Winnipeg Construction X

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by 1ajs

city cant service centerport not alowed to inles it annex's the area
same would go for this new development

Haha what? A good chunk of CentrePort is definitely within the municipal boundary. It's the cost of blasting bedrock and putting in phases of water and sewer pipe that is making the project move at a snail's pace.

[WildCake]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

Haha what? A good chunk of CentrePort is definitely within the municipal boundary. It's the cost of blasting bedrock and putting in phases of water and sewer pipe that is making the project move at a snail's pace.

Didn't the RM of Rosser want to operate its own water, and refused an agreement with the city?

Don't most municipalities have agreements for servicing with their neighbours in cases like this where it makes more sense to do so? If Springfield doesn't currently have water, it would likely cost them way more to run pipe to this new development than any surcharge the city would place on servicing

[plrh]

Rosser is part of the Cartier Regional Water Co-op along with a few other RMs. Their water comes from the Assiniboine. The sewer in Centreport runs to the city, even the Rosser parts.

[bomberjet]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

Haha what? A good chunk of CentrePort is definitely within the municipal boundary. It's the cost of blasting bedrock and putting in phases of water and sewer pipe that is making the project move at a snail's pace.

The long drawn out saga of Centreport. The City is not permitted to provide water service to the RM of Rosser, or any other municipality, with the water from Shoal Lake. The can handle the shit though. This was obviously a major issue for CetnrePort.

So CentrePort, along with the Cartier water corp, got the new water treatment plant built in Headingley.

[esquire]

Centreport sure seems to be chugging along regardless. On the few times a year that I take a drive up Brookside Blvd., it looks like there are loads of new industrial buildings to see each time.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by Labroco

I would assume the province is not renewing in this location resulting in a sale by the owners.

MB Land Titles was fully out-sourced to a for-profit, privately owned Ontario owned company many years ago. Around the time when the office moved to the location on Portage Ave.

[bomberjet]

Originally Posted by esquire

Centreport sure seems to be chugging along regardless. On the few times a year that I take a drive up Brookside Blvd., it looks like there are loads of new industrial buildings to see each time.

I don't know. Those developments next to route 90 are alright. But are mostly smaller scale industry that moved from elsewhere in the City.

There is still nothing out in the main park along CCW. No big wins like Amazon or Facebook data centres. Just kind of paying their bills (barely) with the small scale along Route 90.

[Biff]

Bison Transport bought a massive chunk of land along CentrePort Canada Way. Nothing there now but...

[esquire]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

I don't know. Those developments next to route 90 are alright. But are mostly smaller scale industry that moved from elsewhere in the City.

There is still nothing out in the main park along CCW. No big wins like Amazon or Facebook data centres. Just kind of paying their bills (barely) with the small scale along Route 90.

Yeah, it's nothing revolutionary, but all that industrial gotta go somewhere...

[H2man]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

I don't know. Those developments next to route 90 are alright. But are mostly smaller scale industry that moved from elsewhere in the City.

There is still nothing out in the main park along CCW. No big wins like Amazon or Facebook data centres. Just kind of paying their bills (barely) with the small scale along Route 90.

Merit Functional Foods

[cllew]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

The long drawn out saga of Centreport. The City is not permitted to provide water service to the RM of Rosser, or any other municipality, with the water from Shoal Lake. The can handle the shit though. This was obviously a major issue for CetnrePort.

So CentrePort, along with the Cartier water corp, got the new water treatment plant built in Headingley.

The International Joint Commission in 2012 ruled that a 1914 decision that allowed for Winnipeg to use water from Shoal Lake for its potable water needs did not permit Winnipeg to supply other neighboring municipalities such as West St. Paul was still valid.
The two Shoal Lake bands at the time the city wanted to sell water to West St. Paul and Centerport raised objections with the IJC to the sale as part of their protests to get a road build to the reserve.

[Labroco]

So... What does 10 acres in Centre Point cost and are there development charges for the purchaser? Sewer, water, gas to the property line?

Maybe it’s time to throw in the towel downtown and this constant bickering with Bureaucrats and government agencies.

Every time I get emotionally close to starting a design study on a parcel or lot downtown, the goal posts move...

P&M open! P&M closed! The Bay open... The Bay closed... Portage Place sold... Portage Place not sold... Convention Centre hotel started ... Convention Centre hotel stopped...
Artis REIT apt started... Artis REIT apt still not topped off...

These are huge barometric considerations to moving forward...

I’m also very concerned with 2 or 3 of the large office buildings on Broadway on the verge of going empty with downsizing or relocation of tens of thousands of ft2 of class B office space.

One cannot fill in a parking lot if there are no tenants for a building on the site.

On the bright side, Edison Apts, Alston Apts, RRDSQR Apts ,TN Apts, U of W Apts and Artis Apts very positive indeed.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by Labroco

I’m also very concerned with 2 or 3 of the large office buildings on Broadway on the verge of going empty with downsizing or relocation of tens of thousands of ft2 of class B office space.

One cannot fill in a parking lot if there are no tenants for a building on the site.

Well you can definitely fill parking lots with new towers if you are able to go and poach tenants from other towers. Heck you might even get praised on this forum for doing it as all people seem to care about is "shinny new tower" and look past the longer impact of what that overall move is causing. And yes this is directly referencing the significant, long term, negative impact to downtown Winnipeg which True North Square is causing. Seems I am the loan voice is trying to raise attention to this issue.

[optimusREIM]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Well you can definitely fill parking lots with new towers if you are able to go and poach tenants from other towers. Heck you might even get praised on this forum for doing it as all people seem to care about is "shinny new tower" and look past the longer impact of what that overall move is causing. And yes this is directly referencing the significant, long term, negative impact to downtown Winnipeg which True North Square is causing. Seems I am the loan voice is trying to raise attention to this issue.

But that's just market forces doing their thing. There's a natural healthy turnover. What it does is create space for new uses or residential conversions. You do need some pressure on landlords to either stay up to date and invest in their properties or figure out new uses for them. Otherwise, the building stock stagnates.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Well you can definitely fill parking lots with new towers if you are able to go and poach tenants from other towers. Heck you might even get praised on this forum for doing it as all people seem to care about is "shinny new tower" and look past the longer impact of what that overall move is causing. And yes this is directly referencing the significant, long term, negative impact to downtown Winnipeg which True North Square is causing. Seems I am the loan voice is trying to raise attention to this issue.

Yeah I'm not quite sure how True North Square creating more office space and "poaching" tenants is a bad thing? If anything, in theory it puts competitive pressure on property owners whose buildings are being vacated to upgrade their spaces and/or lower their rental rates to attract new tenants to fill the gap, which means more firms can move from B to A office space, and so on.

Alternatively, it can also force property owners to reconfigure their spaces for more efficient use such as residential if the market for office simply isn't there.

These market adjustments take time, and are not instant. Vacancy rates did not shoot up significantly when TNS opened up, and the only major office project on the horizon is Wawanesa which might cause a vacancy problem for one or two existing unsubstantial buildings.

Sure, COVID and the work-from-home movement has called the future of office space into question, but this isn't isolated to Winnipeg at all. In fact, I'd argue Winnipeg's more "traditional" office sector managed by old school boomers means work-from-home when the pandemic is over is going to be less likely relative to office markets with a lot of hot tech companies all competing for young, car and monthly parking fee-hating, mobile talent (Vancouver and Toronto).

[1ajs]

in theory ur correct about presure but when u got realstate agents that push new suburban and then ignore u when u look downtown in the mix as well. dunnoo how bad that is these days but i know it was bad few years ago.

[esquire]

I could understand CoryB's sentiment if the construction downtown was leading to boarded up old office buildings, but that isn't something I see happening... the ones at the bottom of the totem pole are getting converted to residential more often than not. That is a huge change from the 70s and 80s when downtown was not regarded as a desirable residential district and new office buildings were in fact leading to demolitions and mass vacancies in existing buildings.

The most significant vacant building downtown is The Bay, and that is a retail building which has nothing to do with the state of the office market.

[Spocket]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

Yeah I'm not quite sure how True North Square creating more office space and "poaching" tenants is a bad thing? If anything, in theory it puts competitive pressure on property owners whose buildings are being vacated to upgrade their spaces and/or lower their rental rates to attract new tenants to fill the gap, which means more firms can move from B to A office space, and so on.

The problem seems rather straightforward: If you poach from existing buildings without real demand from the market, you empty out buildings. While that may sound good on the surface, it lowers rental rates and that's not a good thing because it stymies new construction.

If the trend given such a grand push thanks to COVID continues and demand for office space has actually already peaked, what we need is to seriously consider that the only new tower construction we'll see will be in residential. That's fine but it also means we'll have to fill the space left from the emptied out office towers. Unlike the conversions to date, we're talking about converting massive amounts of space. I'm really not so sure Winnipeg is a market that can handle that kind of thing. So what we're really talking about here is a fundamental reshaping of the market. If low rental rates for office were a good thing that drew in even back-office requirements, Winnipeg wouldn't have been able to build enough new square footage for the past 50 years.

[Jeff]

So I clearly don't know all the details, but hearing about the rush to build a new National Research Council building in Montreal to handle a made-in-Canada vaccine makes me wonder if this city didn't even try to land this type of thing or whether it is Trudeau playing to his Montreal base again. I just say this because we have two empty NRC buildings (Ellice @ Balmoral and the one on Lag. beside the Mint) and the national Virology lab here already. Seems like Winnipeg coulda played some part in all of this....

[Labroco]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Well you can definitely fill parking lots with new towers if you are able to go and poach tenants from other towers. Heck you might even get praised on this forum for doing it as all people seem to care about is "shinny new tower" and look past the longer impact of what that overall move is causing. And yes this is directly referencing the significant, long term, negative impact to downtown Winnipeg which True North Square is causing. Seems I am the loan voice is trying to raise attention to this issue.

My real complaint is the tens of millions of dollars of subsidies to build TN. I believe almost $30,000,000 for this great “public square” which isn’t really public at all... Some say a small price to pay for a $400,000,000 investment but remember they are not paying realty taxes for a generation.

This creates the government subsidized poaching from other property owners and stakeholder. Do I like TN? Yes... Does it come at a huge subliminal price? Yes again...