Europe’s richest families snap up Canadian CRE

Europe’s richest families snap up Canadian CRE

Europe’s wealthiest families have discovered Canadian commercial real estate as a safe haven investment, snapping up landmark properties in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal over the past year, in part because of concerns about the European Union’s uncertain future. Foreign buyers purchased a record $5.6 billion of CRE in Canada last year, according to data from CBRE Group Inc.

Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

Ottawa approves foreign purchase of retirement-home chain

The Trudeau government has green-lighted the sale of one of B.C.’s biggest retirement home chains to a Beijing-based insurance titan with a murky ownership structure to give China a foothold in Canada’s health-care sector. A majority stake in Vancouver-based Retirement Concepts – believed to exceed $1 billion in value – is being sold to Chinese-owned Cedar Tree Investment Canada.

Globe and Mail – Toronto Star

Long courtship ends with Edgefront-Noble merger

It was appropriate Edgefront REIT (ED.UN-X) and Nobel REIT (NEL.UN-X) announced their intended merger on Valentine’s Day. Pending shareholder approval, the two trusts will merge to create Nexus REIT, a diversified REIT with 36 commercial properties in Canada totalling 2.1 million square feet of GLA and a combined gross book value of assets of approximately $300 million.

Property Biz Canada

CPPIB acquires interest in Houston office portfolio

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) agreed to acquire a major stake in an 11-building Houston office portfolio consisting of Greenway Plaza and Phoenix Tower from Parkway, Inc. for $141 million US. The transaction pegs the full value of the 4.9 million-square-foot portfolio at $1.045 billion, an implied $210 per square foot.

CoStar Group – PE Hub – Houston Chronicle – IPE Real Estate

Pension funds embracing co-investments in RE

Canadian pension plans have been particularly eager to embrace co-investments for real estate deals. Globally, 19 per cent of public pension funds and 15 per cent of private plans make co-investments, according to a report published last year by London-based data and intelligence company Preqin Ltd. Those numbers rise to 44 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively, for Canadian funds.

Benefits Canada – Benefits Canada

New OAA president advocating for architects

John Stephenson has seen a lot in his more than 30 years as an architect and now, as the newly installed president of the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA), he wants to ensure his vocation is defended and valued. Stephenson is the managing partner of Thunder Bay’s FORM Architecture Engineering.

Property Biz Canada

Canadian architecture’s unlikely new idols

“Canada’s architectural idols, Office OU, a trio of young Canadian architects, brings the ease and comfort of being at one with nature!” Reading this quote from a Korean news site, Uros Novakovic busts into laughter; across the cafe table his business partner, Nicolas Koff, giggles over his green tea latte. The two don’t seem like any sort of “idols.”

Globe and Mail

Vancouver Trump Tower beacon of racism: Councillor

When developer Joo Kim Tiah announced in 2013 his spiralling skyscraper project in Vancouver would bear Donald Trump’s name, the main controversy was whether the glitzy luxury hotel was at odds with the city’s reputation as a home of casual yoga-pants-wearing types. A lot has changed since.

Global News – Vancouver Sun – Vancouver Sun

Edmonton Tower opens its doors

ICE District has officially opened Edmonton Tower for business, the first of several planned towers to open its doors to the public. The 27-storey, targeted LEED Gold structure features state-of-the-art office space, retail and dining options and is conveniently located in the heart of downtown Edmonton at 101 St. and 104 Ave.

Marketwired

China’s obsession with skyscrapers reaches new heights

It seems nothing can curb China’s obsession with skyscrapers. Fifteen years ago, there were barely any high-rises in China. Now, seven of the 20 tallest buildings in the world are on mainland Chinese soil. High-rises have shot up on land once occupied by bungalows and towers can be found in every corner of the country.

Business In Vancouver

Popeyes may not be last buy for RBI: Analyst

It’s been more than two years since the $12-billion merger between Tim Hortons and Burger King, so it was probably only a matter of time before 3G Capital made its next deal in the fast food industry. The Brazilian private equity firm controls Restaurant Brands International Inc, (QSR-T) which on Tuesday added Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen (PLKI-Q) to the mix with a US$1.8 billion cash deal.

Financial Post – Bloomberg – Toronto Star – Globe and Mail (Subscription required)

The brutal transformation of Tim Hortons

It took less than a year for Tim Hortons’ new Brazilian owner, 3G Capital, to erase more than 50 years’ worth of corporate culture. Preparation for the purge started even before 3G’s Burger King — backed by Warren Buffett — bought Tim’s for $12.5 billion in December  2014, with the intention of merging the doughnut and burger chains. 

Globe and Mail – Globe and Mail

Wal-Mart’s ‘test lab’ sign of the digital times

An affluent suburb of Hamilton is ground zero for Lee Tappenden’s discount store of the future. The chief executive officer of Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT-N) is touring a supercentre in Ancaster designed for the digital age. Customers can scan their purchases as they move through the aisles, with the bill already tallied when they get to the checkout.

Globe and Mail – Financial Post – Reuters – Globe and Mail

Milestone shareholders hoping for higher bid

On two occasions last week, the team around Milestone Apartments REIT (MST.UN-T) indicated investors are upset, not with the price they are being offered to give up their stake, but with their inability to replace an investment that has given them a return of more than 25 per cent a year.

Financial Post – Canada Newswire

Objections raised to idea of for-profit airports

The Capital Regional District was expected to wade into the debate over privatizing Canada’s airports. CRD director and Saanich Coun. Judy Brownoff intendd to table a motion to have the CRD push the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to call on the federal government to stop what it sees as a push to privatize the nation’s airports.

Victoria Times Colonist

Featured Column

On ‘dealing with’ clients

Have you every commented in passing that you must “deal with a client”? This casual turn of phrase carries weight.

Read more

Market Trends and Research

Post-industrial wave washes over Mount Pleasant

New developments blending light industry with office space in Mount Pleasant are accelerating the transformation of a Vancouver neighbourhood once known more for its elbow grease shops than digital commerce. One of those developments is at 34 West 7th Ave., where Chard Development is redeveloping the former warehouse into a four-storey commercial strata development.

Vancouver Sun

Opinion: TO should collect tax on Mink Mile property

At a time when the City of Toronto is fishing around for loose change in the cushions to keep some programs going, it’s an unpleasant surprise to learn it’s missing out on millions in tax revenue it should be collecting. The owner of a swanky Bloor Street shopping mall pays no property tax at all.

Toronto Star

Office staging lets you imagine yourself working here

Some commercial landlords are not betting on prospective tenants’ imaginations. Kevin Hardy, senior vice-president, portfolio management at Dream Office REIT (D.UN-T), a major office landlord, remembers one incident. A prospective tenant, an insurance company, was being shown various spaces in Scotia Plaza, Dream’s showcase, 68-storey, maroon-toned monolith in Toronto’s downtown core.

Globe and Mail

Edmonton businesses should look at e-commerce to enter Chinese market

Edmonton firms should look at e-commerce as a possible route into the huge and growing Chinese market, a city economic development executive said Thursday. “You may be here, but the world is going to compete with you whether you want to or not,” said Glen Vanstone, vice-president of trade and investment at the Edmonton Economic Development Corp.

Edmonton Journal

Real Estate Companies

QuadReal Property names leaders to founding board

QuadReal Property Group, which was established to manage more than $18 billion in global real estate assets for bcIMC, announced today Paul Cantor (chair), Steve Barnett, Stephen Bellringer, J. Lorne Braithwaite, Thomas Garbutt, and Lauralee Martin have joined QuadReal’s Board of Directors. 

Canada Newswire

Haskayne building toward real-estate specialization

High unemployment, high office-vacancy rates and a still-ravaged energy sector make for gloomy times in the Calgary real-estate market. But that has not deterred the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business from moving ahead with a real-estate industry specialty, in the works for several years, to be offered in September. 

Globe and Mail

Banff businesses brace for surge of visitors

Businesses in Banff are bracing for a banner year as numerous factors attract tourists, including free admission to all national parks to mark Canada’s 150th anniversary. “Everything is hitting in our favour right now,” says Mike Mendelman, chief executive officer of the Banff Hospitality Collective, which owns numerous Banff restaurants, night clubs, and a distillery.

Globe and Mail

Airbnb CMO reflects on ‘marketing that matters’

Even the chief marketing officer of Airbnb Inc. has a soft spot for hotels sometimes. While in Alberta next week, in an unusual move, Jonathan Mildenhall won’t be booking through his company’s home-sharing service, but instead is looking forward to a stay at the “stunning” Banff Springs.

Globe and Mail

REOC Financial Reports

Latest reports:

* BMTC Group, (GBT-T), Canada Newswire

REIT Financial Reports

Latest reports:

* Maplewood International REIT, (MWI.UN-X), Marketwired

* Summit Industrial Income REIT, (SMU.UN-T), Canada Newswire

Real Estate Investment Trusts

Ashford launches hostile takeover of FelCor

After months of direct negotiations failed to produce an agreement, Ashford Hospitality Trust (AHT-N) Tuesday went public with its bid for rival lodging REIT, FelCor Lodging Trust (FCH-N), launching an unusual hostile takeover bid in the normally gentile REIT sector.

CoStar Group – Reuters

What’s holding Boardwalk unit price down?

Boardwalk REIT (BEI.UN-T) is facing deteriorating fundamentals pressuring its unit price. The REIT has realized a triple whammy with three main challenges sending unit-holders for the exit door in search of other investment opportunities with near-term upside potential.

Globe and Mail (Subscription required) – Marketwired – Motley Fool

Killam Apartment names Noseworthy CFO

Philip Fraser, president and CEO of Killam Apartment REIT (KMP.UN-T) announced Dale Noseworthy, CPA, CA, CFA has been appointed chief financial officer effective April 1, 2017. Noseworthy, currently vice-president, Investor Relations and Corporate Planning, has been with Killam since 2006. 

Marketwired

A new investment outlook for REITs

The growth of all the REIT’s aggregate market capitalizations has increased 68,074 per cent in 45 years. NAREIT reports from 1971 (Market Cap = $1,494 million) to 2016 (Market Cap = $1,018 billion) the REIT industry has grown to an extremely substantial industry. Granted, this growth is highly skewed as the REIT industry has drastically changed in the last almost-half century.

CP Executive

Legal Corner

Public inquiry nears for Winnipeg RE scandals

City council was poised to approve a call for the province to hold a public inquiry into Winnipeg’s real-estate and capital-procurement scandals in spite of disagreements about the request’s wording. Most members of council had signalled their intention to vote today in favour of Mayor Brian Bowman’s motion asking the province to commit to a formal commission of inquiry.

CBC

Retail

B.C. retailers inviting customers behind the scenes

Listening in on shoppers is all in a day’s work for the team at Dish & Du/er, a recent addition to Vancouver’s athleisure line-up. In its hipster Gastown perch, the local brand doubles down on tech-forward fabrics, but its out-of-the-box thinking also extends to what’s going on behind the scenes — except nothing goes on behind the scenes. 

BCBusiness

Retail sales fall in December

A weak holiday shopping season took a bite out of retail sales, which were softer than expected in December. Statistics Canada said Wednesday retail sales fell 0.5 per cent in December as shops typically associated with the holiday season saw sales fall. Economists had expected no change in December compared with November, according to Thomson Reuters.

Winnipeg Free Press

Home Depot profit beats estimates

Home Depot Inc (HD-N), the world’s largest home improvement chain, reported higher-than-expected profit and sales, helped by a strong U.S. housing market, and set a $15 billion share repurchase plan. Shares of the company were up 1.8 per cent at $145.59 in premarket trading on Tuesday.

Reuters – Bloomberg

H&M to open first Saskatchewan store

Major fashion retailer H&M Canada has confirmed it is opening its first Saskatchewan store at the Cornwall Centre in Regina. The company announced on Friday it was adding a Saskatchewan store to its stable of 83 across Canada. It said the Regina store would open its doors in 2018.

CBC – Regina Leader-Post

Restaurants and Eateries

Freshii heads across the pond to U.K.

Freshii Inc. says it is taking its healthy-food eateries across the pond to the United Kingdom. The Toronto-based eatery has partnered with a local Starbucks and Domino’s Pizza franchisee, Anil Patil, who operates 40 and 20 locations of each chain respectively. Freshii (FRII-T) had 244 restaurants in North America, South America and Europe as of Sept. 25.

Winnipeg Free Press

New Development

Edmonton delays Quarters tower decision again

A controversial land deal for an 80-storey hotel and condominium along Jasper Avenue has been delayed for 60 days by city council. Alldritt Group, the developers behind the Quarters Hotel and Residences, want to buy a parcel of publicly-owned river valley land for part of the project.

CBC – Edmonton Journal

Vancouver’s pop-up neighbourhood

With the Canada Line SkyTrain rushing past, the gleaming residential towers and busy shops at Cambie and South West Marine Drive sprouted up seemingly overnight creating what some have dubbed an “instant neighbourhood.” The project officially opened last spring and includes residential towers, multiple shops and restaurants, a 10-screen movie theatre and office space.

CBC – CBC

Renovation and Restoration

Windsor’s Riverfront plaza getting upgrade

Windsor city council has approved the next stage of plans for the $13-million redevelopment of the Riverfront Festival Plaza project. The latest vision for the site breaks the waterfront property into three sections and includes a treed area and more grass than is currently included in the concrete grounds.

CBC

Royal Bank Building getting a facelift

It’s often overshadowed by its 31-storey neighbour at 360 Main St., but the Winnipeg office tower at 220 Portage Ave. is also in the midst of a multi-million-dollar transformation. The 17-storey tower, commonly referred to as the Royal Bank Building, is undergoing a $16-million renovation and upgrade  scheduled to be completed later this year.

Winnipeg Free Press

Feds trying to save the ‘birthplace’ of Canada

On Sept. 1, 1864, as Islanders tell it, some Central Canadians got off a steamship, crashed a Charlottetown party and formed a nation. The Central Canadians included future prime minister John A. Macdonald, his political opponent George Brown and prominent French-Canadian George-Étienne Cartier.

Globe and Mail

Infrastructure

Three LRT stations eyed for Ottawa

Three stations in Ottawa’s Stage2 LRT expansion are being eyed for well-designed developments to build density in the western leg of the extended rail network and potentially generate revenue for the city. Pinecrest, Cleary and Baseline stations could see new developments around, or even on top, of the LRT stops.

Ottawa Citizen – Ottawa Citizen – Ottawa

Ambitious expansion for Van. Aquarium

The Vancouver Aquarium will proceed with its ambitious expansion plans, even though it will phase out its captive beluga program over the next 12 years. For now, the Arctic habitat will remain empty while the aquarium builds a bigger enclosure, including a new water filtration system and improved security measures, as part of an ongoing $100-million expansion plan.

Vancouver Sun

STM unveils metro station expansion plans

Montreal’s transit authority says it plans to start work this fall on a second entrance to the Vendôme métro station that will connect the subway stop and the nearby MUHC superhospital in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. It will take two years to complete the $76.5-million project, which will include a tunnel between the station and the hospital.

Montreal Gazette – CBC

Edmonton to turn Yellowhead into a freeway

Edmonton city council has given the green light for the city to borrow more than $500 million to upgrade Yellowhead Trail into a freeway. The vote Tuesday was unanimous. The $1-billion project will eliminate all the intersections along the busy 25-kilometre stretch of roadway, turning what is mostly a 70 km/h zone dotted with major intersections into a free-flowing freeway.

CBC – Edmonton Journal – Edmonton Journal

Sustainability

Feds eye energy savings with Confederation Heights retrofit

The federal government says it’s preparing to spend up to $5 million on a pilot project aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of an office building and data centre at the Confederation Heights complex. The project involves switching from high-temperature hot water to low-temperature hot water.

Ottawa Business Journal

Windstream Energy sues Canada, Ontario

New York-based energy company Windstream Energy LLC is asking the Ontario Superior Court to enforce a $28-million award against the Canadian and Ontario governments it received under a NAFTA arbitration after the province imposed a moratorium on offshore wind-power projects in the Great Lakes.

Globe and Mail – CTV

Technology

Ontario students compete to build a ‘hyperloop’

Six Ryerson University aerospace engineering students and an entourage of advisers and supporters climbed into two rented SUVs and began driving southeast through Los Angeles’ glaring night. They were headed back to the Comfort Inn Cockatoo near LAX, where one double occupancy room had been piled with electronics and converted into a makeshift lab.

Toronto Star

Businesses betting on virtual reality

From raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to rolling out a new airline business class service, travel companies and tourism boards are increasingly turning to virtual reality to expand their reach and entice prospective clients. In November, the Tourism Authority of Thailand released four 360-degree videos, including one on an elephant sanctuary near Chiang Mai.

Toronto Star

Other