By Mario Toneguzzi, Calgary Herald
The second phase of the massive Eighth Avenue Place downtown office development is moving closer.
Having weathered the project’s difficult start, its owners celebrated the official opening of Eighth Avenue Place Monday and confirmed work on a planned second tower could begin next year.
Construction of the project’s first phase -a 1.1-millionsquare-foot, 49-storey office tower on 8th Avenue S.W. -began in December 2007.
The next phase will add a second tower of 38 storeys and 785,000 square feet of office space to the complex, located at the former site of the Penny Lane block.
Eighth Avenue Place is jointly owned by Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo), Matco Investments Ltd. and SITQ, a business unit of Ivanhoe Cambridge Group.
Daniel Fournier, chairman and chief executive of Ivanhoe Cambridge, said Monday that construction of the second tower could begin at the end of the first quarter in 2012, if the market for downtown office space remains strong.
“The leasing obviously has improved greatly and the market rents have moved up, so if the market continues this way, and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t, this is something we want to do,” said Fournier.
“One of the big parts of the investment in the first phase is that the infrastructure is all in place for the second phase. That’s an opportunity for us because we can move much more quickly.”
Leo de Bever, chief executive of AIMCo. said Eighth Avenue Place recovered from a difficult start during the economic downturn.
Office occupancy is now higher than it was in 2008, said de Bever.
“When this thing was coming out of the ground it was just before everything sort of caved in and it wasn’t clear we needed the first tower,” said de Bever.
“And I’ve learned in Calgary that if you wait long enough, you don’t like the economic climate, it will change, and that’s exactly what happened.”
Randy Fennessey, who is president of Colliers International in Calgary and part of the project’s leasing team, said the first tower is 95 per cent leased.
“We’ve got some various tenants that we’re dealing with on the small pieces that we’ve got left. It’s all but done,” said Fennessey.
“We certainly had our challenges in the latter part of 2008 and also in 2009 with the economic downturn that we had.
“We’re dealing with a number of tenants now for the west tower and we’re very excited about the prospects for the west tower proceeding.”
Jon Pickard, design principal for Pickard Chilton, who led the conceptual design for the project, said it took some measure of “wisdom frankly and a little bit of courage” for the owners of EAP to begin construction of the first phase without any pre-leasing.
“But to be frank, I think they looked at the character of the Calgary market and they saw if they had the right quality of building that they would be successful in achieving the first-class tenants that indeed they have achieved,” said Pickard.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Second+building+eyed+Eighth+Avenue+Place/4979253/story.html#ixzz1PxbNuMjc
Having weathered the project’s difficult start, its owners celebrated the official opening of Eighth Avenue Place Monday and confirmed work on a planned second tower could begin next year.
Construction of the project’s first phase -a 1.1-millionsquare-foot, 49-storey office tower on 8th Avenue S.W. -began in December 2007.
The next phase will add a second tower of 38 storeys and 785,000 square feet of office space to the complex, located at the former site of the Penny Lane block.
Eighth Avenue Place is jointly owned by Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo), Matco Investments Ltd. and SITQ, a business unit of Ivanhoe Cambridge Group.
Daniel Fournier, chairman and chief executive of Ivanhoe Cambridge, said Monday that construction of the second tower could begin at the end of the first quarter in 2012, if the market for downtown office space remains strong.
“The leasing obviously has improved greatly and the market rents have moved up, so if the market continues this way, and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t, this is something we want to do,” said Fournier.
“One of the big parts of the investment in the first phase is that the infrastructure is all in place for the second phase. That’s an opportunity for us because we can move much more quickly.”
Leo de Bever, chief executive of AIMCo. said Eighth Avenue Place recovered from a difficult start during the economic downturn.
Office occupancy is now higher than it was in 2008, said de Bever.
“When this thing was coming out of the ground it was just before everything sort of caved in and it wasn’t clear we needed the first tower,” said de Bever.
“And I’ve learned in Calgary that if you wait long enough, you don’t like the economic climate, it will change, and that’s exactly what happened.”
Randy Fennessey, who is president of Colliers International in Calgary and part of the project’s leasing team, said the first tower is 95 per cent leased.
“We’ve got some various tenants that we’re dealing with on the small pieces that we’ve got left. It’s all but done,” said Fennessey.
“We certainly had our challenges in the latter part of 2008 and also in 2009 with the economic downturn that we had.
“We’re dealing with a number of tenants now for the west tower and we’re very excited about the prospects for the west tower proceeding.”
Jon Pickard, design principal for Pickard Chilton, who led the conceptual design for the project, said it took some measure of “wisdom frankly and a little bit of courage” for the owners of EAP to begin construction of the first phase without any pre-leasing.
“But to be frank, I think they looked at the character of the Calgary market and they saw if they had the right quality of building that they would be successful in achieving the first-class tenants that indeed they have achieved,” said Pickard.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Second+building+eyed+Eighth+Avenue+Place/4979253/story.html#ixzz1PxbNuMjc
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