Archive for January, 2013

Price ceiling raised for homeowner grants

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

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Tamarack in Coquitlam at the base of Westwood Plateau

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

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Neighbourhood at a Glance: Mount Pleasant

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

Michael Kissinger
Van. Courier

Bounded by Cambie Street to the west and Clark Drive to the east, Second Avenue and Great Northern Way to the north and 16th Avenue and Kingsway to the south, Mount Pleasant is one of Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhoods and considered by some to be the city’s first suburb. Home to several breweries, creeks and fish-bearing streams in the late 1800s, hence its original nickname Brewery Creek, the area was annexed by the city in 1911 and grew into a bustling working class neighbourhood, luring first-time homeowners with more affordable real estate than on the city’s West Side.

By the 1970s and ’80s, Mount Pleasant had lost much of its bloom, garnering an unwanted reputation for its dilapidated houses, seedy back alleys and street prostitution. But as is often the case, cheap rent and real estate once again gave way to an influx of young families, first-time home buyers, independent business owners and creative types.

By the 1990s, gentrification was in full swing, and by the early 2000s new breeds of Mount Pleasant residents began shaping the neighbourhood and its image – developers, amateur real estate speculators, condo-flippers and that broad stereotype of the Pabst Blue Ribbon-swilling, fixed gear bike-riding Main Street hipster. Efforts to rebrand the area as SOMA (South of Main) have been met with mixed reactions, and the area is ground zero for the city’s so-called east-west divide, which occurs along Ontario Street.

With its eclectic mix of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, heritage homes, condo developments, pedestrian friendly streets and accessibility to transit including the 10th Avenue Bike Route, the 99 B-Line bus and the Canada Line, Mountain Pleasant has become one the city’s hottest real estate markets.

Depending on whom you ask, the community is undergoing a “rapid and exciting transformation” or at risk of losing the very characteristics that made it attractive in the first place, as witnessed by the heated debate over the proposed RIZE condo tower and the expansion of the Kingsgate Mall proposal.

Whatever the case, Mount Pleasant continues to charm. In November it was announced that social media company Hootsuite had outgrown its Railtown nest and struck a deal with the city to move its head office to a 33,000-square-foot, two-storey office building in near Main and Broadway, ushering in yet another phase of this ever-changing neighbourhood.

© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

City of Vancouver pays $144k to CBC for unused downtown space

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

Space needs $800k renovation before it can be rented

Mike Howell
Van. Courier

The City of Vancouver has paid $144,000 over the past three years to rent 8,000 square feet of vacant space in the downtown CBC building that was originally planned to be home to arts and culture groups.

Though the city says it has offset $20,000 of the tab by renting the barren space for occasional film shoots, it is still without a tenant or tenants and continues to pay rent.

The space at 700 Hamilton St. also needs at least $800,000 in upgrades including flooring, ceilings and other finishing needs before a tenant could move in.

“We’ve been doing our best to fill that space and I think that once we’re successful in terms of getting tenants in there, it will be well utilized and it will be well worth the wait,” said Richard Newirth, the city’s managing director of cultural services. “It’s taken us longer than we’ve liked.”

The city negotiated the space in 2006 as a condition of approving the development permit for the CBC to complete major renovations on its building.

The city took possession of the space Dec. 1, 2009 and had interest from the children’s, folk and jazz festival organizations to occupy the space.

But, Newirth said, the recession and the city requiring the organizations to pay $800,000 to upgrade the space proved financially prohibitive for the groups.

“One after another, the organizations dropped out,” he said.

Since then, the city negotiated with the developer of the massive Telus Garden project being built at West Georgia and Richards to commit $1 million to pay for upgrades to the space at CBC. The money was a condition of rezoning the property, which is a couple of blocks from the CBC.

Newirth said now the onus won’t be on arts and culture groups to pay for the upgrades. The city plans to put another call out in a couple of months to search for potential tenants, he said.

If a tenant or tenants are selected, Newirth anticipates the space could be occupied by the fall. The city aims to find a tenant or tenants that could also use the plaza space outside the CBC building.

“We finally have the resources to go ahead and do it and I thinks it’s going to work,” Newirth said.

Katharine Carol, artistic and executive director of the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, said Monday the space and the city’s commitment to cover costs of the upgrades are enticing. The festival offices are currently in a shared space on Beatty Street.

However, Carol said, she would have to consult with the festival’s board of directors and find out more details about the city’s renewed efforts to find a tenant before saying whether the festival office would be seriously interested in moving.

“There’s a whole bunch of information I’d have to get,” she said. “We certainly couldn’t move in to that kind of space on our own. We would have to be partnering with people because that’s way too much space for us.”

© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

CIBC says its booming consumer mortgage business is well-insured

Sunday, January 13th, 2013

John Greenwood
Other

The head of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s retail banking operation says he’s “comfortable” with the bank’s business mix despite continuing rapid growth of the consumer mortgage portfolio.

“In our own branded mortgage space we are now growing faster than anyone,” said David Williamson.

All the big banks have been aggressively pursuing the consumer loan business, especially mortgages, so CIBC is hardly alone on that front. But a key reason Canada’s fifth biggest bank by assets is confident the issue won’t come back to haunt it is that CIBC has worked hard to cut its exposure to potential losses.

“We’ve got the vast majority of our mortgages insured with the government of Canada,” Mr. Williamson said in an interview with the Financial Post, referring to coverage provided by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. “Probably more than other banks.”

With all the businesses we are in “we look at the longer term view, and I’m really quite comfortable with our business mix,” he added.

Many analysts worry that soaring consumer debt levels could hurt the banks in the event of a sudden rise in unemployment or interest rates. The concern is that it could set off a wave of defaults that, given the precarious state of household finances, would reverberate through the economy.

The banks have largely insulated themselves through the use of CMHC insurance, with average coverage of their mortgage portfolios of more than 60%.

That means lenders would be mostly protected from the direct impact of any downturn but even so, in such an event they would still experience a slowdown in their other consumer businesses.

Mr. Williamson made the comments at the launch of a credit card that holds centre stage in CIBC’s strategy to remain a leader in the travel rewards space.

The launch of the CIBC Aventura credit card comes two weeks after CIBC agreed to carve up its Aeroplan business with Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Under the deal, about half of the roughly

one million holders of CIBC’s Aeroplan will be migrated to rival TD, which becomes the first new issuer of Aeroplan cards in two decades.

Unlike Aeroplan which focused on Air Canada, the new Aventura card will allow customers to accumulate frequent flier points to buy tickets on any airline.

Aventura also includes various travel and medical insurance benefits which are superior to most other cards, Mr. Williamson said.

Those enhancements make it one of the best travel rewards cards available, he said. “You put our [card] up against any other offer, it will show very well.”

More than 20 years ago CIBC launched its first Aeroplan card – the program owned and managed by Aimia Inc. of Montreal – setting the stage for what is one of the most profitable businesses in retail banking.

“It’s a dynamite business,” said National Bank Financial analyst Peter Routledge.

According to Mr. Routledge, the Aeroplan card holders tend to be well-off, often spending a good chunk of their disposable income using the card, and CIBC and Aimia collect about 2.5% of every dollar spent.

The travel rewards business has change dramatically since CIBC became an issuer and the market is now crowded. Still, the rewards are there for astute operators.

“It’s got good margins and we are continuing to grow in this space,” Mr. Williamson said.

© 2013 National Post

Pragmatic steps needed to buy first home today

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

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Canu in Downtown Ladner

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

Come for the value, stay for the lifestyle

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Public outraged that condos could replace the cultural hotspot at the Waldorf Hotel

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

Gen Why aims to save Waldorf

Cheryl Rossi
Van. Courier

Public outrage that condos could replace the cultural hotspot at the Waldorf Hotel has Tara Mahoney excited.

The creative director of Gen Why Media, a social enterprise that works to promote civic engagement, Mahoney hopes the anger will motivate more Vancouverites to get involved in shaping the city.

“We saw the same thing with the Red Gate [artists’ space], we saw the same thing with W2 [Community Media Arts], and it feels like it’s just going to keep happening until there’s enough of a public outcry that politicians take notice and do something,” Mahoney said.

Gen Why launched a Save the Waldorf petition on Change.org. Less than 24 hours after The Waldorf’s closure was announced, the petition had more than 2,000 signatures. Mahoney noted another petition to convince the city not to approve rezoning had more than 3,000 signatures, and social media buzzed with the news.

Waldorf operators announced Wednesday afternoon the property had been sold to the Solterra Group of Companies, which develops condos and townhomes. The Waldorf will be vacated Jan. 20.

A group of partners led by members of the creative community restored the 1947 building with its tiki bar, two nightclub spaces and an art gallery and reopened it Halloween 2010.

The Waldorf hosted club nights, concerts, readings, movie series, a weekly food truck festival and events by arts institutions that include the East Side Culture Crawl, the Polaris Music Prize, the PuSh festival and the jazz and international film festivals. Local music acts that include Black Mountain, Grimes and Japandroids and artists Douglas Coupland, Rodney Graham, Michael Turner and Paul Wong all appeared there. But the first year of business on East Hastings Street near Clark Drive was a financially difficult one. “When we took over it wasn’t even on the map,” noted Daniel Fazio, brand manager for the Waldorf.

He said their landlord “gladly” forgave some rent to the partners who had spent nearly a million dollars in renovations. Fazio said the partners operated with a 15-year lease agreement that hadn’t been “solidified.” More recently, they signed a four-month lease with a promised of a longer lease, which effectively cancelled the 15-year agreement, according to Fazio.

Waldorf operators said they were offered a week-to-week lease until September, but they couldn’t plan events under these conditions.

The creative team is looking for a new programming space. “The city is exploring ways to support the Waldorf continuing as one of Vancouver’s most unique and vibrant cultural spaces,” tweeted Mayor Gregor Robertson.

Mahoney wants city council to do something bold. “It’s so disempowering to think that a private developer can just come in and take whatever they want because they have the money to do it and the price is right to the person who wants to sell it and the community doesn’t have a say.”

In a press release received after the Courier’s print deadline, Solterra said it has no intention of demolishing the hotel.

“We want to work with the city to explore possible ways to retain and improve the hotel,” the release read.

© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

Tight markets, battles over lease rates will mark commercial real estate market this year

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

Frank O’Brien
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REBGV Stats For December 2012

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

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