Manulife Place Renovations | 145.99m | 36s | AIMCo | MdeAS

[IanO]

Diverse financial, insurance investment with a crazy story of collapse in the late 80s.

Chapter 6 The Collapse of The Principal Group of Companies

Chapter 6 The Collapse of The Principal Group of Companies Bruce La Rochelle Ph.D. Dissertation Organizational Behaviour Schulich School of Business York University, Canada 1993 Introduction At tre…

brucelarochelleacad.wordpress.com

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Well then. I had no idea.

Principal Plaza Cinemas in Edmonton, CA - Cinema Treasures

Cineplex opened the Cineplex Principal Plaza on March 5, 1982. The nine tiny theatres in the complex had a total seating capacity of just 676. Cine...

cinematreasures.org

 

[MacLac]

Yup! That's where I saw "Time Bandits."

 

[_urbanite]

I would've never thought there was once a movie theater in that space.

 

[Glenco]

I remember the movie theatres in the parkade out back (Zebra parkade now?) that were the size of your Grandma’s living room. Btw, what did the “Principal” in Principal Plaza refer to? Was it an insurance company?

Basically a Ponzi scheme

 

[David A]

Hell I still call CWB tower Principal Plaza. So I may never get around to calling Manulife CWB tower.

Yes, for those of us who have been here a long time it will take a bit getting used to. Some of the hotel name changes confound me a bit.

I remember the Cineplex there, went there a few time and it was great. It had a nice variety of movies you could watch. Of course that was pre DVD or Netflix, when if you wanted to see a movie you either had to catch it at a theatre or wait forever (often years) for it to be on TV late night or something.

 

[kcantor]

Principal Group - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

i believe they owned a half interest in the building - along with campeau who was the developer - as well as being the anchor tenant.

start to finish it was built in two years at a time edmonton was building a million sf of office space downtown a year, most of it on spec.

 

[Gronk!]

Basically a Ponzi scheme

That was the point when the mighty (i.e. Peter Pocklington) started falling.
Either that or the Gainers strike.

 

[northlands]

Principal Group - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

i believe they owned a half interest in the building - along with campeau who was the developer - as well as being the anchor tenant.

start to finish it was built in two years at a time edmonton was building a million sf of office space downtown a year, most of it on spec.

found this on some quick Googling on Campeau Corporation’s 1979 Annual Report (shout out McGill for putting this online) for more history on that.

Cool seeing the tower being erected. Wonder who the GC was.

https://digital.library.mcgill.ca/images/hrcorpreports/pdfs/6/631912.pdf

 

[Airboy]

Principal Group - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

i believe they owned a half interest in the building - along with campeau who was the developer - as well as being the anchor tenant.

start to finish it was built in two years at a time edmonton was building a million sf of office space downtown a year, most of it on spec.

Yup we were busy then. my first major project was PP, then IPL tower then Manulife and Capitol square. There were smaller ones as well back then but those ones I still have vivid memories.

 

[Airboy]

found this on some quick Googling on Campeau Corporation’s 1979 Annual Report (shout out McGill for putting this online) for more history on that.

Cool seeing the tower being erected. Wonder who the GC was.

View attachment 521988

https://digital.library.mcgill.ca/images/hrcorpreports/pdfs/6/631912.pdf

It may have been Poole, just because they were charging the Subs to use the elevator. The Mechanical I believe was Lockerbie and Hole and the Sheetmetal was Watson. They also did IPL and Manulife towers and Chembiomed out in the science park. Then they went under. Lockerbie Went under about 1988.

 

[northlands]

It may have been Poole, just because they were charging the Subs to use the elevator. The Mechanical I believe was Lockerbie and Hole and the Sheetmetal was Watson. They also did IPL and Manulife towers and Chembiomed out in the science park. Then they went under. Lockerbie Went under about 1988.

I thought IPL was Batoni Bowlen

 

[Airboy]

I thought IPL was Batoni Bowlen

It may have been. I know Poole had a hand in a lot of work. My contracts were with L&H so I didn't pay attention to the GC until they started asking us to take a reduced fee. (UofA hospital).

 

[Gronk!]

It is now 2024

I would have asked someone at the popup kiosk when their permanent location will finally open but they appear to be closed.

 

[David A]

I wonder if they are just closed because yesterday was a holiday and it was not expected to be very busy today. At least Manulife has gotten rid of some of the other laughable signage about something exciting coming soon.

I thought this was supposed to be temporary, I'm not sure why there is such a delay in giving this business a real store front location. Its not like there isn't a ton of empty space available.

Really this is the only thing positive thing in Manulife giving more life to this level. If the landlord is the problem, they should treat this tenant good and quit dithering.

 

[kcantor]

I wonder if they are just closed because yesterday was a holiday and it was not expected to be very busy today. At least Manulife has gotten rid of some of the other laughable signage about something exciting coming soon.

I thought this was supposed to be temporary, I'm not sure why there is such a delay in giving this business a real store front location. Its not like there isn't a ton of empty space available.

Really this is the only thing positive thing in Manulife giving more life to this level. If the landlord is the problem, they should treat this tenant good and quit dithering.

it wouldn't surprise me if the deal with cwb will eventually have a large and hopefully positive impact on the building's retail. in addition to their wanting a main floor retail/commercial banking presence, i can see manulife trying to claw back the rbc branch and rbc being amenable (they don't need three retail branches within 2 1/2 blocks of each other) ace may well be part of those discussions - or at least aware of them - but it's worth remembering that manulife has more than 861,000 sf of overall rentable area and a small tenant like ace will never be able to drive much if any of the building's overall direction. while that might sound callous at first reading, it also needs to be remembered that it's the other 860,000 some sf that is what's attractive to a small tenant like ace.