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

What do you think of this project?

  • Total voters
    26
westcoastjos said:
Seems high for a building like Manulife, but I don't know how they are doing relative to other space downtown - we're still down overall relative to other markets. APEGA moving out doesn't really help things either - CWB was mostly a given to stay downtown imo. Good for Manulife, but I'm not sure I share your enthusiasm for downtown right now.
Click to expand...
Isn't APEGA in Rice Howard Place? Are they leaving downtown? They put a lot of money into their offices not too many years ago.
 
scyeg said:
Isn't APEGA in Rice Howard Place? Are they leaving downtown? They put a lot of money into their offices not too many years ago.
Click to expand...
Apparently, see this post and after in the Downtown Real Estate thread.
 
scyeg said:
Isn't APEGA in Rice Howard Place? Are they leaving downtown? They put a lot of money into their offices not too many years ago.
Click to expand...
I am guessing that APEGA members are spread throughout the city and a lot are not downtown, so that might be part of their considerations too. I'm not an engineer, but I worked years ago for a firm that was downtown for many years, then they moved to a southside location for a while, now they are back downtown. They serve people throughout the city, so one of the advantages of being downtown is a central location. Is it is quite a hike from the northside to say Millwoods, if you are having clients or members come to your office.

Back to Manulife, I suppose this would be a net gain to downtown if CWB is taking more space than they currently have. I believe this is the case, but don't know for sure.
 
David A said:
I believe this is the case, but don't know for sure.
Click to expand...
It is the case. As far as I know, their plan is still to consolidate all of their corporate ops in a single place, which means getting the folks out of the Oliver branch/office and into the same office space as the rest of the company.
 
But I thought we had a very good quarter in terms of office space absorption? Is this not a positive?

Edmonton’s office market saw a net absorption of 165,000 square feet in the latest quarter, while downtown vacancies fell to 20.4% and suburban vacancies to 17.4%. Avison Young, which reported the numbers, said the absorption rate breaks the previous record set in Q3 of 2018, when 158,000 square feet was absorbed. Demand was driven by educational institutions, including NorQuest College, which expanded its downtown space by 63,000 square feet, and the Edmonton Classical Academy charter school, which signed a lease for 61,000 square feet. Edmonton has the second-highest downtown office vacancy rate of any major Canadian market after Calgary.
-Taproot
 
Oliver_William said:
But I thought we had a very good quarter in terms of office space absorption? Is this not a positive?

Edmonton’s office market saw a net absorption of 165,000 square feet in the latest quarter, while downtown vacancies fell to 20.4% and suburban vacancies to 17.4%. Avison Young, which reported the numbers, said the absorption rate breaks the previous record set in Q3 of 2018, when 158,000 square feet was absorbed. Demand was driven by educational institutions, including NorQuest College, which expanded its downtown space by 63,000 square feet, and the Edmonton Classical Academy charter school, which signed a lease for 61,000 square feet. Edmonton has the second-highest downtown office vacancy rate of any major Canadian market after Calgary.
-Taproot
Click to expand...
Yes it is a positive.
 
westcoastjos said:
Seems high for a building like Manulife, but I don't know how they are doing relative to other space downtown - we're still down overall relative to other markets. APEGA moving out doesn't really help things either - CWB was mostly a given to stay downtown imo. Good for Manulife, but I'm not sure I share your enthusiasm for downtown right now.
Click to expand...
You'd be surprised the TI's landlords are dishing out to get some deals done. And this goes for all building classes new or old.

This is good for downtown as we avoided building more office space which we don't need to do right now, irrespective of the vacancy rates dropping as per the recent market update for Q3.
 
Escalators are almost ready to open!
I find it interesting that these renovations took roughly the same amount of time as the renovations for the Commerce Place escalators last year.

20231102_123835.jpg
 
I recently noticed this looked almost done, seemed a bit faster than Commerce, but I never used the escalator here as much as there, so maybe being inconvenienced made it seem longer.

I feel after a few years, with things open again, shipping rates way down, demand slowing, etc.. those "supply chain issues" should be resolved by now. At this point, I wonder if it is sometimes being used as an excuse.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top