The Vancouver Business Thread

[Hourglass]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Dubai:
City population, 3.1M
Metro population, 5.6M
Tourism revenue, $27B+ per year

Vancouver:
City population, 0.67M
Metro population, 2.4M
Tourism revenue, $4.8B per year

So in about twenty-ish years when we're almost two-thirds as big as Dubai and maybe have a third of their tourism industry, we can most definitely think about bigger tourist trap-sized malls and casinos and megatowers. Parq and Pacific Centre and Metrotown and our existing rapid growth suit us just fine in the meantime.

I feel it’s worth pointing out that Dubai made a concerted effort to become the tourist destination it is today as a means to diversify the economy away from oil. Not saying I disagree with you, but there’s a lot more that could be done in Vancouver.

[misher]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

I feel it’s worth pointing out that Dubai made a concerted effort to become the tourist destination it is today as a means to diversify the economy away from oil. Not saying I disagree with you, but there’s a lot more that could be done in Vancouver.

Too many NIMBYs who’s don’t want tourists

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

I feel it’s worth pointing out that Dubai made a concerted effort to become the tourist destination it is today as a means to diversify the economy away from oil. Not saying I disagree with you, but there’s a lot more that could be done in Vancouver.

Sure. Thing is, exactly what do we want to do, who do we want to attract, and how, without fundamentally screwing up the city?

IMO most of our tourism sector is eco/adventure venues. Our shopping and gambling sectors are more than fine for the near future. We could definitely start working on the cultural, nightlife, boating and dining sectors, as well as improving existing destinations and access to other parts of Metro Vancouver and BC. Maybe buy a pair of these and start tours?

Originally Posted by misher

Too many NIMBYs who’s don’t want tourists

NIMBYs don't want "undesirables" such as gamblers or poor/homeless people. What gave you the idea that they dislike tourists?

[Vin]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

I feel it’s worth pointing out that Dubai made a concerted effort to become the tourist destination it is today as a means to diversify the economy away from oil. Not saying I disagree with you, but there’s a lot more that could be done in Vancouver.

Exactly. While here we have those who fear the tallest and the largest, and rather go for an alternative that's not at all appealing. When one even suggests how this city can improve, they take it as a personal insult.

[Vin]

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/

How to lose money developing a big-city casino in Vancouver
Glen Korstrom and Frank O'Brien

By Western Investor - June 4, 2019

Questions swirl around whether taxpayer money was used wisely in courting the Parq Vancouver entertainment complex development given that project’s financial woes. Yet a look at the process of delivering the city’s biggest casino shows that trusting the word of politicians proved a dangerous gamble for the developer.

The province rejected a stadium-naming deal that would have netted $35 million for the casino, and the city capped the number of gaming tables at half of what the casino expected.

Parq announced May 10 that it has restructured its debt to lower its annual interest payments, which had totalled $112.2 million per year on close to $560 million in debt related to project funding to build the complex, but the company did not reveal too many details of that pact.

It separately revealed that it has brought on a new equity partner, but it did not immediately say what company that is, other than that the partner is “a domestic Canadian company with hospitality holdings in several markets.”

The entire Parq project, however, came into existence thanks to financial help from the publicly owned BC Pavilion Corp. (PavCo) and British Columbia Lottery Corp. (BCLC).

The B.C. government was also separately involved in financing the emerging entertainment district by providing loans to pay for a renovated BC Place stadium with a new retractable roof – a project that totalled $514 million.

The government’s decision to upgrade the stadium was seen as key for the Parq development because the new stadium was envisioned to be a main destination for people who would also visit hotels, restaurants and bars.

Part of the $514 million that PavCo used to renovate BC Place came from a $150 million loan from the B.C. government in the 2010 fiscal year. PavCo planned to use lease payments from the Parq development and funds from a corporate sponsor that would buy naming rights to the stadium to help pay off that debt.

The B.C. government, however, scuttled the only deal for naming rights in 2012 by rejecting a $35 million offer from Telus Corp. because it said the deal was not good for taxpayers.

PavCo’s most recent financial disclosure, for the 2018 fiscal year, showed that its debt to the province stood at more than $140.4 million, following an annual payment of $2.64 million on the loan and $4.64 million toward interest.

PavCo has not made a serious dent in its debt to the government partly because it is generating much less income from its land lease to help pay off the debt than was originally expected.

PavCo first signed a 70-year lease with Paragon Gaming, which conceived of the Parq development, and it announced that agreement in early 2010. Paragon later partnered with Dundee Corp. and PBC Group to create Parq Holdings.

Paragon’s agreed terms in the lease included building and operating an entertainment complex and paying PavCo $6 million per year to use the land.

Paragon expected Vancouver city council to approve Paragon’s request to expand Edgewater Casino’s number of slot machines to 1,500 from 600, and tables to 150 from 75, when it moved the casino into the new development.

However, while council agreed in April 2011 to allow Edgewater to move to the new development, it unanimously rejected any expansion of operations.

To keep the Parq project on track, PavCo in 2013 renegotiated the 70-year lease that it had with Paragon and allowed Paragon to pay $3 million per year, or half of the originally agreed-upon sum, with the lease rate rising with inflation after 2027.

PavCo also signed a side deal to allow Paragon to pay $8.5 million of the first $9 million in lease payments to the Musqueam Indian Band, instead of PavCo, as part of a reconciliation effort with Indigenous people.

Cutting Paragon’s lease rate in half was controversial.

“If you have a bidder who cannot complete on the terms of the agreement, you put it out for bid again – put it out for highest and best use,” said Sandy Garossino, who led the campaign to prevent Edgewater from expanding. PavCo executives, however, are unwavering in the belief that it was a good deal.

“PavCo expects to receive more in lease revenue from the site than it would from a one-time sale,” the company told Business in Vancouver in an email.

[Vin]

Translink should run more buses up and down Pacific Boulevard with the large buses, and not just those infrequent shuttle buses. This bus service should go in a loop from the casino to Burrard Bridge, Granville Island, Olympic Village, Chinatown, Stadium Station and then back to the Casino. This neighbourhood needs better transit link to bring more people there.

[Vin]

delete

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Vin

Translink should run more buses up and down Pacific Boulevard with the large buses, and not just those infrequent shuttle buses. This bus service should go in a loop from the casino to Burrard Bridge, Granville Island, Olympic Village, Chinatown, Stadium Station and then back to the Casino. This neighbourhood needs better transit link to bring more people there.

Yes, let’s use scarce transit funding to deliver patsies to casinos.

[Galaxy]

Also, the Casino is a pretty short walk from Yaletown Round House Station. It is also a little longer walk to also Stadium Station. I personally am not a gambler so have yet to even visit the place since they built it.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Vin

Exactly. While here we have those who fear the tallest and the largest, and rather go for an alternative that's not at all appealing. When one even suggests how this city can improve, they take it as a personal insult.

You appear to be projecting on the rest of us. There's plenty of options for diversifying the city and economy and drawing tourists - I've suggested several. "(Much Bigger City) has one!! Why don't we have one?!?" is neither constructive nor practical.

Again, even with renaming BC Place as the "Telus Dome" or something equally ridiculous, the double-size casino would still be losing $29 million a year on debt payments.
Evidently there's barely enough gamblers to fill one urban casino, let alone a Vegas-sized one. Nor should we be trying to get more - given your distaste for social services and their users, doubling down on an industry that exacerbates both is the last thing we need.

Originally Posted by Vin

Translink should run more buses up and down Pacific Boulevard with the large buses, and not just those infrequent shuttle buses. This bus service should go in a loop from the casino to Burrard Bridge, Granville Island, Olympic Village, Chinatown, Stadium Station and then back to the Casino. This neighbourhood needs better transit link to bring more people there.

TransLink themselves note that long, looping, and/or redundant routes are mostly inefficient - the 50, for example, is usually near-empty. The best-performing routes are straight lines that intersect - for example, one down Pacific to Prior or Main, one up Quebec to Waterfront.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

You appear to be projecting on the rest of us. There's plenty of options for diversifying the city and economy and drawing tourists - I've suggested several. "(Much Bigger City) has one!! Why don't we have one?!?" is neither constructive nor practical.

Again, even with renaming BC Place as the "Telus Dome" or something equally ridiculous, the double-size casino would still be losing $29 million a year on debt payments.
Evidently there's barely enough gamblers to fill one urban casino, let alone a Vegas-sized one. Nor should we be trying to get more - given your distaste for social services and their users, doubling down on an industry that exacerbates both is the last thing we need.



TransLink themselves note that long, looping, and/or redundant routes are mostly inefficient - the 50, for example, is usually near-empty. The best-performing routes are straight lines that intersect - for example, one down Pacific to Prior or Main, one up Quebec to Waterfront.

A much bigger casino will also mean more options for more amenities. They could build a much bigger entertainment complex, complete with a theatre, retail centre, food hall, as well as taller hotels on top the podium. When more people are in the area, it will attract more to go. You can't restrict the size of businesses and then hope for the best. Paragon made a mistake to go ahead with the development for sure, but CoV is largely to blame too. RiverRock did not face such restrictions and it is doing pretty well now.

Bad city planning has led to few people using those routes. There just aren't too many people going up and down Pacific Boulevard from lack of retail or points of interests in the past, although it is changing with the casino and stadiums in place, Vancouver House development and so on. The area should be served with more buses plying the route, and not the occasional shuttle bus which is usually full and leaving other passengers stranded.

50 buses link downtown to Granville Island, which only operates till 6pm. Beyond that point they are always empty, but they do get pretty full loads before that. The more points of attractions the bus route serves, especially those that open till late like the casino, the more passengers it can get.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Vin

A much bigger casino will also mean more options for more amenities. They could build a much bigger entertainment complex, complete with a theatre, retail centre, food hall, as well as taller hotels on top the podium. When more people are in the area, it will attract more to go. You can't restrict the size of businesses and then hope for the best. Paragon made a mistake to go ahead with the development for sure, but CoV is largely to blame too. RiverRock did not face such restrictions and it is doing pretty well now.

Parq is larger than RiverRock minus the parkades (also seeing a drop in revenue), but is making barely over half as much money. Size isn't the problem. Transit access, perhaps.

The city only had a problem with the larger casino - which wouldn't have made much difference anyway - not with the rest of the complex, which was mostly unchanged.
Given that many condos flanking it are much taller, it appears that the hotels were not interested in having more height. Any one of the eight restaurants/lounges or the space that would've housed the casino expansion could've easily housed theatres, stores or other amenities. Instead, Paragon doubled down on F&B and lost.

Originally Posted by Vin

Bad city planning has led to few people using those routes. There just aren't too many people going up and down Pacific Boulevard from lack of retail or points of interests in the past, although it is changing with the casino and stadiums in place, Vancouver House development and so on. The area should be served with more buses plying the route, and not the occasional shuttle bus which is usually full and leaving other passengers stranded.

50 buses link downtown to Granville Island, which only operates till 6pm. Beyond that point they are always empty, but they do get pretty full loads before that. The more points of attractions the bus route serves, especially those that open till late like the casino, the more passengers it can get.

The bad city planning in question being a hundred years ago when people thought universities and tiny suburbs out in the middle of nowhere were a good idea. As we both know, Pacific is dense and the 23 is crowded, and so it shouldn't perform any worse than a regular bus line once upgraded to one.

What you want sounds like the Detroit People Mover and Sydney Monorail - both are/were connected to popular destinations, yet one gets half as many riders as a trolley line and the other was demolished six years ago.
Ditto Vancouver - anybody trying to go the "wrong" way around on your route (eg Parq to OV) would end up sitting in traffic for over half an hour. Even most tourists would prefer to walk rather than travel the long way around a circle. Much better to have several straight/bent lines that run every 7-10 minutes and connect to each other.

[Sheba]

Apple plans to open office in Westbank’s glitzy Vancouver tower

Apple Inc. plans to open an office in one of Vancouver’s most hotly anticipated developments, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Cupertino, California-based Apple will join Deloitte LLP and IWG Plc’s Spaces co-working unit as key tenants in 400 West Georgia, a 24-story office building that is owned by Westbank Corp. and Allied Properties REIT, said the people, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t yet public. The firm will take up about two floors, one of the people said.

The futuristic tower — a rotating stack of enormous glassy cubes said to be inspired by a Japanese paper lantern — is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2020, according to Westbank’s website. The entire development will be 367,000 square feet. Deloitte Canada’s Vancouver headquarters will take up about 117,000 square feet in the top 10 floors, while Spaces will rent about 120,000 square feet.

Representatives for Allied, Westbank and Apple declined to comment.

Vancouver’s office sector is becoming increasingly crunched for space, as technology giants expand their footprint in the Pacific Coast city, lured by a strong labor pool, friendly immigration policies, and proximity to U.S. West Coast company headquarters. Vancouver and Toronto are tied for having the tightest vacancy rates in North America, according to CBRE.

...

[LeftCoaster]

I posted this in the 410 thread, but I'll clarify here too, the original lease was for four floors, so I think the article is incorrect. I doubt the deal is now only for two floors.

[whatnext]

Workers at several downtown Vancouver vote to strike and the Hotel Georgia has issued lockout notice to theirs. It too a while but we’re finally seeing the consequences of Vancouver’s skyrocketing cost of living in the labour market. There’s a reason wages increase 3.5% here, the biggest jump in the country.
https://www.citynews1130.com/2019/08/23/hotel-strike-harassment-draft/

[misher]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Workers at several downtown Vancouver vote to strike and the Hotel Georgia has issued lockout notice to theirs. It too a while but we’re finally seeing the consequences of Vancouver’s skyrocketing cost of living in the labour market. There’s a reason wages increase 3.5% here, the biggest jump in the country.
https://www.citynews1130.com/2019/08/23/hotel-strike-harassment-draft/

Their union has been in negotiations for over a year without a contract and with the closing of one major hotel likely the bargaining position of the union weakened.

[SpongeG]

Vancouver’s hotel crunch set to drive up room rates

Business In Vancouver
By Glen Korstrom - August 28, 2019

Vancouver’s diminishing number of hotel rooms has been a trend for a while now.

City of Vancouver statistics show that the city in mid-2018 had 13,925 hotel rooms, or 1,105 fewer units than it did a decade ago. Those lost rooms include the 626 suites in the former Empire Landmark and Coast Plaza Stanley Park hotels, which both closed in recent years.

Speer expects that when the 372-room Four Seasons Hotel closes at the end of January 2020, no new hotel will take that space.

Landlord Cadillac Fairview did not return phone calls from Business in Vancouver to confirm what it plans for that space at 791 West Georgia Street.

One bit of good news for the sector is that digital hotel operator Sonder has been renovating former convention space adjoining the 31-storey former Coast Plaza building. The tower is separately being renovated to include 316 rental units.

However, people who enter above the Denman Place Mall at 1771 Comox Street early next year are expected to be able to enter Sonder’s three-storey, 66-unit hotel.

“It’s a bit of a strange building,” Sonder’s general manager for Vancouver, Emma Cahalane, told Business in Vancouver.

“If you go in from Comox, the first thing you see is the mall. Then you come up one level and that was the old conference area. We have our own entrance, own elevator and own complete access.”

Sonder launched in Montreal in 2012 as a short-term rental company similar to Airbnb. It has since morphed its business model to be a digital hotel, which means that all guests book rooms online and the lion’s share of interactions with hotel staff are online. If they need extra towels, for example, they request them via a smartphone app – same thing if they want their sheets changed.

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/2019/08/28/vancouvers-hotel-crunch-set-to-drive-up-room-rates/

[cairnstone]

I wonder how long till Airbnb sues the city for a change to the bylaws that prevent them from operating as a full suite short term rental business. Onni was allowed to change there rental building that was in the news a few years ago back to short term rental do to the lack of rooms.

Im heading to Montreal next June. I can rent a suite in the village for $75 a day. I dont think you can get a room in the Patricia for that.

SO we need to build more hotels, low income housing and also increase the supply of market housing but we have put in restrictions on foreign buyers allow developers to move forward with projects.

[NewfBC]

Originally Posted by cairnstone

I wonder how long till Airbnb sues the city for a change to the bylaws that prevent them from operating as a full suite short term rental business. Onni was allowed to change there rental building that was in the news a few years ago back to short term rental do to the lack of rooms.

Im heading to Montreal next June. I can rent a suite in the village for $75 a day. I dont think you can get a room in the Patricia for that.

SO we need to build more hotels, low income housing and also increase the supply of market housing but we have put in restrictions on foreign buyers allow developers to move forward with projects.

You can rent a 2br apartment in Montreal for $800/month.. it's all relative.

Ron.

[Migrant_Coconut]

We're about to get Canada's largest movie production facility:

Massive new 600,000 sq. ft. film studio to be built in Metro Vancouver

When complete, Martini Film Studios’ (MFS) new purpose-built, world-class facility in Metro Vancouver will be the largest film and production studio in Canada and one of North America’s biggest.

MFS announced today it will be a tenant of the new 80-acre Langley 216 Business Park that will be constructed next to Highway 1’s new 216th Street interchange in Langley Township’s Walnut Grove area. The studio’s parent company is the owner of the entire business park property.

The film and production studio component will account for 25 acres of 216 Business Park, creating 600,000 sq. ft. of soundstages, offices, and production support buildings.

At least 300,000 sq. ft. of the floor area will be purposed as soundstages.

... Upon the completion of the new facility, MFS will more than triple its current size and capacity, and become the largest provider of film studio facilities in the region. It is estimated Metro Vancouver’s film and television production capacity will increase by up to 15% as a result of the new 216th Street studio location...

(DailyHive)

---

On one hand, this is great for Hollywood North and the general economy... on the other, the last thing we need is another giant industrial park in the middle of nowhere creating traffic.