Edmonton Construction 12 (December 2013)

[Hallsy's Toupee]

Encore!

Sales start for Edmonton's tallest condo-only tower
http://edmontonjournal.com/business/comm...t-for-edmontons-tallest-condo-only-tower

Launching sales for a $100-million, 40-storey condominium highrise in Edmonton during an economic downturn and a downtown residential building boom isn’t as risky as it sounds, says Richie Lam.

In fact, the co-CEO of Westrich Pacific Corp. expects a crowd of potential buyers when the development company opens sales Saturday for Encore Tower, planned for the corner of 103rd Street and 102nd Avenue.

He says Encore sales could outperform the pace set in a more upbeat economy by 32-storey Ultima, another Westrich luxury tower scheduled to open a year from now and 98-per-cent sold.

Lam wasn’t as optimistic five months ago. “We were almost going to put this on hold because we weren’t sure,” Lam said.

After a year’s delay for design work and focus on other projects, the company even discussed simplifying Encore’s cross-shaped floorplate into something more boxy, but ended up sticking with the original concept and marketing plan.

“The response so far has been overwhelming,” Lam said. “For Ultima, we reserved $50 million in condos in one day and took two to three weeks to close them all up. It’s looking like it’s going to be stronger than Ultima. We have close to 1,350 people that registered on our website. Ultima, we had only 800.”

“A few people that have called us for Encore say they live in St. Albert or Sherwood Park or the southwest area and looking to buy a place downtown where they can see a concert instead of driving back and forth.”

Construction is expected to start next fall.

The “all-glass” building will hold 164 two-bedroom, two-bath units and a three-storey lobby entrance with a waterfall feature. The fourth floor will have a sun lounge with Las Vegas-style cabanas and a wading pool, the company says. There will be five levels of underground parking. Units start at $359,000.