Saskatoon Construction III

[Echoes]

Originally Posted by roryn1

The surface parking lot in front of the Bess which is also attached to the courthouse - SASKATCHEWAN PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CORPORATION (what is that)

The Province's property management arm. The reserved parking there is for Ministry of Justice / Court of Queen's Bench next door.

[studentview]

Originally Posted by roryn1

I worked out of Toronto for a bit once and was right next to Dream's office downtown. If they're so proud about being Saskatchewan's largest developer lets see a skyrise that people will notice. Come on guys! Scrap this! https://sl2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/us...pdf?1590083504

The unmaintained grass full of dandelions in this picture is exactly how I feel about this lol.

@roryn A quick glance of the brochure tells me this site contains far more than one suburban office. 200+ rental units alongside additional phases of mixed use live/work units, retail pads and public greenspace. Dream is the developer of the Brighton community hence their involvement in the area. Their sister company Dream Office REIT owns both Princeton Tower and Saskatoon Square downtown. With vacancy approaching 20% downtown would love to hear your take on increasing the office supply with little demand on the horizon.

[roryn1]

Originally Posted by studentview

@roryn A quick glance of the brochure tells me this site contains far more than one suburban office. 200+ rental units alongside additional phases of mixed use live/work units, retail pads and public greenspace. Dream is the developer of the Brighton community hence their involvement in the area. Their sister company Dream Office REIT owns both Princeton Tower and Saskatoon Square downtown. With vacancy approaching 20% downtown would love to hear your take on increasing the office supply with little demand on the horizon.

The whole purpose of a strong downtown is a center for congregation of everyone in one place to live, work, and play. Personally, a huge reason why I love working downtown is to connect with friends over lunch and after work. It's the no1 reason why I don't leave SK and go work somewhere else with random strangers.

The 20% vacancy is misleading - Princeton and old Nutrien tower are actually in very rough shape and no longer of the same quality of the new office builds builds that the city is letting happen in the suburbs. The elevator buttons hurt to press and your eyes get scratchy throughout the day because of air quality lol. Someone bought the Scotiabank build attached to those towers and renovated it a ton and it's immensely better than those towers - if that building had a few more floors they would be leased out. I'm very surprised Vendasta went to Saskatoon Square tower - that building is very temperature variant and that's a main reason why the tenants wanted to leave. It looks pretty on the outside but most of these buildings from the 80's need huge renos to get them to the quality of the new commercial being built in the burbs. So no, we're not at 20% vacancy rate.

[YXE]

I would imagine that the poor quality of the available supply downtown plays into the higher vacancy rate. It's encouraging that River Landing has filled up as well as it has, given the discussed high rates. I'm a little surprised that River Quarry has yet to find a tenant but who knows how many have approached with interest for a floor or two, only to be told by the owner that he wants a single "AAA" tenant (i.e. someone like Sask Health Authority).

I think the next large-scale project we'll see downtown will be a mixed use retail, commercial, residential project that will attract tenants. No one is calling Triovest asking them to build River Center #2 but once a project is planned and announced, prospective tenants will look at it and be happy to be in a new build by the river, downtown etc. Saskatoon market seems to be a bit backwards in that right now, the Class AA supply needs to first be announced downtown before tenants would look to move. Of course, this is just a nice little concept I thought of right now. Who knows the truth.

It cannot be denied that the demand for office space is there as one can see by looking at lower rates elsewhere in the city. The city must continue to find ways to incentivize both a)vibrant developments and b) push people to move their offices from the suburbs to DT.

[prairieguy]

Do people not think that one of the results of Covid will be less demand for brick and mortar office space. Not saying there will be no demand, but I absolutely believe there will be more folks working from home on a permanent basis in the future. I have worked from home for 20 years as consultant and it works for me!

If this does result....I will be as disappointed as many others, as I would love to see the injection of few more attractive modern buildings downtown...but we will have to see.

[ToonTownRob]

Indications are that many will keep working from home, but that also the old days of filling up bull pens with ‘cattle’ will disappear as well, meaning that those companies that prefer a culture of bringing people together in an office environment will require more space for the same numbers of people. All of which will result in little change of office space needed/consumed due to COVID-19.

[roryn1]

As much as I’d like to agree that way, I do think it’s going to be disastrous for commercial space. I think once daycare is back up and running most will still prefer to work at home to remove the amount of time it takes to commute and get ready. Companies will also realize they can pay everyone a bit more and offer better tech when their staff are working from home. They could even potentially offer a lot higher quality annual trip as a cost savings. I think there will be offices, but they will be more mobile. I also personally want to get the heck out of my condo during this quarantine - I need an extra 1,000 sqft minimum if i’m ever working and working out at home again haha

[Crisis]

I agree that the fallout from COVID-19 will result in decreased demand for commerial office space. I see there as being 2 factors for this:

• There will be more people premanantly working from home, though I wouldn't hold my breath for employers to being paying them more to do so or bonusing them perks to offset their saving from lower office rental costs. The employer will want to maximize their savings by not providing office sapce and. As well, there is a lot of scepticism as to the productivity of people working from home, especially while simultaneously caring for children. Regardless of antecdotal reports of increased productivity from home, most employers want to see the work being done to believe it, though that obviously depends on the type of work being done and how easily it can be measured.
• Many empoyers have realized during the COVID restrictions that they can get virtually the same amount of production from fewer workers. This pandemic has inadvertantly provided a free efficiency audit to many businesses. Businesses have cut unnecessary activites and have found that they can still produce 90% of their work with 70% of their staff

Interesting theory about moving away from open work spaces back to private offices. Our workplace has a private office for everyone except the receptionist, so we found it pretty easy to enact COVID protocols and remain open with the majority of staff continuing to work from the office throughout the outbreak. However, I doubt that advantage will be enough to convince most office planners to revert to the old school private office layout that became so passe in recent decades.

[djforsberg]

Originally Posted by Crisis

I agree that the fallout from COVID-19 will result in decreased demand for commerial office space. I see there as being 2 factors for this:

• There will be more people premanantly working from home, though I wouldn't hold my breath for employers to being paying them more to do so or bonusing them perks to offset their saving from lower office rental costs. The employer will want to maximize their savings by not providing office sapce and. As well, there is a lot of scepticism as to the productivity of people working from home, especially while simultaneously caring for children. Regardless of antecdotal reports of increased productivity from home, most employers want to see the work being done to believe it, though that obviously depends on the type of work being done and how easily it can be measured.
• Many empoyers have realized during the COVID restrictions that they can get virtually the same amount of production from fewer workers. This pandemic has inadvertantly provided a free efficiency audit to many businesses. Businesses have cut unnecessary activites and have found that they can still produce 90% of their work with 70% of their staff

Interesting theory about moving away from open work spaces back to private offices. Our workplace has a private office for everyone except the receptionist, so we found it pretty easy to enact COVID protocols and remain open with the majority of staff continuing to work from the office throughout the outbreak. However, I doubt that advantage will be enough to convince most office planners to revert to the old school private office layout that became so passe in recent decades.

The whole open office concept has already been getting a lot of hate in recent years. Sure, packing employees together saves on real estate costs but it also lowers productivity in a lot of cases, doesn’t actually increase teamwork and as we now see, provides a perfect catalyst for spreading disease. Before I began working from home, I worked in a 15x20ish sq ft room with four other developers. I will refuse to be in there with more than one other person going forward. Big surprise, a nasty “flu” hit each and every one of us over the winter.

[The Bess]

Here is latest report on office vacancy

https://www.icrcommercial.com/wp-con...ON-Q1-2020.pdf

[roryn1]

I see Vendasta’s sign is now on Saskatoon Square. I hope whoever buys their building turns it into some awesome condos! Like we’ve all been discussing above i think the most promise our downtown has now is condo highrises 🙂

[prairieguy]

I am curious whatever happened to SHA's plans to consolidate staff HQ in Saskatoon? I believe that was going to be somewhere between 300-400 employees? Has that just temporarily been put on hold due to Covid or is this now no longer the plan?

If anyone has any insight, that would be appreciated. I still think River Quarry would be a great building for them if they decide to proceed.

[YXE]

That Office Report shows a building for sale on 3rd - that looks like a perfect candidate to be refurbished into boutique condos.

[roryn1]

Originally Posted by YXE

That Office Report shows a building for sale on 3rd - that looks like a perfect candidate to be refurbished into boutique condos.

Yea that's the old Vendasta building I was referring to. Would be perfect

[roryn1]

Originally Posted by prairieguy

I am curious whatever happened to SHA's plans to consolidate staff HQ in Saskatoon? I believe that was going to be somewhere between 300-400 employees? Has that just temporarily been put on hold due to Covid or is this now no longer the plan?

If anyone has any insight, that would be appreciated. I still think River Quarry would be a great building for them if they decide to proceed.

I heard they had some jobs from it at City Centre Hospital, probably some at the Idywild and 25th location, and then I saw that they have leased space in the new World Trade Center Stonebridge - thanks Don Atchison and business friends

[prairieguy]

I also know the City has employees spread all over the city in various leased or owned spaces. Perhaps they should look at consolidating and taking up River Quarry as it is so close to the existing City Hall.

[YXE]

I have some doubt that a public ally funded institution would pick one of the most expensive places to lease downtown, as much as I wish that would be the case. Maybe the case could be made around consolidation, however I think the general public still wouldn’t be too thrilled. At the end of the day politics is mostly optics - leasing the most expensive option isn’t exactly the finest move. I can imagine the uproar already.

Instead of all of us always speculating, is there someone that could be contacted at Sask Health that would give some info about what they’re doing? I know they leased some space out near the North Pole at the Don Atch Special but I recall that they only took a sliver of the space.

[YXE]

Originally Posted by roryn1

Yea that's the old Vendasta building I was referring to. Would be perfect

It’s a beautiful building. In a perfect world, a large-scale developer would purchase this property and add residential on top. Toronto is full of these heritage-type buildings with mass residential above. And frankly, most of them are beautiful.

[prairieguy]

Anyone with insider info know if the North Prairie project for corner of Clarence and College is dead in the water? The field of weeds continues there. They don't even use it as a gravel parking lot for Hospital workers!

I refuse to believe any announcement they may make in the future on any potential projects. What a ridiculous record of failed announcements they have. They need to stick to residential townhouse development.

[nook]

Y'all really think that people will be working from home after this is all over with?

Employers will be wanting their employees close at hand in the offices the second they get the green light to fill cubicles again. They're not going to incur the cost of lost productivity so people can work at home.

I like working out of my house. It establishes a work/home separation that I enjoy.

Once they figure out a treatment or a vaccine, most will go back to working out of the home.