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Groupe Quint buys 550,000 sq. ft. of Mtl.-area industrial

4 years ago

Groupe Quint has acquired two industrial properties with more than 550,000 square feet in Montreal and nearby Saint-Hyacinthe, in transactions with previous owner Olymbec. “They were key for us for our acquisition strategy,” said Groupe Quint president/founder Ian Quint.

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This summer, Toronto-headquartered Oxford Properties opens a 147,000-square-foot office space at 402 Dunsmuir St. in downtown Vancouver. A few blocks away, it’s working on The Stack, due for completion in early 2022, whose 36 storeys will make it the city’s tallest office building.

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The EA Burnaby campus will get a major expansion of office space, adding nearly 300,000 square feet in two new five-storey office buildings for Electronic Arts. The buildings will include one level of underground parking and two above-ground levels of parking.

UPDATED: A syndicate led by Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust Inc., (BREIT) will invest $395 million in Toronto-based rental housing company Tricon Residential (TCN-T) via a preferred equity investment, allowing Tricon to reduce its debt by about 10 per cent.

Marcus & Millichap

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In partnership with Vancouver Island-based Aryze Developments, TELUS (T-T) is planning to construct a purpose-built office building at a prominent city-owned site in downtown Victoria – the 27,900-square-foot triangular vacant parcel at 767 Douglas St.

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Firm Capital‘s purchase of a two-building Edmonton portfolio on April 1 for $11 million is an indication investors are confident in the city’s ability to bounce back from COVID-19, says Keith Reading, director of research for Morguard Corporation.

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The value of buildings has started to fall downtown, argues the Urban Development Institute of Quebec (IDU) in its brief submitted to the City of Montreal as part of the pre-budget consultations. The fall is most acute for retail.

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Goodfood Market Corp. (FOOD-T) has signed a lease for a 45,000-square-foot facility in Montreal. This new facility will bring Goodfood’s footprint to seven facilities across Canada totalling nearly 590,000 square feet of purpose-built online grocery and meal solution capacity.

ICS Facilities Services

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Metro has launched its ninth “hub” store in Quebec, opening up delivery and click and collect to more than 73,000 households in Sherbrooke and area. Employees at the Metro Plus Plouffe place items in temperate, refrigerated or frozen zones.

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Industry groups representing food producers, as well as thousands of small retailers, criticized “distorted market practices” in the grocery industry Wednesday as they repeated calls for Ottawa to create a code of conduct to oversee relationships between retailers and suppliers.

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COVID-19 has added a whole level of uncertainty to what were otherwise enforceable lease clauses. Now it is uncertain as to what will be enforceable, making it harder for both landlords and tenants to protect themselves.

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Hyperloops, a futuristic mode of transportation that aim to carry passengers in levitating tubes at 1,000 km/h, “may fall short” as an option to transport Canadians from city to city, says a report commissioned by Transport Canada.

RealREIT

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Hudson’s Bay Co., the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue, has ditched its plan to raise up to $900 million in debt after prospective investors requested a higher interest rate than the company was willing to pay, sources said Wednesday.

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PGIM Real Estate has invested $425 million to buy an industrial portfolio on behalf of its U.S. core strategy. The manager said it has acquired the 4.7-million-square-foot, 15-building portfolio on eight properties in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, and Phoenix.

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U.S. commercial real estate prices are falling as the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic worsens — and the decline is just getting started. Real Capital Analytics data shows July transaction volume plummeted to $14 billion across all sectors, down 69% year-over-year.

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The block-size art deco building in downtown Allentown, Pa., is one of nine properties the United States Postal Service is currently selling. Today, mail delivery operations occupy just 5,000 square feet of the 96,500-square-foot property.

Yardi Marketplace

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Twenty-one per cent of mortgages in Alberta were in deferral as of July, the highest rate of any province in the country, according to a Tuesday tweet from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation president and CEO Evan Siddall.

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A failed condominium development project in Toronto’s east end has laid bare a multimillion-dollar dispute between the sons of a former banker who fled charges of embezzlement and fraud in Iran and a family of Saudi Arabian investors.

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Rental prices are softening in Vancouver and Toronto and housing prices are soon to follow as the number of new immigrants and foreign students falls sharply because of border restrictions aimed at combating the spread of COVID-19.

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Condos in downtown Vancouver have seen prices dip slightly over the past year, but the area remains the most expensive in Canada in terms of price per square foot, according to a new report from Century 21 Canada.

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