Quote:
Originally Posted by King Ralph
Everyone needs to be realistic.
There will not be a notable commercial construction in downtown Saskatoon for at least 10 years after River Landing is built out. By notable, I am referring to something over 5 stories, which is really not notable by any stretch of the imagination.
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I thought the same thing prior to the shorter of the two office towers starting up. Then I thought what would become the Nutrien tower was ‘vapour ware’, and here it is... under construction. Which proves I don’t know so much. And neither do you.
The fact is, the fastest growing metropolitan area in Canada for the last (? 15 years - have to check stats can for the period) has been Saskatoon. And despite this, ZERO commercial office tower space built downtown in all of that time. It took outsiders with far more vision than local builders to recognize the need for new high end office space in Saskatoon. Even what is underway now at Riverlanding doesn’t keep up proportionately with the growth of Saskatoon as a city, and despite the propensity for city administration to chase office development away from downtown Saskatoon, there is still an awful lot of room for catch-up. There are also a ton of reasons to build and locate in downtown Saskatoon.
With some people with vision and obvious skill leading the way, I suspect you will see a surprising renaissance in downtown Saskatoon. Our housing exploded when outsiders began to flock here because locals had no idea just how good they had it. The same thing will happen with commercial office space downtown, because people who build it will always want to make money doing so, and RL is demonstrating to them that the pastures here are very green compared to just about any other major western Canadian city.
I know you have a major personality defect and like to crap on all things Saskatoon, on a Saskatoon thread no less, but Saskatoon’s skyline changed a lot in the late 70’s - early 80’s and those weren’t boom times. It was just... time. Right now, in board rooms across the country commercial developers have Saskatoon on their radar, and they don’t need local everything to be nearly so perfect as the local boys have been holding out for in their insulated ignorance.
It is now, and will continue to be, Saskatoon’s time for the next while.
Come back in seven years and we’ll see who was right!