Edmonton Construction 13 (November 2015)

[s4.audios]

Great news, and that downtown number is staggering.

What is going on with Oliver?

[noodlenoodle]

Nothing built in Oliver in 2016 & a couple buildings removed.

[Mikemike]

Briesbach doesn't really fit the mature neighbourhood category. I guess it's not Greenfield, but it doesn't act like infill.

[Airboy]

A couple of drive byes, sorry about the quality.This was drive by and not my main camera.

AGLC Warehouse.
[IMG][/IMG]

New NW Police Campus.
[IMG][/IMG]

[Coldrsx]

Originally Posted by noodlenoodle

Nothing built in Oliver in 2016 & a couple buildings removed.

No comment on Downtown?

[Coldrsx]

COE Tower officially opened! Most awesome ice carving of the tower and Mr. Katz and family even joined!


https://twitter.com/IanOyeg

[noodlenoodle]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

No comment on Downtown?

Why would I have? I answered a question I had an answer to, in regards to the disingenuous numbers you're patting yourself on the back for.

As for a generic comment on Downtown? Sure, here goes: Downtown is nigh-irrelevant to me. Don't live, work, play, shop, visit or dine there & don't see any of that changing for me in the near future & judging by how & where most Edmontonians are choosing to live it seems I'm not alone in this.

[Black Star]

^ I believe that was a rhetorical question.....

[noodlenoodle]

Originally Posted by Black Star

^ I believe that was a rhetorical question.....

I'm well-versed in Ian's rhetoric, having been exposed to it virtually unchanged for almost a decade.

[hilman]

ICE District:

Glen Scott, senior vice-president of real estate for the Katz Group, said the structure cost more than $300 million and will house about 3,000 people.

About 80 per cent of the retail space is already leased and the rest should be taken in 90 days, while there are still three or four floors vacant in the office tower, he said.

“We’re building a total of 1.3 million square feet of office (in the Ice District) and we’re collectively over 90 per cent leased, which anybody in North America will tell you is a home run.”

The 67-storey Stantec Tower is set for occupancy in October 2018, while the JW Marriott Tower and Legends Private Residences should be ready in spring 2019.

Scott wouldn’t discuss the future of the closed Baccarat Casino across the street, which in the past the company indicated would be replaced by 2019 with a “trophy” tower that could include residential space.

“I think you’ll see as we work through our plans we have a major public consultation process we’re going to be kickstarting for lands on the north side of the arena, and I think you’ll be quite excited about some of the plans we have for there.”

http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/city-opens-first-office-tower-in-edmontons-ice-district

[s4.audios]

So the ball is already rolling on North District and old Bacarat site... that is amazing.

[GreenSPACE]

^Granted consultation, planning, design will take 2-3 years. But yes exciting.

[Coldrsx]

Incredibly exciting.

[s4.audios]

To say that we may actually see construction in those next phases in 2-3 years is massive. That means we will have no stoppage of construction in the area for a good 6 years or so.

[Hallsy's Toupee]

How Edmonton is gaining ground as a research and innovation hub for AI
http://business.financialpost.com/entrep...-as-a-research-and-innovation-hub-for-ai

The AI community in Edmonton may have gotten off to a quiet start, but it is now viewed as a world leader in the field. This status is driving efforts to build a startup ecosystem to attract VCs and corporations hungry for AI solutions.

The community’s notoriety can be attributed in large part to the work of Richard Sutton, a computing science professor at the University of Alberta who heads up the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence research program (RLAI).

Sutton is considered the pre-eminent researcher in reinforcement learning — a subset of AI he describes as learning by trial and error.

“Deep (or machine) learning is more supervised, in which you are given a training set with many examples of how systems should behave. Reinforcement learning systems interact and figure out for themselves the best things they need to do to achieve their goals.”

Reinforcement learning is being used in ad and article placement on websites and schedule and resource management. It’s often used in tandem with machine learning techniques (autonomous vehicles being a case in point).

Sutton’s latest mission is to work with various groups to develop a stronger economy for potential AI companies. It’s a timely goal, given that the demand for AI is estimated to reach $45 trillion by 2025, he says. “We now have major companies coming into Edmonton; and there’s a lot of excitement around this activity in the startup community.”

[CMD UW]

^This is VERY important. Great news.

[canucklehead2]

I like the words, "trophy tower." I guess we can all read into that in different ways. I'm hoping for tall..er than Stantec... Maybe hit the magic 1000' mark? That would really put Edmonton on the skyscraper map...

[s4.audios]

What the hell do they mean trophy tower? Are they going to build an extra tower as gift? Without anything pre-leased or units sold? Sheesh enough with the tease.

Or will the tower simply look like a trophy... have a 200m Stanley Cup replica sitting there... where's the photoshoppers at???

[kcantor]

Originally Posted by s4.audios

What the hell do they mean trophy tower? Are they going to build an extra tower as gift? Without anything pre-leased or units sold? Sheesh enough with the tease.

Or will the tower simply look like a trophy... have a 200m Stanley Cup replica sitting there... where's the photoshoppers at???

trophy tower is a recognized building descriptive recognizing that all building descriptives can be somewhat subjective.

boma mentions them in their building class definition discussions ( http://www.boma.org/research/pages/building-class-definitions.aspx ) when discussing investment grade/international classifications after their metropolitan class discussion.

wikipedia's definition is also a good reference point for what is considered to be a trophy property:

"A trophy property is a real estate term for the top 2% of properties in a given subcategory, though the term typically referers to residences, architecturally or historically preserved properties, high-amenity natural land and properties with spectacular views, or other extraordinary amenities. The term also can refer to capstone properties such as office buildings or other unique income-producing properties."

it also needs to be noted that the true definition is a market one (as vague as it is), not an individual one. by that i mean that the description of a building as a "trophy building" needs to be applied on a broad international scale, not the scale of an individual portfolio (i.e. a neighborhood walkup might be the trophy asset in someone's portfolio but that doesn't make it a trophy building).

[s4.audios]

Oh wow, I never actually had the thought to look into it, just decided simply complain.

Thank you very much for that Mr.Cantor.

Well now I hope it does turn out to be something state of the art or with extraordinary amenities.