two of the city’s leading property managers announced Tuesday they are joining forces to become the largest commercial landlord in Ottawa. Colonnade Management and BridgePort Group of Companies said they have agreed to merge with an eye toward expanding their combined portfolio in the Greater Toronto Area. The amalgamated company, which will be known as Colonnade BridgePort, will offer a range of services, including property management, leasing, development management and asset management. “Toronto’s obviously a very large growth market for real estate,” said Colonnade president Steve Kaminski. “For us, we’re not really there yet, so it’s something that is a core part of the strategy, for sure.” Colonnade is currently the third-largest property management firm in Ottawa with a commercial portfolio totalling about 4.2 million square feet, according to OBJ’s Book of Lists. The new company will have a combined portfolio of about 5.5 million square feet at 90 properties in the National Capital Region, making it the largest commercial landlord in the city. Mr. Kaminski said Colonnade and BridgePort, which have a total of more than 90 employees, are “very like-minded in the way that we approach the market” and felt they had a better chance of succeeding in their Toronto expansion if they worked together. “We just think it’s a good fit,” he said. “For us, long-term steady growth is really the key. Between BridgePort and ourselves, I think we have a much greater likelihood of good, long-term steady growth.” BridgePort, which manages more than 6,000 residential properties in addition to its 18 commercial holdings, has a wide variety of tenants and prefers a buy-and-hold strategy, managing director Hugh Gorman told OBJ in a 2013 interview. “Our job is to be investors in real estate first and foremost ... I wouldn’t say we’re turners of capital for the sake of turning capital,” he said. “We’re not trying to assemble a portfolio to take it public or sell to a pension fund.” Mr. Kaminski said the company would release more details about the deal in the new year. “There’s lots that we still have to work through in terms of our longer-term strategy,” he said. The players: BridgePort Group of Companies Key local executives: Hugh Gorman, partner and managing director; Pierre Hurteau, partner Key properties: 81 Metcalfe St., 319 McRae Ave., 1600 Merivale Rd., 580 Terry Fox Dr. Size of local commercial portfolio: 1 million square feet of commercial; 6,000 residential units under management (as of 2013) No. of commercial properties managed locally: 18 (Source: Bridgeport Group of Companies) Colonnade Management Key local executives: Steve Kaminsky, president; Greg Johnston, vice-president of property management Key properties: 106 Colonnade Dr.; 1150 Cyrville Rd.; 2405 St. Laurent Blvd.; 250 Tremblay Rd. Size of local commercial portfolio: 4.2 million square feet No. of commercial properties managed locally: 72 (Source: OBJ Book of Lists) http://www.obj.ca/Real-Estate/Non-re...est-landlord/1 |
Struggling to fill office space, east Ottawa landlords await LRT completion
OBJ Staff Published on October 17, 2016 Office vacancy rates east of the Rideau River could drop as the completion date of Ottawa’s Confederation LRT Line draws closer, according to a local commercial real estate services firm. The Ottawa East submarket contains slightly less than 10 per cent of the city’s supply of office space and has historically posted some of the area’s highest vacancy rates. In a report released Monday, the Ottawa office of Colliers International said the area had a challenging third quarter as the vacancy rate rose from 13.6 per cent at mid-year to 15.2 per cent at the end of September. “The region continues to struggle in attracting new tenants to the area, especially with competitive rents downtown,” Colliers said. However, the real estate firm said that may change in the coming months as tenants consider how the completion of the Confederation Line, which will run as far east as Blair Station at the Gloucester Centre, will improve transit services. The area is already due for a major facelift as RioCan proposes several high-rises, including a 30-storey residential tower. Across the street, large-format retailer Costco is planning to move its Gloucester location to Shoppers City East. The citywide office vacancy rate continues to creep upwards and ended the third quarter at 12.7 per cent, Colliers reported. That’s up from 12.4 per cent at mid-year and 11.9 per cent a year earlier. http://www.obj.ca/Real-Estate/Non-re...T-completion/1 |
It will take quite some effort for the Confederation Line to help office vacancies in the area.
Most of the offices are strung along Coventry Road which despite having two LRT stations on it, is not particularly accessible by LRT due to how pedestrian hostile the area is. LRT will only make a difference if the city rejigs the pedestrian realm of Coventry and St. Laurent to be more friendly to walk-up ridership for the LRT. |
According to a source of mine, the old theatre in the World Exchange Plaza has been leased to a tech company for conversion to office space with occupancy in mid-2017.
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And how will it work with the Podium Building. With the integrated entrance, redevelopment is out the window, is it not? |
Feds to fill long-empty space in EDC tower in downtown Ottawa
By: David Sali Published: Jun 20, 2017 4:22pm EDT The federal government is set to expand its downtown footprint after subleasing long-vacant space in the head office of the Export Development Corp. Public Services and Procurement Canada has signed a 10-year lease to rent more than 37,000 square feet of space on two floors at EDC headquarters at 150 Slater St. Under the deal, which runs from August of this year to July 31, 2027, the federal department will lease all of the seventh floor and part of the sixth floor to augment its main office on Laurier Avenue. The space has been vacant since the 18-story office tower was completed in 2011. A joint venture between Broccolini Construction and the Canderel Group of Companies, the 479,000-square-foot building at the corner of Slater and O’Connor streets was the largest new office development in downtown Ottawa in a quarter-century when construction began in 2009. Manulife Financial acquired the LEED gold-certified tower from Broccolini and Canderel at the end of 2011. EDC has a long-term lease on the entire building that extends until 2031, and the empty real estate on the sixth and seventh floors was originally left open to accommodate more staff as the Crown corporation expanded its workforce. EDC’s headcount has now “stabilized” at just under 1,300 employees, according to spokesperson Shelley Maclean, and the agency decided to sublease the unused portions of the building. A pair of high-profile construction firms, PCL Constructors and EllisDon, will work together to tailor the space, which is currently a bare shell, to fit the new tenant’s needs. PSPC spokesperson Nicolas Boucher said the number of employees who will work there will depend on the final design. http://www.obj.ca/article/feds-fill-...owntown-ottawa |
Global Affairs has put a group into the building to work on next year's G-7 summit, so I assume short term. I don't know who else is in the building at the moment.
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Canderel-led consortium close to purchasing Ottawa’s Constitution Square
Tenants began receiving Estoppel Certificates last week, which is generally considered a sign that a sale is on the path to completion By: David Sali, OBJ Published: Aug 8, 2017 9:13am EDT http://www.obj.ca/sites/default/file...?itok=bzCI4LRm A group led by Montreal developer Canderel is close to purchasing one of Ottawa’s marquee class-A office complexes, OBJ has learned – marking what would be among the biggest local real estate transactions in recent history. Several sources have confirmed that the consortium, which also includes Toronto-based Forgestone Capital and Regina’s Greystone Managed Investments, is in the final stages of due diligence on a blockbuster deal to buy Constitution Square from current owner Oxford Properties. The three-tower office complex, which contains more than one million square feet of space at 340, 350 and 360 Albert St., was put on the market in the second quarter of 2017. Sources say the property attracted interest from several other potential buyers, including Morguard. Oxford Properties is the real estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund, better known as OMERS. The company owns and manages a wide range of office, retail, hotel, industrial and residential properties in North America and Europe, but Constitution Square is its only Ottawa holding. Tenants in the three buildings began receiving Estoppel Certificates last week. The documents – which are used to verify lease terms and determine if there are any outstanding issues between landlords and tenants such as unpaid rent – are generally considered a sign that a sale is on the path to completion. “This only happens near the end of the process, so they’re pretty darn close (to a deal),” Bruce Wolfgram, a broker with Proveras Commercial Realty, told OBJ last week. According to a recent report from Colliers International, the sale of Constitution Square would be the city’s “largest single transaction of recent record.” The largest deal in Ottawa so far this year was Investors Group’s $188-million purchase of a 50 per cent interest in the three office towers at Minto Place from Minto Capital Management. That’s also the most lucrative transaction in the city since the federal government bought the former Nortel campus on Carling Avenue in 2010 for $208 million (see fact box below). The first tower at Constitution Square, an 18-storey building, was completed in 1986. A 21-storey highrise was added to the complex in 1992, and the third tower, which is 19 storeys tall, opened in 2007. The complex is a block from the future Lyon LRT station and includes amenities such as a conference centre, fitness centre and a daycare facility. The complex’s retail podium includes a restaurant, while the towers contain a mix of private and government tenants, including Public Services and Procurement Canada, TD Wealth, Scotia Capital and Rogers. According to Oxford’s website, a total of about 84,000 square feet of space is currently vacant in the three towers. Sources say some tenants are paying net rent of less than $10 per square foot after inducements are taken into account, a rate the new owners will likely expect to improve upon. Another source told OBJ the deal features “an aggressive cap rate.” Officials from Canderel and Cushman & Wakefield, the brokerage representing the buyers, did not respond to emails from OBJ. Brokerage firm CBRE is representing the seller and did not return a request for comment. Oxford Properties spokeswoman Claire McIntyre said the company had no comment at this time. “Oxford may have thought now is the time to sell, and it is a good time to sell, that’s for sure,” one veteran broker said. “There’s all sorts of reasons why people sell, and there’s certainly a ton of money sitting out there looking to buy. There’s all sorts of investors looking to put their money somewhere other than in a bank account.” Canderel develops and manages residential and commercial properties in several Canadian cities. The company has maintained a relatively low profile in Ottawa since selling its stake in Export Development Canada’s headquarters at 150 Slater St. six years ago, although it was part of a bid to redevelop LeBreton Flats that ultimately lost to a group led by Senators owner Eugene Melnyk in 2016. The developer is also building an eight-storey retirement residence across from Lansdowne Park in the Glebe and was part of a joint venture with Minto to construct UpperWest, a 25-storey, 175-unit condo project in Westboro that opened last year. “Clearly, this is going to be a major comeback (for Canderel in Ottawa) if and when this goes ahead,” one broker said of the Constitution Square purchase. Forgestone Capital is currently working with Trinity Development Group on another project in the capital, a 680,000-square-foot mixed-use project at the corner of Rideau and Chapel streets that is expected to be completed in the spring of 2019. If it goes through, the sale of Constitution Square would come at a time when Ottawa’s downtown commercial real estate market appears to be heating up. Colliers International’s most recent office market report said the citywide office vacancy rate was 11.7 per cent at the mid-year mark, down from 12.2 per cent at the end of the first quarter. One of the big drivers of the decline was the high end of the downtown submarket, Colliers said. “Class-A assets continue to dominate the interest of tenants looking in the market, a trend that is starting to spill into upper class-B offerings,” the real estate services firm said in a report released last month. “Millennial businesses find downtown spaces to be the most attractive in terms of amenities and transportation. Smaller companies in Kanata are starting to see this appeal and have begun to pursue downtown options as well.” Quote:
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Cushman & Wakefield enters Ottawa property management with 20 VIC acquisition
By: Craig Lord Published: Aug 15, 2017 3:21pm EDT Cushman & Wakefield’s latest acquisition puts a few local properties under new management and continues an expansion of the global brokerage firm’s Canadian services. The U.S.-based commercial real estate firm, which is also Ottawa’s largest brokerage firm based on number of agents, announced Tuesday that it has acquired Ontario-based property management firm 20 VIC. It oversees assets across the country, including four Ottawa properties: Carlingwood Shopping Centre, Billings Bridge Centre and Tower, and 2211 Riverside Dr. The move folds 20 VIC’s more than 21 million square feet of Canadian property under Cushman & Wakefield’s umbrella, and returns the global firm to the property management field in Canada, which the firm exited in the 1990s. Nathan Smith, head of Cushman & Wakefield in Ottawa, says the acquisition “completes the package” of services the firm can offer its clients in Canada. The company’s traditional verticals include its corporate services, property appraisal and brokerage businesses. That’s not to say that Cushman & Wakefield is any stranger to property management. The firm manages 13,000 assets comprising 1.4 billion square feet of property around the world, Mr. Smith told OBJ. The experience and service ability that comes with such a sizeable portfolio will be a boon to 20 VIC’s own services, Mr. Smith said. “The strength and size of the Cushman & Wakefield global property management business will benefit 20 VIC.” The move continues Cushman & Wakefield’s expansion into Canada, including its 2005 acquisition of Royal LePage Commercial. http://www.obj.ca/article/cushman-wa...ic-acquisition |
The LCBO at Rideau and King Edward was sold to Toronto's Westdale Properties.
http://obj.ca/index.php/article/exte...wa-investments |
Westdale Properties is a partner on Nobu in Toronto
http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/08/...dences-toronto |
It would be nice if they bought the metro side from Claridge.
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It’s official: Ottawa’s Constitution Square sells for $480M
Downtown office complex changes hands in largest deal in city's history By: David Sali, OBJ Published: Sep 12, 2017 3:12pm EDT A consortium of investors closed the largest real estate transaction in Ottawa’s history Monday, buying the Constitution Square downtown office complex for $480 million. The buyers – Greystone Managed Investments, Canderel and Canstone Realty Advisors – announced the deal Tuesday. Regina-based Greystone becomes the majority owner of the three-building complex on Albert Street, while Montreal’s Canderel will take on the roles of property and leasing manager and Toronto-based Canstone will act as asset manager of the 1.06-million-square-foot space. Constitution Square had been jointly owned since 2005 by Oxford Properties, the real estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In a statement, the new owners called the complex “the largest and one of the most prestigious Class ‘AA’ office complexes in downtown Ottawa,” noting the buildings’ close proximity to the Lyon Street LRT station that will open next year. With a total value of nearly half a billion dollars, the deal easily eclipses previous blockbuster sales such as the federal government’s $208-million purchase of the former Nortel campus on Carling Avenue in 2010 and Investors Group’s $188-million agreement earlier this year for a 50 per cent stake in Minto Capital Management’s office towers at Minto Place. CBRE vice-president Nico Zentil, whose firm represented the vendors along with RBC, said all parties involved in the transaction are “elite investors” in the Canadian real estate industry. “I think it’s testament to the strength of the Ottawa investment climate right now,” he said of the record-smashing deal. “It complements a lot of various investors’ strategy, which is to own very core assets in core markets. It’s a top-three building in the city, and the investment strategy is conducive to owning the top buildings in the top markets.” ‘Stars were aligned’ When Constitution Square was put on the block earlier this year, the property attracted interest from several potential buyers, including real estate heavyweights such as Morguard. In a statement issued Tuesday, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board said the strength of the Ottawa market made it an “opportune time to monetize” its stake in the asset. In an e-mail to OBJ, Oxford Properties vice-president of investments Eric Plesman called Constitution Square a “great piece of real estate” but said it “no longer fit with Oxford’s strategy.” Referring to the transaction as “one of the platform deals of the year” in Canadian commercial real estate, Mr. Zentil said it reflects Ottawa’s reputation as a “safe, sought-after” market. “The stars were aligned,” he said. “The investment climate was very strong, the debt and equity markets were very strong. Everything just added up to be a pretty iconic sales transaction.” The first tower at Constitution Square, an 18-storey building, was completed in 1986. A 21-storey highrise was added to the complex in 1992, and the third tower, which is 19 storeys tall, opened in 2007. The complex includes amenities such as a conference centre, fitness centre and a daycare facility. The complex’s retail podium features a restaurant, while the towers contain a mix of private and government tenants, including Public Services and Procurement Canada, TD Wealth, Scotia Capital and Rogers. Before the sale was completed, Oxford’s website indicated about 84,000 square feet of space was vacant in the three towers. “Constitution Square represents a strategic opportunity for our institutional clients, and we are extremely pleased that this latest acquisition enhances our significant investment position in the Ottawa area,” Greystone managing director Ted Welter said in a statement. “We believe that Ottawa’s downtown core will benefit from the growth momentum currently under way.” Recent research suggests Ottawa’s downtown commercial real estate market is indeed heating up. Colliers International’s most recent office market report said the citywide office vacancy rate was 11.7 per cent at the mid-year mark, down from 12.2 per cent at the end of the first quarter. One of the big drivers of the decline was the high end of the downtown submarket, Colliers said. “Class-A assets continue to dominate the interest of tenants looking in the market, a trend that is starting to spill into upper class-B offerings,” the real estate services firm said in a report released in July. “Millennial businesses find downtown spaces to be the most attractive in terms of amenities and transportation. Smaller companies in Kanata are starting to see this appeal and have begun to pursue downtown options as well.” http://www.obj.ca/article/its-offici...are-sells-480m |
They already plastered Canderel branded paper in the window of an empty retail space and removed the Oxford plates from the elevators. Haven't noticed anything else so far.
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2018 lookahead: Tech migration driving ‘sea change’ in downtown office market
Changing commercial real estate landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for owners of lower-tier properties looking to entice new style of tenants By: David Sali Published: Jan 2, 2018 2:43pm EST In a town where the federal government has been the dominant tenant in commercial real estate seemingly forever, Michael Church and his colleagues are starting to sense a subtle shift in the landscape. The managing director at Avison Young’s Ottawa office and a broker in the capital for three decades, Church is as tapped in to the local real estate community as anyone. What he heard at last fall’s Ottawa Real Estate Forum – an event where federal government leasing strategies and requirements typically monopolize industry chatter – caused him to sit up and take notice. “The focus was not on the feds,” he says. “It was all about technology, it was all about transportation. We spent a lot of time on major projects, (multi-residential developments), which was quite refreshing.” Church and many of his fellow brokers say 2018 is shaping up to be a pivotal year, the start of a new era in which a growing number of established firms and young upstarts in the technology industry begin to put their stamp on the downtown market. “I’m seeing a full-on shift,” says Shawn Hamilton, a senior vice-president at CBRE’s Ottawa office who has been part of the local real estate scene for more than 25 years. “It’s not away from government; we’re always going to be a government town. But our reliance is less on government, and there’s now room for other business cultures and other businesses to grow in our downtown, which is very exciting.” Church calls it the “Shopify effect,” and for good reason. The e-commerce giant made headlines last spring when it leased 325,000 square feet of space in the former Export Development Canada building at 234 Laurier Ave. in anticipation of adding up to 2,500 employees over the next decade. But a growing number of other firms, both new and well-established, have anchored themselves in Centretown and nearby neighbourhoods such as Little Italy, far from the traditional tech hub of Kanata North. Among them is business dashboard developer Klipfolio, one of Ottawa’s hottest companies. The booming software enterprise – which made Deloitte’s list of Canada’s 50 fastest-growing companies in 2017 – plans to vacate its longtime headquarters on Gloucester Street for a state-of-the-art new 17,000-square-foot head office in the World Exchange Plaza early this year. Tech newcomers such as online grain marketplace FarmLead and fitness tracking firm GymTrack have also chosen to make their homes downtown, close to where their predominantly 20-something workforces live and play. “Downtown is starting to become a place to be for burgeoning tech companies, to the point now – and most of this is on the back of Shopify – technology is the biggest industry in our downtown core behind the federal government,” Hamilton says. “That will bring a culture shift to our downtown core.” Far from adhering to the traditional model of staid office towers filled with a maze of cubicles, the new crop of tech firms tends to prefer wide-open work spaces and large meeting rooms that encourage employees to congregate and bounce ideas off each other – not to mention places where they can kick back and enjoy a stress-busting game of fussball or table hockey. Veteran broker Bruce Wolfgram notes that even kitchens have gone from afterthoughts relegated to the back of an office to brightly lit beehives of activity in many workplaces. “It’s no longer a cookie-cutter approach to how you organize an office,” says Wolfgram, principal at Proveras Commercial Realty, whose firm represents only tenants and counts several tech firms among its clients. The rise of tech presents both challenges and opportunities for commercial landlords, brokers say. The federal government’s exodus from downtown class-A properties caused many landlords to woo new tenants with incentives such as free rent and subsidized fit-ups in order to fill the vacuum. That’s driven downtown office vacancy rates in those buildings down to less than five per cent, while vacancy rates in Ottawa’s aging crop of class-B properties have spiked from close to zero a decade go to nearly 15 per cent today. The picture is even bleaker for class-C buildings, where nearly a quarter of all leasable downtown office space sits empty. But owners of lower-tier buildings now have a chance to get some of that business back by targeting tech upstarts that want to be downtown where the action is but don’t have the budget to lease class-A space, experts say. Class B- and C properties are also more likely to be in the hands of local owners who have more flexibility to completely redesign a space than landlords at top-tier addresses, who are often constrained by the policies of those buildings’ large corporate owners. Many startups have “creative wishes to transform their space that might not fly in an A-class tower today,” Hamilton says. That’s opening the door to landlords in B and C-class buildings who are willing to reconfigure an office to suit a prospective tenant’s needs. “I’m not going to say that the C-class market is going to go from a vacancy of the high twenties down to zero, but I’m seeing that there is the possibility for real demand in buildings we were wondering what we were going to do with two or three years ago,” he says. “I think there need to be a couple of brave landlords who will step out and say, ‘We’re going to take this building and we’re going to be creative and retool it to appeal to the high-technology crowd.’” Church agrees. “What do people want? At the end of the day, it’s access to light, it’s good-quality air, it’s perhaps a change in design,” he says. “It’s time for those landlords to say, ‘Look, I could be the next wave.’ There’s all manner of opportunities for those who (say), ‘You know, things are changing and now’s my time to change.’ You stay put at your peril.” While tech firms are the leading contenders to fill the class-B and C vacuum, other organizations such as not-for-profits are also starting to rethink their office needs, brokers say. For example, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has just moved from Constitution Square, its home for the past decade, to a class-B building managed by Colonnade Bridgeport at 275 Slater St., lured by the carrots of cheaper rent and a no-cost makeover of the space. “What’s happened is there’s a value proposition in these B-class buildings that was never there before,” says Alan Doak of Proveras, which represented the chamber in leasing negotiations. “It’s not just technology companies that are thinking this way. We have clients in the legal industry that want to do things that are creative and modern. We’ve got large Crown corporations that we work with that are completely rethinking the way they want their working environment to be.” It’s now up to landlords to get on board and start reimagining their properties to make them more appealing to tenants with changing tastes and demands, experts say. “Part of the challenge is, as a government town, we don’t have a lot of experience with that,” Hamilton says. “So we need to retool ourselves as a real estate community to understand what that means. It’s more than just beanbag chairs and bring your dog to work.” Although the move to Class-B and C properties has already begun, some brokers say it will really pick up steam in 2019, when the Department of National Defence has completely vacated the downtown core and Class-B vacancy rates are expected to peak. “It’s a sea change going on out there right now,” Wolfgram says. “We think this will continue for the next several years. The Class-B market is not going to get all filled up anytime soon.” http://www.obj.ca/index.php/article/...-office-market |
Feds looking for 28,000 square feet of Ottawa office space
By: OBJ staff Published: Jan 26, 2018 9:28am EST The federal government is asking local landlords if they’d be interested in leasing the region’s largest tenant some 28,200 square feet for a five-year term starting in 2019. Earlier this week, Public Services and Procurement Canada published a request for “expressions of interest” from Ottawa property managers. While not a formal solicitation request, Public Services and Procurement Canada may eventually ask those interested landlords to submit a formal offer. The federal government is casting a relatively wide geographic net for its space, which can be located anywhere west of St. Laurent Boulevard, east of Island Park Drive or Fisher Avenue and north of Baseline Road, Heron Road, Riverside Drive or Highway 417. If the space is outside the central business district, it must be within a 600-metre walk of a rapid transit station. To put the size of the request in context, 28,200 square feet the equivalent of slightly more than one full floor inside the Sun Life Centre. The federal government occupies about 38 million square feet of office space across the National Capital Region. Within that portfolio, approximately 40 per cent is leased from the private sector while the remainder is comprised of Crown-owned properties or buildings occupied under a lease-to-own contracts. The federal government’s top real estate official, Kevin Radford, has repeatedly said he’d like to see the government look to lease private-sector space to meet its future office requirements. In a separate, smaller request for expressions of interest, the federal government said it’s also looking for 7,870 square feet of space in downtown Ottawa between Bay, Nepean and Elgin streets. http://www.obj.ca/index.php/article/...a-office-space |
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It's amazing that even with the uptick of tech vacancy rates are still that high. This is a double edged sword; it means that office rent prices, especially the critical downtown ones, will remain affordable as companies compete for tenants. But it also means that there won't be as much potential for new office development, which could handicap efforts to redevelop Lebreton, as residential likely isn't enough to generate the profits needed to build it out.
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I guess Shopify would have one once they occupy their second building, but it would be great to see some of the more mature Kanata companies embrace downtown. Doesn't look like it'll ever happen. |
The Kanata companies are going to stay where they are--in this tight labour market we have right now for tech workers, any office move is inevitably going to scare some employees away--but most of the up and coming small-to-mid size tech companies are actually in the downtown area. If I had to guess, I'd actually say that in the current wave of tech expansion, the urban core and Kanata North are actually about tied for total number of new tech jobs being created.
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In 10 years, Shopify will have taken over close to 500,000 squre feet in the CBD between 150 Elgin and the old EDC. I could see them request a new million square foot building at LeBreton Flats within 5-10 years.
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Shopify heavily invested in their 150 Elgin space though... Including numerous customizations, so they aren't going to want to relocate their HQ. And Lebreton is a little far to be a secondary office.
I can easily see Klipfolio wanting a 1 million square foot building in Lebreton in the next 5-10 years though Their new space in the WEP is still not big enough for their needs and the WEP is so big that Klipfolio doesn't stand out. They'll want to be an anchor of their own building. Klipfolio may very well end up being the anchor office tenant for RVL. |
It has begun.
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From theatres to dashboards: Klipfolio offers first public look at new World Exchange space
By: Craig Lord, OBJ Published: Mar 23, 2018 1:45pm EDT Klipfolio, the Ottawa-based developer of business analytics dashboards, debuted its new 17,000-square-foot space in the World Exchange Plaza to guests at a Techopia VIP event on Thursday night. CEO Allan Wille told the assembled Ottawa tech crowd that this wasn’t the official premiere, but rather more of a sneak peek at the coming attraction, a fitting preview of the redesigned space that formerly housed a multi-screen movie theatre. Signs of the space’s former identity remained: there were vaulted ceilings as high as the silver screen and a mezzanine space where the projector once sat, now overlooking desks rather than rows of velvet-lined seats. http://www.obj.ca/sites/default/file...2_163437_1.jpg http://www.obj.ca/sites/default/file...322_174357.jpg Wille says that when it came time for the growing firm to move, he was expecting to find space in a B-class building. When he got an offer to tour the World Exchange Plaza’s vacant space, which the building owners applied to have converted to office space when former tenant Empire Theatres left in 2013, he was simply curious. “Let’s just have a peek. We’re not even going to consider this,” he said. “A-class buildings were certainly not what we were expecting to move into.” While he was blown away by the space’s potential, Wille said it was a generous offer from the landlord that sealed the deal. http://www.obj.ca/sites/default/file...lio%20vert.jpg To redesign the space, Klipfolio turned to the architectural studio Linebox, the same firm that did Shopify’s current digs. While Wille says he was confident in Linebox’s work, he was a bit hesitant at first – it was important to him that his company not get a “Shopify clone.” “We’ve got our own culture; can we work with this team to emphasize that? It totally worked,” he told the crowd. http://www.obj.ca/sites/default/file...322_174256.jpg The Klipfolio team moved in six weeks ago. Wille told OBJ last year that the space would have room for 120 employees “and beyond,” with an option to lease an additional 7,000 square feet in the building. You can watch the video above to hear Wille’s thoughts on maintaining his growing company’s culture and recruiting in the midst of the city’s “talent crunch” in a Techopia Q&A. http://www.obj.ca/index.php/article/...exchange-space |
Cool space. Nice to see Klipfolio move in downtown and get the space and design they wanted and for the World Exchange Plaza to land a large tenant. Stuff like this is what will keep the vacancy rate downtown low.
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This is pretty huge.
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For the the Richmond and Churchill property, I guess that means a big chain retailer will be coming to the area since that's what Trinity specializes in. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. There was talk years ago of Westboro becoming like Queen Street West in Toronto. |
Brookfield expected to list Jean Edmonds Tower for sale: Colliers
By: OBJ staff Published: Apr 24, 2018 7:38am EDT A 550,000-square-foot office tower occupied by the federal government is expected to hit the market in the coming months, according to Colliers International. The real estate services firm said in its first quarter Ottawa office report that the Jean Edmonds Towers, two buildings occupying half a city block bounded by Kent Street, Laurier Avenue and Slater Street, will be listed in the second quarter. The property was built in 1974 by Robert Compeau and is the former home of the Ottawa Journal newspaper, according to Brookfield, which owns and manages the buildings. The property was renamed the Jean Edmonds Towers in honour of the first female executive in the Canadian Public Service and is currently home to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency. Colliers says the Jean Edmonds Towers property is likely to be joined by Scotiabank’s office and main branch at 118 Spark St. as well as a pair of RioCan retail plazas in coming to market later this year. The listings will add further momentum to Ottawa’s hot investment market, which reached a five-year high in 2017 with some $2 billion in assets trading hands, led by the record-breaking $480-million sale of Constitution Square. This year has already seen several notable sales, including Fiera’s $78.1-million purchase of several Kanata North office properties, Desjardins’ $68.15-million acquisition of the Investors’ Group Ottawa industrial portfolio as well as Trinity and Timbercreek’s pickup of the Main and Main portfolio that included a half-dozen central Ottawa properties. http://www.obj.ca/article/brookfield...-sale-colliers |
They just finished re-cladding the north tower. Wonder if the south tower will get done.
I'm hoping that Brookfield invests the money they make selling Jean Edmonds into Place de Ville. Fix up the underground concourse and do something with the Podium Building. If not demolish, re-open the theater and convert the rest into an entertainment destination. |
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Both towers have been an eyesore for a long time. They fit the description of the typical stuffy government office complex :haha: |
I took a few, but I would need to upload them to my computer. I'll try and do that this week.
Basically, they installed chocolate brown medal panels over the expired chocolate brown pre-cast panels. Quick unrelated question; back when the World Exchange Plaza had the Theater, could people walk all the way from O'Connor to Metcalfe through the building? Looks cut off since Klipfolio moved in. |
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I had no idea they had an office in Ottawa before reading the article. According to their website, Ottawa is their only Canadian location;
Ottawa, Canada Office SurveyMonkey Canada Inc. 12 York Street, 2nd Floor Ottawa, ON K1N 5S6, Canada https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/abou..._source=footer I feel like 50,000 square feet is probably a much bigger space than their current office. |
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I also had no idea they were located here. I went on their wikipedia and it also listed Ottawa as their only Canadian location. I wonder how many people are employed at their Ottawa office. |
I also had no clue SurveyMonkey had a presence in Ottawa, that's pretty cool.
I went on their website just for shits and see they have some positions they are looking to fill in Ottawa. Looks like they are doing well here and are growing, just as the article suggests with them moving into a bigger space. |
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http://fluidsurveys.com/blog/great-n...monkey-family/ |
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RioCan betting big on residential in major shift for Canada’s biggest mall owner
Rachelle Younglai, The Globe and Mail May 7, 2018 RioCan has embarked on a plan to own apartments as consumers retreat from the shopping centres that have defined the real estate investment trust for more than two decades. RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust, Canada’s biggest mall owner, expects to pull in upward of 10 per cent of its income from apartments, a shift for the landlord, which built its reputation on shopping centres. “We envision this being a substantial part of our portfolio, one that will drive a lot of income,” said Jonathan Gitlin, RioCan’s senior vice-president of investments, who was put in charge of the RioCan’s newly established residential division, RioCan Living. In five years, RioCan expects that up to 5 per cent of its operating income will come from residential and in about a decade, its goal is 10 per cent or higher, according to a RioCan spokeswoman. Apartments or multiresidential buildings are a bet on the future for RioCan, which has witnessed retail falling out of favour with investors. So far this year, its value has dropped 4 per cent to $23.50 a unit on the Toronto Stock Exchange, matching a similar level in 2006. Despite investors’ distaste, RioCan’s funds from operations per unit, a measure of cash flow, has increased to $1.79 in 2017 from $1.68 in the previous year. The retail industry is undergoing a transformation as consumer shopping habits change and e-commerce proliferates. Traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers are racing to stay relevant. Hudson’s Bay Co. is in talks to sell one of its top properties in Vancouver, which is jointly owned with RioCan. RioCan itself has had to grapple with large empty spaces over the years when some of its largest tenants – Sears Canada and Target Canada – shut their doors. Although the trust is securing new tenants and is reducing its exposure to the weaker Canadian retail markets, investors are not buying it. “Today, retail is more limited,” said Paul Meierdierck, a senior vice-president with LaSalle Investment Management. “They view the residential space as being more ripe of an opportunity relative to retail.” RioCan has identified 43 retail properties that will be redeveloped into apartments and other multiresidential buildings across its six major markets in Canada. It says that has the potential to produce more than 20,000 residential units. Nearly three-quarters of its new buildings are slated for the Toronto area, where the apartment-vacancy rate is rock bottom. Another 10 per cent are destined for Ottawa and the rest will be in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. Currently, RioCan has about 2,800 units in eight buildings under construction, including a massive project just west of Toronto’s downtown core. But it’s not going to be easy. In addition to new rent-control measures in Ontario and changes to the province’s land-use tribunal, RioCan’s expertise is not in multiresidential buildings. “It is going to take time to figure it out. It’s not as easy as everyone thinks that I am just going to start building apartments,” said Paul Finkbeiner, the president of GWL Realty Advisors, which has operated and developed offices, multiresidential and retail properties for more than two decades. “When I build retail, I build a box and I dress the box up. When I build apartment buildings, I got to build bathtubs, kitchens, appliances, hallways, laundry rooms. It’s very different,” Mr. Finkbeiner said. The way Mr. Gitlin sees it, RioCan will draw from its huge pool of retail tenants and mix them with its future residents. For example, one of its tenants, Cineplex, could offer to show new movies to RioCan’s apartment residents. “If you look at our sphere of tenants, you can imagine restaurants doing a food night or tasting night. You could imagine bookstores having authors coming in and read,” he said. RioCan observed how the proximity of a condo to one of its malls helped. “We saw a lot more traffic,” Mr. Gitlin said. “From that came the recognition that those condo units benefited from having a shopping centre next door and our shopping centre benefited from having residents next door.” RioCan is not the only developer that has embraced multiresidential, which is one of the hottest types of commercial real estate in Toronto and Vancouver. SmartCentres REIT, which is known for its power centres with Walmart stores, is teaming up with residential and other partners to expand into new types of uses. Follow Rachelle Younglai on Twitter @rachyounglai https://www.theglobeandmail.com/busi...nadas-biggest/ |
Jean Edmonds Towers reclad. Pics by me, but it's not as obvious as in real life. The one closest to the camera in both cases is the medal reclad.
https://i.imgur.com/UCD6q5A.jpg?1 https://i.imgur.com/rfBdoBR.jpg?1 |
Broccolini to spend up to $200M on massive new distribution centre in southeast Ottawa
By: Peter Kovessy, OBJ Published: May 11, 2018 10:37am EDT A Montreal-based developer is planning to construct the largest distribution centre in the National Capital Region, a massive 1.02-million-square-foot facility that experts say could kick off a new wave of development in southeast Ottawa. Broccolini has filed a site plan application to build the warehouse, which will have 100 truck loading bays and ceiling heights of between 36 and 38 feet, at the interchange of Highway 417 and Boundary Road. James Beach, Broccolini’s director of real estate and development, said the company does not currently have a tenant secured for the space. “Ottawa is a good market, (with) low industrial vacancy rates,” Beach said. “This investment in Ottawa is consistent with the increasing demand for large facilities of this nature that we’ve seen in the GTA and Montreal area.” While Broccolini has previously developed properties prior to securing a tenant, Beach said the firm would prefer to have a commitment in place before it breaks ground on this particular project. Beach said the massive new distribution centre is being designed with “a potential use in mind” but that it could be converted into a multi-tenanted facility. The new structure would be constructed on a 96-acre parcel of land on the east side of Boundary Road, just south of GreyHawk Golf Club. Beach estimated the project costs at between $100 and $200 a square foot, depending on the end user’s requirements, bringing the total cost to up to $200 million. Documents filed by consultants in support of the development application project the facility to employ more than 1,000 workers on daytime and evening shifts. Beach confirmed the facility will have the capacity to accommodate 1,000 staff, but said the transportation study assumed the “peak number” for design requirements and said there could be fewer employees working out of the facility. Broccolini is known locally for constructing the Export Development Canada tower with Canderel in downtown Ottawa as well as the recently completed Ciena campus in Kanata. The firm is also the developer, owner and landlord behind 199 Slater St., a mixed-use 21-storey downtown tower featuring condos and an Alt Hotel. While the firm performs work as a third-party general contractor, Beach said Broccolini has been focusing extensively over the past decade on its own developments, building and managing real estate across various asset classes in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa. For the Boundary Road project, Beach said Broccolini would own, develop and manage the warehouse as a landlord. By some measurements, the availability of industrial space in Ottawa is approaching record lows. The market’s availability rate – the amount of available space, whether vacant or not, divided by the total amount of existing inventory – declined by half a percentage point in the first quarter of the year, from 3.7 per cent to 3.2 per cent, according to real estate services firm Colliers International. If a single user leases all of Broccolini’s new facility, the building won’t have any impact on the local vacancy rate. However, it could spur additional development in the southeast corner of the nation’s capital, said Warren Wilkinson, the managing director of Colliers International in Ottawa. “This could be the catalyst for a new wave of development in the area,” he said, adding that the existing zoning and size of other land parcels in the area would influence future growth. “If people see a large user out there, it will start drawing amenities. It will start drawing other attributes to the area, which could in turn trigger smaller parcels being built upon (and) business parks being developed.” http://www.obj.ca/index.php/article/...utheast-ottawa |
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According to Wikipedia, there are no Canadian ones east of the GTA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_locations |
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My guess would be they're trying to woo Costco. The eastern Canada headquarters are here, but they have relatively small distribution centres in Brampton and St Bruno.
Almost time for this idea :) |
Costco also entered my mind but I'm not familiar with their distribution model.
They no longer have an east/west HQ setup (although they do for vendor inquiries). Costco Canada is HQd here. |
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I found this list of Costco warehouse sizes: https://panethos.wordpress.com/2015/...north-america/ Only one in North America is close to the size of what is being proposed in Ottawa. |
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