I find the wording of the announcement interesting:
ICON refers to the 16T tower crane as "theirs."
This suggests that they actually
own the crane.
This places then in a select small group of development companies that actually own their own tower cranes. This includes ICON, Lafford and CG Group. Other companies lease their tower cranes on a project specific basis.
Actually owning your own crane changes the mindset of a development company. If you own a tower crane, then it is an
asset that you want to keep busy. If on the other hand you lease a tower crane, then it becomes a
liability (or cost centre) that you will only use sparingly and when you really need to.
This is an important distinction between truly serious players in the development game and more casual developers. Do you own or rent???
Look at the evidence:
Lafford used their tower crane sequentially for the construction of all Three Sisters, them moved the crane across the street for the two Gateway Towers. Once Gateway is complete, I strongly suspect the crane will move to the Tim Horton's property on Albert Street. Lafford will keep this owned asset busy.
CG Group has been using their tower crane sequentially for all nine major apartment buildings in the Franklin Yards. Now that Franklin Yards is winding up, they plan to move immediately on to the five apartment building development on Corey Craig Drive next to the casino. again, CG Goup plans to keep this owned asset busy. I wonder if they have something else in the pipeline after Corey Craig???
ICON used their tower crane to build the first two buildings in their Pine Ridge development in Riverview. Now it is being moved across the river for the Infinity Tower development in Moncton. Once this is complete, I have confidence that ICON will quickly deploy the crane for another development, either the third apartment building at Pine Ridge, or, perhaps more likely to Dominion Street, for the second apartment building on that site (rumoured to be a 17-18 storey tower).
If you own the asset, you want to keep it busy.
Moncton is very lucky to have three very serious development companies in the community. These are the really big players. Other companies like Ashford are capable of financing and building major projects, but operate with a different mindset and on a different level.
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