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Bay Street still has Canada’s most expensive office space http://renx.ca/bay-street-still-canadas-expensive-office-space/ Bay Street in Toronto has the most expensive office space in Canada, and no other city comes close to matching the $68.52 per square foot average rent that’s being asked for in the heart of the country’s financial district. JLL Canada recently released its “Most Expensive Streets for Office Space” report, which ranks Canadian cities by their highest asking rents. It shows many companies are still willing to pay a premium for the most expensive spaces, and competition is growing to get into prominent financial, retail and government hubs. “The most significant trend that we are seeing across major markets is that there are a large number of new developments underway,” said JLL Canada president Brett Miller. “Although we have only seen minor changes to the top market rents thus far in 2014, we anticipate that as the new inventory comes to market, overall rents will decrease in the older class-A stock whilst headline rents in new developments may raise the top line rents.” Here are the most expensive streets in nine major Canadian cities 1. Bay Street, Toronto, $68.52 per square foot Bay Street held strong in first place for the fourth year running. It features the headquarters of major Canadian banks and is home to many investment banks, accounting and law firms. Brookfield Place, at 161 Bay St., continues to command the highest office rents of any building in Canada at $76.54 per square foot. The average market rent in Toronto is $34.82 per square foot. (Bay St. looking north from Front St. shown in the image,) 2. 8th Avenue SW, Calgary, $59.06 per square foot 8th Avenue SW again has the highest average gross office rents in Calgary. Large vacancies and availabilities along this corridor typically account for significant activity and command market-leading rates. Large oil and gas companies have historically clustered around the central business district in this area. The top rent on the street is $64.40 per square foot and the average market rent in Calgary is $46 per square foot. 3. Burrard Street, Vancouver, $58.87 per square foot Burrard Street has dropped to third place despite a slight increase in average asking rent from $58.47 in 2013. Approximately 18.3 per cent of downtown class-A office supply is located on Burrard Street between West Georgia Street and Canada Place. The vacancy rate in these six buildings sits at 1.6 per cent, which justifies this location commanding some of the highest rental rates in the city despite the impending influx of new supply that’s putting downward pressure on rents throughout the central business district. The top rent on the street is $66.06 per square foot and the average market rent in Vancouver is $38.81 per square foot. 4. Albert Street, Ottawa, $52.10 per square foot Albert Street remained in fourth position with average rents decreasing slightly from $53.40 per square foot. Albert Street is mainly home to government-related office towers, including numerous foreign embassies, and a few of the largest Canadian business law firms. There seems to be a wait-and-see approach in anticipation of the 2015 federal election regarding the government’s intentions to lease or return more space to the market. The top rent on the street is $53.54 per square foot and the average market rent in Ottawa is $30.90 per square foot. 5. 101st Street NW, Edmonton, $46.71 per square foot The average asking rent dropped from $48.19 per square foot, but 101st Street NW is expected to remain the most expensive in Edmonton with the recent commitment to build the arena district, a large-scale, mixed-use project incorporating the city’s new National Hockey League arena. This is expected to revitalize some of the most important corners on the street. The top rent on the street is $54.15 per square foot and the average market rent in Edmonton is $28.30 per square foot. 6. René-Lévesque W, Montreal, $44.28 per square foot The average gross rent on the street hasn’t changed significantly year over year, but the total value of tenant inducement packages has nearly doubled. The most expensive building on the street (1250 René-Lévesque W) rents for $52.76 per square foot but has seen some downward pressure of two to four dollars on its net rent due to 170,000 square feet of vacant space left behind by Heenan Blaikie. The average market rent in Montreal is $30.38 per square foot. 7. Upper Water Street, Halifax, $36.42 per square foot Upper Water Street has maintained seventh place despite its average asking rent dropping from $36.65 per square foot last year. New construction coming on stream is expected to put downward pressure on rents in existing office buildings. The top rent on the street is $36.62 per square foot and the average market rent in Halifax is $27.44 per square foot. 8. Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, $35.67 per square foot Portage Avenue held strong in eighth place, with its average rent increasing from $35.17 per square foot. The class-A market remains tight and is expected to remain so through 2015. The top rent on the street is $37.32 per square foot and the average market rent in Winnipeg is $23.62 per square foot. 9. Laurier Boulevard, Québec City, $27.50 per square foot Laurier Boulevard held its ninth-place position despite the average rent dropping from $28.14 per square foot. There’s been no notable increase in the average gross rent and the vacancy rate on the street remains low at 5.2 per cent compared to the rest of the market’s 7.8 per cent. The top rent on the street is $28.98 per square foot and the average market rent in Québec City is $21.89 per square foot. JLL manages more than 50 million square feet of facilities across Canada and offers tenant and landlord representation, project and development services, investment sales, advisory and appraisal services, debt capital markets and integrated facilities management services to owners and tenants.

(Courtesy of BIDNESS ETC)

Malade Les condos 56 Leonard à NYC viennent de vendre un locker de 200 p.c. au sous-sol pour 300,000$! C'est 1,500$ du pied carré!!!

Some of the measures in the Snøhetta concept sound familiar... http://nymag.com/arts/architecture/features/times-square-2012-4/ Could it become a place where New Yorkers actually want to hang out? By Justin Davidson Published Apr 15, 2012 Snøhetta's plan for Times Square: a low-key, pedestrian-friendly base for the riot of lights above. (Photo: Rendering courtesy of MIR) For two decades, New Yorkers have viewed Times Square as the city’s heart of brightness, a candy-colored hellhole to be avoided whenever possible. At either end of a workday or just before curtain time, we may dart and jostle past slow-moving out-of-towners, but the notion of meeting friends for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe or whiling away a weekend afternoon held rapt by the symphony of screens doesn’t cross our minds. Starting next fall, workers with jackhammers will tear apart the bow tie, temporarily making it an even less congenial place to hang out. But one major goal of the $45 million construction project is to persuade New Yorkers to love Times Square—to convince them that it’s not just a backdrop for a million daily snapshots but Manhattan’s most central, and most convivial, gathering spot. Architects and visionaries have often addressed that old ambition with high-energy concepts that gave us the current high-tech razzmatazz. Even in this round of ideas, the city has fended off proposals for colored LEDs embedded in the pavement, for ramps, staircases, pavilions, digital information kiosks, heat lamps, trees, lawns, canopies, and, of course, more video screens. Instead, the city hired the architectural firm Snøhetta to produce a quiet, even minimal design that doesn’t try vainly to compete with the glowing canyons. Its beauty lies in dark, heavy sobriety and a desire to be a lasting pedestal to the frenzied dazzle above. In the most straightforward sense, the new plan enshrines a transformation that has already taken place. Ever since vehicles were banned from Broadway between 42nd and 47th Streets, in 2009, Times Square has felt like a temporary art installation. Pedestrians have been able to step off the curb and into the weirdly motor-free street. Rickety red café tables, which replaced plastic beach chairs, dot a blue river painted on the asphalt. Streetlights, lampposts, mailboxes, hydrants, and pay phones remain clustered along the Broadway sidewalk, staying clear of nonexistent traffic. The new construction will eliminate that feeling of making do. Curbs will vanish. Pedestrian areas will be leveled and clad in tweedy concrete tiles that run lengthwise down Broadway and the Seventh Avenue sidewalks, meeting in an angled confluence of patterns. Nickel-size steel discs set into the pavement will catch the light and toss it back into the brilliant air. Instead of perching on metal chairs, loiterers will be able to sit, lean, sprawl, jump, and stand on ten massive black granite benches up to 50 feet long and five feet wide. Electrical and fiber-optic-cable outlets will be packed into the benches so that, for outdoor performances, special-event crews will no longer need to haul in noisy, diesel-burning generators or drape the square in cables and duct tape. Even on ordinary days, the square will be de-*cluttered of the traffic signs, bollards, cones, and boxes that cause foot traffic to seize up. With any luck, crowds will gather and mingle only in the center plain between the benches, leaving free-flowing channels on either side for the rest of us, who have somewhere to be, people! Originally based in Norway and now firmly ensconced in New York, Snøhetta in 2008 created one of the most successful public spaces in recent memory: the pedestrian pathway that winds its way around, inside, in front of, and on top of the firm’s new opera house in Oslo. It’s a cosmopolitan yet utterly local place, an exquisite juncture of sea, sky, and glacier-like building, which seems to be slipping calmly into the fjord. It suggests that the architects understand the interaction of local culture and public space. “We’re not trying to make an instant photograph of happiness,” says the firm’s co-founder Craig Dykers, explaining that Times Square needs a little grit. “There’s been quite a lot done to make the city feel more delicate, which is good, but we shouldn’t forget its industrial history. At Times Square, there were rivets on the old marquees, the steelwork on the signs was industrial, and the lighting was naked bulbs. We want that whole history to be reflected in the experience of the space.” That may be a lot to ask of benches and pavers. Toys ’R’ Us isn’t slinking back to the suburbs, and all the happy, shiny logos won’t be dimming anytime soon. But Times Square has always reinvented itself every decade or two, and it may be shifting again. It’s been the epicenter of the media world, but Condé Nast will soon be moving to the World Trade Center, and Google has settled in Chelsea. In the nineties, Times Square lured law firms and financial outfits with the city’s freshest, most technologically advanced office towers, but new models inexorably supersede the old, and this time they’ll be in lower Manhattan and Hudson Yards. This is not to say that the glitter is flaking off, only that the least likely option for the future is stasis, so Snøhetta had to design a permanent platform for the unpredictable. There are two distinct approaches to public-space renovations: the grand design and the perpetual tweak. If Snøhetta is pursuing the first path, the apostle of the second is Daniel Biederman, who led the fabulously successful renovation of Bryant Park in the early nineties and has been managing it ever since, filling it with activities, temporary structures, and retro details. “If I were the czar of Times Square design, I would do the traditional stuff: plants, kiosks, movable seating, games, programming—small touches,” Biederman says. “Most people look down as far as two feet from the ground and up to fourteen feet off the ground, so at Times Square they have a chance to waste a ton of money on a surface that nobody’s going to see.” Yet Bryant Park’s charms don’t constitute a recipe. Times Square is not a graciously bounded piazza, and it shouldn’t be a verdant oasis. It’s an accidental wedge formed by two major avenues. Seventh Avenue will keep its traffic, and so will the cross streets. Even below ground, ancient water mains, electrical lines, telephone cables, subway tunnels, and long-buried trolley tracks tangle chaotically. The square’s getting a face-lift and major surgery at the same time. Quaintness has no place here. Every bit of this area acts as a showcase of some kind. The new design is to the street what the M&M’s store is to candy and Good Morning America is to television: an urban launchpad for a global commodity. In this case, the product is the philosophy of public space preached by the Bloomberg administration’s impassioned transportation commissioner, Janette *Sadik-Khan. For decades, American cities have treated their streets as traffic conduits meant to speed cars along as efficiently as possible (which is often not very efficiently at all). Instead, the new thinking goes, they should be a flexible network equally comfortable for drivers and dawdlers, parents with strollers, cyclists, truckers, and anyone who would rather just sit for a while and rest. Until 2009, the theater district embodied the disjunction between the way streets were conceived and the way they were used, as Sadik-Khan points out with data-driven fervor. “Times Square had 137 percent more accidents and crashes than any other avenue in the area,” she says of the way she found it when she took office in 2007. “It was a hot spot of congestion. You had 356,000 people coming through on foot every day and less than 10 percent of the space allocated to pedestrians. It wasn’t working, and it was a problem that had been lying in plain sight for 200 years.” You remember: Crowds spilled over the curbs into the street, gridlock stranded taxis in the triangular crossroads, and hurried theatergoers battled through the stationary herds. The Times Square Alliance, which represents local businesses, suggested an incremental solution: Widen the sidewalks a little bit. Sadik-Khan one-upped them and completely closed five blocks of Broadway to traffic. The result was a harvest of happy data: fewer accidents, cleaner air, more satisfied survey respondents, and popular events like the Summer Solstice free yoga classes that last year attracted 6,000 people. (The 2012 edition takes place on June 20.) Clearing out cars also brought a surprising economic roar. Before, annual commercial rents in the area averaged about $800 per square foot. Last week, the eyewear emporium Oakley opened a new store, paying about $1,400 per square foot. Everyone in the Bloomberg administration is watching the countdown to the end of the mayor’s term, and Sadik-Khan’s Department of Transportation seems to be rushing to set her revolution in concrete so that her successor can’t merely paint it over. Times Square is only the most visible representative of a program that spans all five boroughs: Another 50 permanent plaza renovations are completed or in the works, from Madison Square to Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn and Roberto Clemente Plaza in the Bronx. Uncharacteristically for a city agency, the DOT is resisting uniformity, trying to gear each project to local desires, so the Snøhetta design won’t be an archetype, but it will be a much-*scrutinized example. Tourists already make the crossroads of the world an obligatory visit, but Tim Tompkins, the president of the Times Square Alliance, wants to change both the composition of the crowds and the reasons they come. “Ten years from now, we want people to want to see what public art is happening here,” he says. There is of course the possibility that a rejuvenated Times Square will appeal to New Yorkers so intensely that it will once again become as unbearably crowded as it was before. That’s a risk the city is willing to take.

Canada may be a hotspot for retail expansion, but lease costs in the country’s fanciest downtown shopping districts are still a relative bargain compared to other global centres. Toronto’s Bloor Street area was the priciest in Canada at $291.66 (U.S.) a square foot, according to Colliers International. Toronto is the only Canadian city to make the Top 50 in the report, coming in as the world’s 37th most expensive retail leasing market. The most expensive space in the world can be found on Fifth Avenue in New York, where lease costs are $2,150 a square foot – gaining 70 per cent over last year. The top five is rounded out by Hong Kong’s Russell Street ($1,510, up 25 per cent), Paris’s Avenue des Champs-Elysees ($1,310, unchanged), London’s Old Bond Street ($962, unchanged) and Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse ($955, up 14.2 per cent). Ste-Catherine Street West in Montreal was the second most expensive Canadian location, at $204.15, a drop of 4.5 per cent. Saskatoon saw the biggest jump in Canadian lease rates, with Broadway Avenue gaining 25 per cent to $34.03. Other Canadian sites included: Calgary’s Uptown 17th Avenue at $53.47 (down 26 per cent), Downtown Edmonton at $43.75 (unchanged), Halifax’s Sprig Garden Road at $48.61 (unchanged), Ottawa’s Byward Market at $38.89 (down 20 per cent), Vancouver’s Robson Street at $194.44 (unchanged) and Victoria’s Government Street at $53.47 (unchanged). “After two successive years of lackluster growth, the world’s top retail streets once again regained their vitality, as reflected by a general rise in rents in many of the world’s premier shopping districts,” the report states. “As the lingering effects of the global downturn faded during the latter half of 2010, rising demand for the world’s most prime retail real estate was evident in many countries as many new retailers sought to establish a foothold in the world’s most prestigious avenues.” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canadas-retail-space-still-a-deal-report/article2050037/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/greathomesanddestinations/03gh-househunting-1.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1299593719-+xlaQH3kS13uLe9aveRW4A

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/magnificent-montreal/1 "Both Canadian and Québécois, part anglophone and part francophone, with one foot in the past and the other firmly in the future, Montreal is a city that defies easy categorization."

Ste. Catherine St. has top lease rates Tied with Bloor St. in Toronto. Most expensive retail corridors in Canada By LYNN MOORE, The Gazette June 8, 2010 Toronto's Bloor St. and Montreal's Ste. Catherine St. are Canada's most expensive retail corridors, according to Colliers International's 2010 Global Retail Report, released yesterday. Ste. Catherine St. is tied in 32nd position with Toronto's Bloor St. on the global list of shopping hot spots. Merchants in the two most popular Canadian shopping areas pay an average lease rate of $300 per square foot, according to the report. The 2010 Winter Olympic festivities in Vancouver were not enough for the city's marquee retail stroll -Robson St., with its average rate of $200 per square foot -to overtake Toronto and Montreal's premier retail streets on the list. Jim Smerdon, director of retail and strategic planning with Colliers, said the retailers themselves set the lease rates according to the importance of the location. "The hallmark of strong retail streets is a blend of the size of the market, things like accessibility and parking, and a host of intangibles such as the history of the street as a commercial destination," he said. Even though Toronto is larger than Montreal and the commercial capital of Canada with more head offices and wealthy residents, it's not surprising that Ste. Catherine St.'s shops can command the same rent, Smerdon said. Ste. Catherine St., which is often thick with pedestrians night and day, is an experience, he acknowledged. "Montreal is more of a destination for shoppers than Toronto is ... and Ste. Catherine is more of a lifestyle experience," he said. In 31st spot on the Colliers list was Honolulu's Kalakaua Ave. and 33rd spot was occupied by Amsterdam's Kalverstraat. The report shows that Canada's most exclusive streets are a bargain compared with the world's priciest, in such places as Paris, New York, Hong Kong and London, where rates per square foot exceed $1,000. Topping the list was the Champs Elysees in Paris, with an average lease rate of about $1,256. All figures in the report are in U.S. dollars. The information comes from surveys and material supplied by Colliers staff in 61 countries, Smerdon said. lmoore@thegazette.canwest.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Catherine+lease+rates/3125235/story.html#ixzz0qXanL7Xi

(Courtesy of The Globe and Mail) I am quite surprised Montreal and Honolulu were so close together. Plus Oahu quite expensive, but I guess compared to other islands its cheaper. Honolulu has way more high end boutiques. Even Ala Moana shopping mall full of high end stores. The most predominate tourist in these high end boutiques are Japanese or were. Seeing I haven't been to Honolulu in quite a while. Last time I was there. There was more and more Russians. Could have changed, more Chinese could have been coming also. Plus I am also surprised Montreal and Toronto were tied. I would have thought Toronto would have been a few hundred bucks more expensive.

Macklowe’s Worldwide Plaza Successor Wrestles Towering Dilemma By David M. Levitt Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Real estate investor Peter Duncan, who negotiated the nation’s biggest property deal of the year in buying Manhattan’s Worldwide Plaza, is now in charge of a skyscraper that’s 40 percent empty. The Italian marble south lobby of Worldwide Plaza, the gateway to 14 vacant floors, is quiet. It’s one reason Duncan, president of George Comfort & Sons Inc., was able to buy the 49- story building in July for $590 million, two years after it sold for almost three times as much. The purchase price may allow Duncan to undercut the rents competitors charge as he leases his 709,000 square feet. Manhattan has 59 million feet of available offices, according to brokerage Colliers ABR, the most since June 1996, and rents for the best space are down more than 30 percent from their peak last year. Duncan’s outcome may help investors determine whether it’s time to resume buying New York office buildings. “They are one of the first waves of risk-takers here in this asset recovery business,” said Robert Freedman, executive chairman of New York-based brokerage FirstService Williams. “They made a great deal if they can manage this risk.” Pinched by scarce credit and the recession, New York City may hit a record low dollar value for commercial property sales this year. Manhattan office properties have lost almost 47 percent of their value since 2007, more than any other major U.S. city, according to the Concord Group, a consulting firm in Newport Beach, California. Investor Signal If Comfort and its partners lease the space at 825 Eighth Ave. quickly, it will be a “signal for investors” that could increase their appetite for risk, said Jim Frederick, a principal at Colliers ABR, a New York-based commercial broker. Not a single lease for more than 250,000 square feet in Midtown has been signed this year, according to CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., the world’s biggest commercial brokerage. Tenants have plenty to choose from. Just eight blocks south at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street is 11 Times Square, a new 1.06 million square-foot office tower that’s almost finished and has no tenants. Just up the street is 3 Columbus Circle, the former Newsweek Building, where 417,000 square feet is available, according to Colliers. Six blocks southeast lies the former New York Times building, where all 644,000 square feet is up for lease. Comfort’s advantage may be price. The partnership paid $370 a square foot for Worldwide Plaza, while competitors paid $1,000 a foot or more for similar buildings at the height of the five- year U.S. property boom. Rents Fall “No longer will they have to get $80 or $90 or $100 a square foot” for a lease, Robert Sammons, research director at Colliers, said in an Aug. 20 interview on Bloomberg Television. “They can do deals in the 30s, 40s or 50s now, which is going to help start to move the market.” Rents for so-called Class A Midtown offices averaged $68.38 a square foot at the end of September, according to Colliers data. The law firm Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP agreed to pay almost to $100 a foot when it renewed its 600,000-square-foot lease at Worldwide Plaza in 2007, a person involved in the transaction said at the time. “I look at the vacancy as being an opportunity,” said Duncan, whose company owns or has interests in eight other New York office properties. “The success of any deal is dependent on how well occupied you keep your buildings.” Comfort, a closely held family-owned company, and its partners set aside “in excess of $100 million” to cover leasing costs, including maintenance and a reserve to renovate for new occupants, Duncan said in an interview. He declined to disclose the building’s expected first-year yield, or capitalization rate. Higher Vacancies The vacancy rate for the highest-quality offices in Manhattan was 12 percent in September, near the highest in more than 12 years, Colliers said. Tenants haven’t been in a better position since the mid-1990s, when the market was coming out of a recession, Sammons said. Duncan’s challenge is the latest for a skyscraper that helped gentrify part of the west side in the 1980s. Built on the old 50th Street site of Madison Square Garden, it was the first sizable skyscraper built that far west in Manhattan. A PBS program, “Skyscraper: the Making of a Building,” documented the construction. William Zeckendorf Jr. developed the property. It was the first New York commission for Skidmore Owings & Merrill architect David Childs, who went on to design the nearby Time Warner Center. Macklowe’s Purchase Developer Harry Macklowe purchased Worldwide Plaza and six other Manhattan buildings from Blackstone Group LP in February of 2007, the same day Blackstone bought billionaire Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties Trust in what was then the biggest leveraged buyout in history. A year later, Macklowe lost all seven properties to lender Deutsche Bank AG when he was unable to refinance almost $7 billion in short-term debt he used to acquire the buildings. Deutsche Bank financed a $470 million loan for Comfort’s group to make the purchase. The partners include RCG Longview, an investment firm whose founders include former Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc. Chief Executive Officer Peter Cohen; and DRA Advisors LLC, a New York-based sponsor of real estate investment funds. “We wanted to put together a group that has been through the wars a little bit,” Duncan said. The partners “are all long-term holders of real estate.” The floors they need to rent make up the second-biggest empty space in the city: 14 stories at the base of the tower vacated in June by the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather. Empty Space While some floors have been stripped to the fireproofing, traces of the ad agency remain. The walls on the fourth floor are covered with artwork, including a red and black 1960s-style pop-art mural that reads: “Next time there’s a war for sale, it’s alright to say no thank you.” Representatives of accounting firm Deloitte LLP have spoken with Comfort about taking some of the space, according to two people familiar with the discussion. They declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the space. Jonathan Gandal, a spokesman for Deloitte, declined to comment. “We’ve had lot of people look at the available space,” Duncan said. “We are actually discussing having active negotiations with certain tenants. And that and $2.25 gets you a ride on the subway.” To contact the reporter on this story: David M. Levitt in New York at dlevitt@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: October 23, 2009 00:01 EDT http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aJG1.l7fPiik

Source: The Gazette New city guide puts Montreal on the geotourism map By MONIQUE BEAUDIN, The Gazette, June 16, 2009 It's a tourist map with a difference. Along with the usual destinations, such as Little Italy and Mount Royal, you'll find more unusual ones, like a series of "green" alleyways in the Plateau Mont Royal and a boutique that makes clothes from recycled materials. Unveiled yesterday by Mayor Gérald Tremblay, the new map promotes geotourism - that is, tourism that protects and preserves the geographic character of a destination, such as its heritage, culture, environment and well-being of its residents. The map was the brainchild of the U.S.-based National Geographic Society, with whom Montreal was the first city in the world to sign an agreement in 2007 promising to adhere to 13 principles of geotourism. "You live in a magnificent and sophisticated city," said Jonathan Tourtellot, the director of National Geographic's Centre for Sustainable Destinations in Washington, D.C. "Tourists should leave here knowing they have visited a city that is unique in Canada, unique in North America, unique in the world. That's geotourism." Creating the map - the first of its kind in the world for a city - took months of consultation with conservation and community groups, as well as the input of residents, who suggested more than 400 locations that scream out "Mont-real." Some that made the cut include Habitat 67, Promenade Bellerive in Montreal's Mercier district and Le Cartet in Old Montreal where visitors can "break bread at communal tables with real-life Montrealers." The map encourages people to visit the city by bicycle, métro or on foot saying "this is one city where you can see almost everything without setting foot in a car." Historical information includes the fact that St. Laurent Blvd. was "reputed for risqué nightlife during the city's heyday as an inland seaport." Other areas with similar geotourism maps include Norway and the Mexican state of Baja California. You can check it out online at www.montrealgeo.com

New condo building in NYC offers ‘couture living’ 170 East End Avenue is the latest of a crop of new luxury residential buildings recently completed in New York City. Located on Manhattan’s toney Upper East Side and situated on Carl Schulz Park, the 20-storey building, designed by Peter Marino, houses 110 couture homes with 3 to 4 bedrooms and a selection of duplexes, maisonettes and smaller one and two bedroom units. Regardless of size, Marino has brought a high degree of luxury and sophistication to the design of each apartment. All units feature custom oak rift cut and quarter sawn parquet floors, kitchens with custom wood cabinets accented with aluminum inlays and oversized stone floors, and bedrooms with master baths finished in polished Italian marble with 6 foot soaking tubs. The building’s public amenities are many and include a well stocked library, squash court, golf simulator, toddler’s play room and art room, and a fully interactive center with Arcade games. There is also a private outdoor garden and waterfall with sheep sculptures by LaLanne. http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11473

Market’s Troubles Echo in a Building’s Vacant Floors Article Tools Sponsored By By CHARLES V. BAGLI Published: November 9, 2008 The elevators work fine, the views are great, the offices have been refurbished and no one is complaining about rats. In so many ways, the green-tinted, 41-story office tower overlooking Bryant Park seems a desirable address. So why are tenants who rushed to rent space a year ago in the building, at 1095 Avenue of the Americas, rushing to break their leases now? The answer says much about the increasingly precarious state of Midtown Manhattan’s real estate market at a time when once-mighty financial companies like Lehman Brothers are disappearing and the slowing economy is driving the vacancy rate up and commercial rents down. Though the building, once owned by Verizon, just went through a two-year, $250 million makeover, several financial firms that signed leases in 2006 and 2007 say they no longer can afford the rents or the cost of outfitting new spaces. Others are laying off workers or reorganizing their offices and no longer need as much room. The first sign of trouble came over the summer when iStar Financial, a real estate finance company, decided not to move into the 100,000 square feet of space that it had rented on the 36th, 37th and 38th floors. Several weeks later, Metropolitan Life Insurance, whose name is now in block letters over the tower’s front doors, quietly began shopping for tenants to sublease 100,000 square feet of its space in the building, a quarter of what it signed up for in 2006. And last month, Centerline Capital Group, a suddenly struggling commercial property finance and investment company, confirmed that it would not be moving into its 100,000 square feet of space on the third, fourth and fifth floors. The company is negotiating with the landlord, the Blackstone Group, to buy out its lease or to sublet the space, said real estate executives who have been briefed on the talks. The companies signed leases for as much as $132 a square foot, when the market was near its peak. Despite the building’s new glass skin, refurbished space and prime location at the corner of 42nd Street, many brokers say they would be lucky to get $95 a square foot today. The difference would translate into millions of dollars a year. Neither iStar nor MetLife have found any takers. For landlords and brokers, the building has become a closely watched barometer of the commercial real estate market in Midtown, where the mercury is clearly falling. Although the rents being asked have hardly moved, brokers say that landlords are providing a menu of concessions that are substantially reducing the effective price. “It’s definitely a microcosm of the last few years in the New York real estate market,” said Peter Riguardi, president of Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate brokerage and advising company. The problems at 1095 Avenue of the Americas are not hurting Blackstone so far. The combined unused space of Centerline, MetLife and iStar accounts for roughly one-third of the 1.06 million square feet owned by Blackstone in the building, and the three companies are obligated to pay full rent even if they are unable to sublease the space. Brokers say that Blackstone would require the companies to pay dearly to break their leases. But trouble could emerge if any of the companies tumble into bankruptcy court and stopped paying rent. Other tenants seem to be staying put. Dechert L.L.P., a law firm and the first tenant to sign a lease in 2006, is moving onto floors 25 through 31, and Bank of Scotland is occupying its two floors, 34 and 35. MetLife is moving into its space at the top of the tower, even as it tries to sublease its space in the middle. And Robert Alexander, chairman of the New York office of CB Richard Ellis, the real estate brokerage for the tower, said he had pending deals for two other vacant floors, 32 and 33. “We’re signing smaller deals at premium rents, and we look forward to finishing our leasing program,” he said. Brokers familiar with the space offered by iStar, MetLife and Centerline say competition for tenants in Midtown is growing in part because there is ample renovated space available in other buildings. As a result, many companies are demanding rent concessions from landlords or are refusing to take on the cost of adding walls, carpeting and bathrooms to newly renovated space. “What’s missing right now is the demand for raw space,” said one broker, who requested anonymity because he was active at the former Verizon building and he did not want to alienate the landlords or other brokers. The building was constructed in 1974 with vertical white marble slabs and few windows to house switches and other equipment for New York Telephone, which became Verizon. In 2005, as rents and sales prices for commercial buildings were skyrocketing, the company put the tower on the market, with the exception of 234,000 square feet on Floors 6 through 12. Equity Office Properties, one of the largest commercial real estate owners in the country, won a hotly contested auction with a bid of $506 million, more than Verizon had anticipated. At the time, many analysts suggested that Equity Office had overpaid, especially after the new owner started a $250 million renovation that included replacing the marble exterior with a glass skin. Equity Office, however, was betting that the tower would lure prime tenants and generate rents as high as $90 a square foot. And it was right: Rents escalated even higher as the vacancy rate in Midtown plunged and investors clamored to buy properties. Blackstone bought Equity Office for $39 billion in early 2007, at what turned out to be the height of the market. It sold most of Equity’s New York buildings but held on to 1095 Avenue of the Americas. The firm signed leases last year with Bank of Scotland and Centerline for as much as $150 a square foot, brokers active at the tower said. MetLife’s average effective rent, for floors in the middle and at the top, is about $100 a square foot, or $40 million a year, according to real estate executives familiar with the deal. The insurance giant had moved most of its New York employees to Long Island City in 2002, where rents were as low as $30 a square foot. But in 2006, MetLife reversed course, signing a lease to move about 1,300 employees from Queens into the former Verizon building. But this year, the company reassessed how many employees were actually in the office at any one time and determined that it needed only 9 of the 12 floors it had leased in the tower. So early next year, MetLife plans to formally market three of its floors, said John Calagna, a spokesman for MetLife. Mr. Calagna said that the same number of people who moved into 1095 Avenue of the Americas two years ago, about 1,300, are now “moving to less space.”

(Courtesy of CTV News) Guess its time to buy an APC for this city. I'll have to worry about some person using an RPG or road-side bomb now.

Quelques 'snippets' du dernier 'Canadian Real Estate' (Mar/Apr 2008) "When we first opened for sales in 2004, the general consensus was that we were crazy to be asking for $1,000 a square foot. Yet, we were very successful. We proved that the Toronto market was viable and other great brands have followed our success. We've now sold over $300 million worth of real estate and are averaging over $1,500 a square foot - a relative bargain compared to New York prices." "Toronto is a world-class city and it's only going up. It's getting better all the time. With Vancouver, Toronto and to a lesser degree, Montréal, the world is beginning to take notice of the value of Canadian real estate." "Several years ago we identified Canada as being a very viable and lucrative marketplace and one that we wanted a piece of." "According to sales figures for Trump Toronto, 35% of buyers are from Canada, 30% are from the UK and 20% are from the US." "We're not actively planning any additional Canadian projects right now. The Toronto property has been our main focus in Canada to date. Its success will hopefully drive interest in markets like Montreal or Vancouver. Right now, we're focused on Toronto, but certainly look forward to future projects throughout the country." P.S. Trump ne fait que preter son nom au Trump Toronto (pour $1mil et un pourcentage des ventes).

(Courtesy of Reportonbusiness.com)