Edmonton City Centre Mall (Renovations) | ?m | 2s | LaSalle Investment Management

[IanO]

Ok ECC, your move!

Winnipeg’s Portage Place set for massive $500m revitalization

Winnipeg’s Portage Place set for massive $500M revitalization - Winnipeg | Globalnews.ca

After years of debate over the beleaguered downtown Winnipeg mall's future, Portage Place got a massive shot in the arm Friday with a big announcement about its future.

globalnews.ca

 

[MacLac]

This will never see the light of day. If I'm not mistaken, pretty sure their "Bay" building re-develop plans have stalled out.

 

[David A]

It seems like a good plan bringing together various public and private initiatives.

Unlike Alberta, Manitoba only has one major city, so in their upcoming election their government is not mainly focusing on one and ignoring the other.

Of course, we already have a downtown grocery store, but other aspects of this could work here. I think ultimately, a nice residential tower on the under utilized west or north west side of City Centre makes sense.

 

[CaptainBL]

I spoke with a couple people in management at CCM last week at the real estate forum. 2 things:

1. They both came across in my opinion as almost exasperated with downtown, CCM, crime, etc. Both are very hardworking and dedicated to what they do but both seemed almost defeated
2. Both said effectively the same thing - redevelopment of CCM is maybe 5-10 years out with very little if anything moving behind the scenes right now and/or appetite to do any redevelopment work

 

[David A]

I get the last few years have been tough, but I go through City Centre Mall several times a week. Over 95% of the people there are now are not criminals or trouble makers.

In some ways mall management has been and continues to be their own worst enemies. Starting by locking down everything during COVID and making it almost impossible for regular people to get in. At times, its like they just want to have an excuse to fail. Like every major city, there are various issues in downtown Edmonton, but regular people also want to live and shop there and by only focusing on the problems I think they are missing that.

 

[Toddbrummet]

Very well said

 

[Munanyo]

I spoke with a couple people in management at CCM last week at the real estate forum. 2 things:

1. They both came across in my opinion as almost exasperated with downtown, CCM, crime, etc. Both are very hardworking and dedicated to what they do but both seemed almost defeated
2. Both said effectively the same thing - redevelopment of CCM is maybe 5-10 years out with very little if anything moving behind the scenes right now and/or appetite to do any redevelopment work

I'm really not surprised (if true). I think one of the biggest problems is that the owners have zero idea of where to start. Don't get me wrong, our DT is super high risk these days, but for them to just sit on their asses and bitch about the state of downtown and have no vision or plan in place is shortsighted.

Be part of the solution - they are sitting on a huge asset in the centre of the core. Get creative, work with partners, the city etc. and start up something to get DT going again.

 

[_urbanite]

It's almost like LaSalle they didn't do any market research at all when they purchased this asset and now seemed shocked at the level of vagrancy and disorder Downtown

 

[CaptainBL]

It's almost like LaSalle they didn't do any market research at all when they purchased this asset and now seemed shocked at the level of vagrancy and disorder Downtown

LaSalle finalized the acquisition of the mall in November 2019 which means they probably had been looking at the property at least 1-2 years going back to some point early in 2018.

No amount of due diligence and research during that time period would've predicted how 2020 to today has turned out and if they had done enough research to had known that a global pandemic would wipe out downtowns then they would have had a crystal ball.

The state of CCM has nothing to do with how much due diligence and research they had done during that time period before acquiring and has a lot more to do with how they are planning to solutionize their problem/investment moving forward.

 

[_urbanite]

LaSalle finalized the acquisition of the mall in November 2019 which means they probably had been looking at the property at least 1-2 years going back to some point early in 2018.

No amount of due diligence and research during that time period would've predicted how 2020 to today has turned out and if they had done enough research to had known that a global pandemic would wipe out downtowns then they would have had a crystal ball.

The state of CCM has nothing to do with how much due diligence and research they had done during that time period before acquiring and has a lot more to do with how they are planning to solutionize their problem/investment moving forward.

The vagrancy issues didn't just pop up during COVID. Sure, it got worse during COVID, but any due dillegence done in 2019 would've uncovered the vagrancy issues at that time too, which were bad enough to scare off potential buyers.

 

[David A]

LaSalle finalized the acquisition of the mall in November 2019 which means they probably had been looking at the property at least 1-2 years going back to some point early in 2018.

No amount of due diligence and research during that time period would've predicted how 2020 to today has turned out and if they had done enough research to had known that a global pandemic would wipe out downtowns then they would have had a crystal ball.

The state of CCM has nothing to do with how much due diligence and research they had done during that time period before acquiring and has a lot more to do with how they are planning to solutionize their problem/investment moving forward.

I do agree it would have been very hard to predict the situation over the last few years in 2019 or earlier, so I certainly don't fault them for that. I also feel at this point the worst is over.

This is definitely not something unique to Edmonton, most major cities in Canada have had to deal with serious social problems and other issues in their downtown's in recent years. So if someone in Winnipeg is now confident enough to reinvest in the downtown mall, I feel we should take that as a good sign for the near future here too.

 

[dunno]

This will never see the light of day. If I'm not mistaken, pretty sure their "Bay" building re-develop plans have stalled out.

They haven't. It's moving slower than the Southern Manitoba Chiefs anticipated (they only got official title to the building last month), that's all.

The Chipmans (the people behind this plan for Portage Place) are some of the wealthiest people in Winnipeg and behind a lot of previous investments, including getting the Jets back to the city and an arena adjacent development called True North Square. TNS is essentially a smaller scale version of Ice District, right down to the central plaza, overpriced grocery store, and preference for banks and bars as CRUs due to being close to the NHL arena. Mark Chipman is kind of like a Winnipeg Daryl Katz (very roughly) and has an active interest in helping to revitalize Downtown Winnipeg, going back a while. This will also make their existing investments, which are near Portage Place, more attractive, which is no doubt part of their interest (there's already currently direct skyway access from Portage Place to Canada Life Centre). All of this is to say that this plan has far more teeth than the previous one from an Ontario developer with no local interest (and a pretty terrible track record out east) and so while I don't wanna call it, I do think the likelihood this sees the light of day (or some version of it) is pretty high.

 

[dunno]

I do agree it would have been very hard to predict the situation over the last few years in 2019 or earlier, so I certainly don't fault them for that. I also feel at this point the worst is over.

This is definitely not something unique to Edmonton, most major cities in Canada have had to deal with serious social problems and other issues in their downtown's in recent years. So if someone in Winnipeg is now confident enough to reinvest in the downtown mall, I feel we should take that as a good sign for the near future here too.

One of the main differences is that there's been very public plans to redevelop Portage Place for years in a way we haven't seen with City Centre. All we've previously had are some "insiders" whispering essentially nothing to us on forums like this about "something big in the pipeline" that never sees the light of day. That, and this recent proposal comes from a wealthy Winnipegger with an active interest in Downtown revitalization, as seen in previous large investments in the vicinity. It'd be like if Daryl Katz bought up City Centre and proposed to redevelop it, basically. While that could theoretically happen, unless someone very wealthy is able to pull some strings with local gov't like with Ice District, I'd take what @CaptainBL said seriously. I don't expect the owners or local gov't on their own to do much in the near term, even if the situation isn't beyond repair like so many thought.

 

[David A]

I think many aspects of what was done in Winnipeg make sense here too. I agree there are some differences and obviously the parties have come together in Winnipeg sooner, although my sense is they have also probably been dealing with this problem longer and their mall had problems sooner.

Whatever is worked out in Edmonton will probably have less involvement from the provincial government, because it doesn't seem to focus much on Edmonton, so that means the city will probably need to step up more, which I hope they are capable of doing.

 

[dunno]

I think many aspects of what was done in Winnipeg make sense here too. I agree there are some differences and obviously the parties have come together in Winnipeg sooner, although my sense is they have also probably been dealing with this problem longer and their mall had problems sooner.

Whatever is worked out in Edmonton will probably have less involvement from the provincial government, because it doesn't seem to focus much on Edmonton, so that means the city will probably need to step up more, which I hope they are capable of doing.

Yeah Portage Place has been rocky for a bit. City Centre was ok 5-8 years ago. Issues started and then got torpedoed over the course of the pandemic. The biggest problem back then was the owners sitting on their hands so as to not let it get ahead of their other property a dozen blocks north.

I'm not saying the plan doesn't make sense in Edmonton. I'm merely pointing out that there's a reason this is happening there first.