QuadReal invests in co-working startup Convene

QuadReal invests in co-working startup Convene

QuadReal Property Group, the real estate arm of British Columbia Investment Management Corp., has made an investment in a second U.S.-based flexible working company, Convene. QuadReal’s investment follows Revolution Growth, Brookfield Property Partners LP, BlackRock Inc. and the Durst Organization, which are already investors in Convene. Earlier this year, QuadReal also invested in Industrious. 

Bloomberg – Globe and Mail (Requires subscription)

Vancouver parks board approves Oakridge roof-top park

The redeveloped Oakridge Centre could be getting a roof-top park. At Tuesday’s meeting of the Vancouver Park Board, commissioners voted to move forward with a plan to build a nine-acre park that will be partially constructed on the roof of the South Vancouver shopping centre.  QuadReal Property Group is working with Westbank Corporation to redevelop the property.

Vancouver Sun

First Capital buys two dozen properties, building two projects

First Capital Realty Inc. (FCR-T) will invest about $300 million to purchase interests in a dozen urban properties in major Canadian cities, as well as commencing redevelopments in Toronto and Montreal. Among the sites it has purchased is a redevelopment site at Yonge and Roselawn in a highly coveted downtown Toronto neighbourhood.

Property Biz Canada

TD Bank to buy Greystone Managed Investments in $792M deal

Toronto-Dominion Bank will buy Saskatchewan-based Greystone Managed Investments Inc. for roughly $792-million in stock and cash, a transaction which the bank says makes its asset management division the biggest money manager in Canada. Acquiring the institutional money manager will add another $36 billion in Canadian assets under management and expertise in real estate, mortgages and infrastructure investments.

Financial Post – Globe and Mail – Toronto Star

3T Equity Partners want to be ‘value-add guys”

3T Equity Partners has built a diverse multi-family and industrial portfolio since its inception in 2010, thanks in large part to the Toronto firm’s focus on adding value to its acquisitions. “The more deals we do, the better set up we are,” said David Goldstein, who formed GoldRich Living with Jordan Rich before adding Lawrence Moskovic as a third partner and renaming the company 3T Equity Partners in 2014.

Property Biz Canada

2018 Mid-Year Commercial Real Estate Update: CoStar

The first half of 2018 brought plenty of drama on the economic, financial markets and real estate fronts. The new reality of on-again/ off-again trade wars, cold wars and Twitter wars has put economists and analysts in a seemingly “special place in hell” where they are constantly trying to keep up and keep their analysis and conclusions accurate and relevant.

CoStar Group Report

Calgary, Edmonton a tale of two (different) cities: Altus

The Calgary and Edmonton commercial real estate markets experienced great investment levels in 2017, buoyed by a healthy return of Alberta’s economy. But the level of commercial real estate activity was much different in the province’s two major cities, according to two reports by the Altus Group.

Property Biz Canada

Broccolini breaks ground on Amazon Ottawa warehouse

Online shopping giant Amazon is expected to create 600 local jobs at a massive new 1.02-million-square-foot distribution centre – the largest facility of its kind ever constructed in the National Capital Region – when it opens in the second half of 2019, the developer Broccolini behind the project says.

Ottawa Business Journal – Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa’s tallest building one step closer to reality

Despite existing rules that only allow 30-storey buildings at 900 Albert St., the city’s planning committee voted seven to two in favour of a development that includes three towers, one of which would be Ottawa’s tallest at 65 storeys. Only councillors Jeff Leiper and Tobi Nussbaum voted against the application. Coun. Riley Brockington was absent.

CBC

Former Hamilton ‘ghetto’ development will go ahead

One of Hamilton’s biggest inner city developments in modern history has cleared its last major planning hurdle. City councillors paved the way Tuesday for Roxborough Park Inc. to build a huge development that includes three apartment buildings, affordable homes, hundreds of townhouses and 100 social housing units.

CBC

Condo developer backs away from Edmonton tower project

Six months before Eric Chung expected his new condo would be move-in ready, he learned the developer will not complete the building and is selling off the entire project. As a result, Chung will not get the unit he paid a $35,000 deposit for last year. “To be notified, when it’s almost done, that they sold it — that’s just unacceptable,” he said.

CBC

Invesque Inc. buys MOB property in Buffalo, NY

Invesque Inc. (IVQ.U-T) completed its acquisition of a medical office building located in Williamsville, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo. The company purchased the property for approximately USD$7.7 million, expanding the company’s medical office building portfolio to 15 properties spread throughout North America. The property bolsters a strong occupancy of 93 per cent while adding close to 35,000 rentable square feet to the company’s portfolio.

Canada Newswire

Brookfield selling self-storage portfolio for $1.3B

Heitman Capital Management is teaming up with National Storage Affiliates Trust to acquire Brookfield Asset Management‘s controlling stake in Simply Self Storage for $1.325 billion.  The portfolio contains 112 self-storage properties totaling 8.7 million rentable square feet in over 68,000 storage units across 17 states and Puerto Rico, according to a securities filing. 

CoStar Group

Currency, capital expands global property market by $1.1 trillion

The global real estate investment market increased by more than a trillion dollars in 2017 as favourable foreign exchange effects and capital-value growth helped lift the market’s size by 15%. According to the annual MSCI Real Estate Market Size Report, the real estate investment market was up from $7.4 trillion in 2016 to $8.5 trillion in 2017.

IPE Real Estate

Tim Hortons to expand to China with 1,500 locations

Tim Hortons has signed an agreement with a private equity firm to expand in China. Under the exclusive master franchise joint venture agreement announced Wednesday, Cartesian Capital Group will develop and open more than 1,500 Tim Hortons restaurants in China over the next 10 years.

Victoria News – Globe and Mail (Requires subscription)

Market Trends and Research

Bank of Canada hikes interest rates

The Bank of Canada is raising its benchmark interest rate again in spite of the intensifying tariff war between the U.S. and its main trading partners. The central bank increased its key rate to 1.5 per cent from 1.25 per cent on Wednesday – the fourth rate hike since last June. The rate, which sets the trend for rates on mortgages and other loans, has not been this high since December 2008.

Globe and Mail – CBC

Industrial space squeeze shifts companies out of Vancouver

Yours truly beds down each night in an apartment five floors above a popular tea shop, but the ground-floor zoning also permits a brewery and other light manufacturing activities, including a commercial bakery and print shop that flank the local dental office. It’s what makes Mount Pleasant a dynamic place to be, and challenges notions of the area’s traditional industrial character and amenities.

Business in Vancouver

Office landlords expect more deals as shared-workspace

U.S. office landlords and brokers are more optimistic than they were six months ago as technology giants Amazon and Apple prepare to select development sites and shared-workspace companies take up to one million square feet of office space every month.  The booming economy has returned the technology sector to its accustomed role as an office demand leader at the start of the second half of 2018.

CoStar Group

Real Estate Companies

ReDev Properties sets new benchmark for Q2

ReDev Properties managed to maintain its strong start to 2018 with an outstanding performance in Q2. “All members of our team should be very happy and proud of what was achieved during our most recent quarter,” said ReDev Founder and President Richard Crenian.  “I believe the company is well positioned to build on those successes and have a fantastic 2018.”

Canada Newswire

Incompetence left B.C. gov’t millions short in land sale

Four years after the B.C. Liberals sold 14 parcels of land in the Burke Mountain area of Coquitlam for a fire sale price, Auditor General Carol Bellringer weighed in Tuesday with an account of what went wrong. She found the government made a fundamental mistake by allowing would-be buyers to submit a grab bag of bids, some for individual parcels, some for the group.

Vancouver Sun

Real Estate Investment Trusts

REITs’ CEO-employee pay gap varies greatly

The compensation paid to the chief executive of Park Hotels & Resorts Inc. in 2017 was 567 times greater than the wages of its median workers, the widest such disparity among the top 100 real-estate investment trusts, according to FPL Associates LP, a compensation consultancy focused on the real-estate industry.

Toronto Star

Retail

‘Grocery wars’: How stores are competing for your dollars

Grocery stores are racing to provide customers improved services and technology as more take advantage of online shopping. It’s created a “grocery war” among the largest and smallest stores in an industry that produces $682 billion a year for local economies, according to the Food Market Institute. About 4.8 million people were employed by the industry in 2017.

Globe and Mail

Couche-Tard eyeing more acquisitions after blockbuster year

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (ATD-A-T) is looking for new acquisitions following a blockbuster year that made it Canada’s largest company by revenues, the convenience store operator said Tuesday. “I’d say M&A (mergers and acquisitions) continues to remain a core part of our strategy,” CEO Brian Hannasch said in a conference call. Hannasch said consolidation in the U.S. convenience store market is very active but sellers are seeking very high selling prices.

Montreal Gazette – Toronto Star

Tim Hortons tests food delivery service in Canadian cities

Some Canadians craving a doughnut or double-double but strapped for time can now have Tim Hortons food brought to them as the national chain started testing delivery this week. It’s one of several concepts the coffee-and-doughnut chain, working to overcome an onslaught of negative publicity, is trying out in an effort to remain relevant to Canadian consumers.

Toronto Star

Cannabis industry news

Canopy to acquire Hiku Brands Ltd. in $250 million retail play

Canopy Growth Corp. is acquiring Hiku Brands Ltd. for around $250 million in an all-stock deal that expands the cannabis grower’s retail footprint and gives it marijuana lifestyle brand Tokyo Smoke.   Shareholders of Hiku, Tokyo Smoke’s parent company, will receive 0.046 of a Canopy share for each of their shares.

Calgary Herald – Canada Newswire

New Development

Development approvals reform termed urgent by RESCON

A new report from the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) suggests developers are more advanced than municipalities in the use of digital project reporting and that municipalities should move to adopt e-permitting including 3-D Building Information Modeling as part of streamlining the development application process.

Construct Connect

Sports Venues

Rays propose $900M stadium in Tampa with translucent roof

The Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday unveiled an elaborate plan for a new domed stadium that would take them across Tampa Bay to the Ybor City section of Tampa at a cost of nearly $900 million. The 30,842-seat stadium would be the smallest in Major League Baseball and would be covered by a fully enclosed and translucent roof, not a retractable dome.

Winnipeg Free Press – ESPN

Infrastructure

CN Rail to spend $315M to upgrade Ontario operations

CN Rail plans to invest about $315 million in Ontario this year to expand and strengthen the company’s rail network across the province. The company says planned projects include upgrades at CN’s intermodal terminal in Brampton northwest of Toronto — the company’s largest such facility — and the construction of a new train passing siding east of Sioux Lookout.

Chronicle Herald

Other

Businessman accused of real estate fraud & killing his lender

The family of a Chinese man who was the victim of a homicide is suing his accused killer for the millions of dollars it claims he borrowed from the victim to buy properties in Metro Vancouver. In a notice of claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court June 27, the family of Changbin Yang says businessman Long Ni borrowed $113 million from Yang with the promise of investing it in the Chinese mining industry.

CBC

Montreal’s Grande Bibliothèque grapples with bed bug invasion

Quebec’s Grande Bibliothèque on De Maisonneuve Boulevard in Montreal is dealing with a bed bug problem, forced to take temporary measures to protect visitors from taking home any uninvited guests. Staff at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), as it’s officially called, removed fabric lounge chairs and replaced them with plastic seats Tuesday morning.

CBC

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