Downtown Real Estate

[Avenuer]

As in I am impressed with their long-term perspective on our market.

I wonder if they've exhausted the Calgary market (in their eyes) and are looking north to us now to invest heavily in?

 

[IanO]

They are being pretty aggressive there as well it seems... but yes, an underserved market.

 

[cmd uw]

Was this one of the Dream disbursements?

Yes, I believe it was.

 

[Daveography]

I missed this news:

November and December have also had some significant transactions, including the sale of the Canadian Western Bank Place and CN Tower in downtown Edmonton for $96.4M and $64.1M, respectively.

Edmonton's Commercial Real Estate Rollercoaster - Edmonton Commercial Real Estate

December 11th, 2020 –– 2020 has been a real estate rollercoaster. 2020 started off strong with a healthy sense of optimism about the economy finally coming out of the recession, but this positive sentiment came to a crashing end in Q2 as the commercial real estate market grappled with the onset...

www.edmontoncommercial.com

 

[archited]

Another couple of articles for those who think that Edmonton's downtown is more susceptible to carnage than American cities (you know who you are)... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/us/crime-poverty-pandemic-cleveland.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Gunfire and Crashing Cars: In Struggling Neighborhoods, ‘We’re Losing Our Grip’

A year of hardship in parts of Cleveland has left many with the sense that the fabric of their communities was fraying.

www.nytimes.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/washington-dc-protests/2021/01/01/da743c20-4a68-11eb-839a-cf4ba7b7c48c_story.html

 

[IanO]

Not more susceptible, but has slid so far in recent years after much progress and now a very different and much less safe/positive experience.

 

[archited]

^^^^it's nice to see your stripes changing, no matter how slightly.

 

[IanO]

Not at all. I still believe that our Downtown continues to underdeliver vis a vis and is often a reason more companies are not located there, more people do not live here and more people choose not to visit.

We need to change that and soon, as we are falling behind our natural competition.

 

[archited]

^^^^ the data says "NO!"

 

[Platinum107]

I don't think I've been to enough downtowns in other cities in North America, so I have nothing to compare our downtown against really

 

[IanO]

^^^^ the data says "NO!"

The people say otherwise.

While we can celebrate many positives over the last say 10-15years, we simply are not driving enough professional, IT, finance and business grow to our core. Sure there are great stories such as DeepMind, Jobber, BioWare etc. but we have moved a lot chairs around at times.

We need to compete harder, demand better, retain more talent and continue to re-shape our Downtown to have it be an attraction and something to be proud of.

I have spent the better part of my last 5 years working to showcase Downtown and yet the general comments I get back and more importantly receive from hotels GMs and VPs of various firms is that our Downtown is:

-unkept
-poorly maintained
-not enough nodes of activity
-lacking retail options

but most importantly

-has a feeling of being unsafe and percentage-wise has a lack of 'normalized use' on our streets.

These are investors from Toronto, professionals from Calgary, people visiting family from Vancouver or Ottawa and groups touring office space from China. We simply do not present well enough and it is getting tiring to hear as someone who (like many, many fine folks) have dedicated a lot of time, money and our life to this endeavour.

'As goes your Downtown, so goes your city'

 

[thommyjo]

I agree. We need to make better strides. Having lived in Toronto and visited Vancouver and Calgary quite a bit...we are way behind Canadian downtowns. Not to mention some of the beauties of Europe. I found Oslo super inspiring in many ways. Their approach to active transport has been amazing. It's also really helped their retail and commercial core vs when it was more car centric.

 

[Platinum107]

Well then, maybe a movement needs to be started to do better and voices like yours @IanO to speak on behalf of making things better. Maybe reviving downtown could be a point for a few candidates this upcoming election...

If anything, I'd still like to believe that things will start improving again once things can get back on track after the era of covid.

 

[David A]

Edmonton has a lot of positive aspects to it, but we excel at either ignoring them, downplaying them or just not bothering to think about appearances and putting the effort into keeping it up and improve it, so I am not at all surprised by the reaction of people from other places visiting our downtown. At times, it reminds me of what I imagine 1970's New York would have been like, except without the density, but with all the grubbiness. I wish I could say that we were Iike some places we were once quite splendid, but gradually descended into a run down but somewhat genteel state, but I think that would be far too kind.

Quite frankly much the area downtown along Jasper Avenue has the feel of the a large outdoor psychiatric facility. Maybe it is much more noticeable now because with COVID there are fewer people working and shopping downtown. I do hope some of the candidates in the upcoming election will take a real interest in improving things, but I get the feeling we have dug ourselves into a fairly deep hole that no one really has a good idea of how or the energy to get out of.

 

[IanO]

We need some focus, a plan (oh wait, we have one*), dedication. decisiveness and an awareness and acceptance that we are underdelivering. I should make mention and very clear at that, that this is both a public and private equation.

*https://www.edmonton.ca/documents/PDF/Capital_City_Downtown_Plan_May_27_2010.pdf
(just noticed that I am listed on it)