City is an attractive location for investors
“Living in the best country, in the best province and in the best city,” is a phrase I often use, so it was great to hear it echoed by Garry Beres, senior vice-president of the national investment team at CBRE, who says Calgary is a hot spot for doing business right across North America — and even farther afield.
Beres says a movement to hard assets of “bricks and mortar” by investors looking for a good home for their capital meant he and his CBRE team in Calgary finished off 2011 with sales amounting to three-quarters of a billion dollars.
The very successful year ended with the sale of Mount Royal Village (MRV) that he sold on behalf of Procura Real Estate Services to First Capital Realty for $35.1 million.
Brian Kozak, First Capital senior vice-president of Western Canada, says the company is delighted to be able to add MRV to its Calgary portfolio that already includes 10 shopping centres. MRV is its first foray into the downtown/ Beltline district providing it with an 83,000-square-foot shopping centre anchored by London Drugs, plus a 214-space underground parkade, residential tower and 34,000 square feet of desirable office space.
Location is ideal on the busy corner of 16th Avenue and 8th Street S.W. alongside Tomkins Park. When built in 1979 it was the ‘go-to’ place for fashion in Calgary and with new investment it has tremendous potential to become a classy shopping destination again.
December was also the month the CBRE team sold Ranch Market, a retail development in Strathmore anchored by Shoppers Drug Mart and ATB Financial to a group of Vancouver private investors and the new Volker Stevin building on a leaseback to another Vancouver syndicate.
One of the most satisfying projects of the year for Beres was the sale of eight of the 10 Calgary heritage properties purchased by Allied Properties REIT, which included the prestigious Encorp portfolio consisting of Arts Central, Fashion Central and Albert Hotel Building. Others were the Cooper Block home to Maclean & Partners at 10th Avenue and 7th Street S.W. and the Keg Building at the corner of 11th Avenue and 5th Street S.W. as well as the Telephone Building, fully leased to Scotia Macleod and Worley Parsons. Along with the Lougheed Building, the Ontario-based REIT now owns 160 feet fronting 6th Avenue S.W. directly across from Suncor Energy Centre.
We are all pleased that the awkward hole at 10th Avenue and 4th Street S.W. was sold by CBRE to Centron Construction, which will develop the planned residential towers into classy office space.
Fifty per cent of both Scotia Centre and Gulf Canada Square were also sold this past year and outside of the core, Beres and his team were successful in selling the South Calgary Health Centre in Sundance Business Park; Fisher Park’s portfolio of 10 buildings; and Calgary Airfreight & Logistics Centre, five new buildings along Aero Drive on airport lands.
And in Saskatoon they engineered the sale of the 208,000-square-foot Saskatoon Square to Dundee REIT for $50 million.
Beres has been with CBRE for 15 years. He left the company for three years but says he missed the energy of the brokerage business and returned to the hustle and bustle of downtown four years ago.
Beres says it’s going to be another bumper year: On his books are properties such as Canyon Meadows Centre, Midnapore Centre and TRC Ranch, and the 250-acre residential and commercial division on the west side of Cochrane.
Sharp’s Audio Visual, a Calgary company with offices across Canada and national company AVW-TELAV Audio Visual Solutions, with locations across the United States, have signed an agreement to exchange assets that will see them specializing in their primary business models. Sharp’s will now fully concentrate on sales and integration delivering a complete range of projection systems, design, digital signage systems and video conferencing while AVW will be involved 100 per cent in the leasing of products and services.