ChazYEG said:
Realistically, any reasonably responsible businesses owner will always be thinking about their assets with these lenses.

It's easy to spitball ideas when you don't have to foot the bill, and that's pretty much what you are doing. If they were to follow your proposal, these guys would have anywhere between 50 and 200 million dollars shortfall to make up for, between lost revenue and maintenance costs, and that is IF the market conditions allow for the development to be profitable and start recouping the costs immediately after construction is finished.

LaSalle and their investors are businesses, and as much as they might want to engage in the betterment of the city, their main goal will always be to make the most money possible out of the assets they own. Within these parameters, their best play would be to demolish and redevelop the HBC space, as it was already pointed out. It would stop the bleeding on the current maintenance costs, which could itself finance the redevelopment, and become a profitable asset much sooner.

But again, if you are confident that you have the best solution, I suggest you approach LaSalle and bring in the $200m financing to back it up, assuming all of the risks. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to follow your vision.
But then again, last I heard, your capital raising efforts were pretty much unsuccessful, do there's that.
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I don't know their financial details, but I suspect the office towers and the parking are what will keep this viable overall. The mall which has been around for almost 50 years now, of course comes with this, and has had a difficult 5 years or so recently. They now seem to be working on stabilizing it and getting it back on track. The lot to the south of the mall is still sitting empty and has been for a long time, which tells me there probably is not much demand for another tower now of any type in this area.

I doubt there is a desire to spend a lot of money on a major redevelopment, except from those here who like to fantasize spending imaginary money. This can be fun, but the bottom line currently I think is making the best of what we have, because no alternatives are really lucrative.
 
Was there ever talk, or an attempt to run a pedway connection directly from City Centre West to the Stantec tower? And thus Rogers Place as well. I know it'd be through the parkade there so maybe it was never viable.
The current pedway routes mean you're never routed through City Centre West except for the little section before Manulife Place.

If they could do something with just that western-most Parkade, ideally with residential towers like has been suggested here, and include a Pedway connection onward to Stantec/Ice-District it would increase foot traffic significantly. It would both improve the vibrancy of what is now a fairly significant corner at 103-103, and enable a lot more people to travel through City Centre on their way to or from the Ice District.
 
JuliallThat said:
Was there ever talk, or an attempt to run a pedway connection directly from City Centre West to the Stantec tower? And thus Rogers Place as well. I know it'd be through the parkade there so maybe it was never viable.
The current pedway routes mean you're never routed through City Centre West except for the little section before Manulife Place.

If they could do something with just that western-most Parkade, ideally with residential towers like has been suggested here, and include a Pedway connection onward to Stantec/Ice-District it would increase foot traffic significantly. It would both improve the vibrancy of what is now a fairly significant corner at 103-103, and enable a lot more people to travel through City Centre on their way to or from the Ice District.
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I don't know the cost, or how viable this is, but this pedway connection is a very interesting idea and could actually help the west part of City Centre a lot by also drawing people from the large office tower and hotel to the north.

It could be a faster and more direct connection to City Centre than the existing pedway, which meanders through three other buildings. It would involve some cost, perhaps to also enclose a walk way on the east side of the parkade as the parkade itself is not enclosed, but this would probably be considerably less than most other redevelopment ideas proposed.
 
I'm guessing that parking lots like Impark lots could be developed faster, given lower rates of return. Anything like underground or energized parking comes at a premium.
 
Is there actually shortage of parking at CCM? their entire basement is a parkade on both sides. Would demolishing that above ground parkade be that big of a loss in terms of supply of available parking?
 
_urbanite said:
Is there actually shortage of parking at CCM? their entire basement is a parkade on both sides. Would demolishing that above ground parkade be that big of a loss in terms of supply of available parking?
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If you are just looking at traffic for the mall and it's various uses/tenants there is plenty of parking. The parkades are used for folks attending events downtown, grabbing dinner, or working nearby also. The way the area has developed the parkades aren't ideally situated aesthetically but from a business perspective they make sense.
 
_urbanite said:
Is there actually shortage of parking at CCM? their entire basement is a parkade on both sides. Would demolishing that above ground parkade be that big of a loss in terms of supply of available parking?
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You mean the basements that used to be retail where we asked a similar, but opposite question but 10-15yrs ago?
 
City Center does need a lot of work. I graduated last year from MacEwan and I only went to that mall once since it actually felt unsafe taking the pedways. Since I live close to Summerside, I would just stop by Southgate on the way home instead of City Center. While my friends who lived on the north side, they would just stop at Kingsway.

It was the closest mall to the university, but most people still would rather go to other malls. The mall just really doesn't offer anything besides a quick food option, which the university already provides a decent option.
 
BASE said:
If you are just looking at traffic for the mall and it's various uses/tenants there is plenty of parking. The parkades are used for folks attending events downtown, grabbing dinner, or working nearby also. The way the area has developed the parkades aren't ideally situated aesthetically but from a business perspective they make sense.
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Honestly even just reconfiguring the west parkade such that 80% of the main level is event/entertainment space (like a Rec Room, megalounge, etc) would be great at improving the streetfront and probably make the CRUs fronting 103rd Ave in Stantec more lucrative.
 
IanO said:
You mean the basements that used to be retail where we asked a similar, but opposite question but 10-15yrs ago?
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To be fair, this mall was actually built in a time before large underground parkades were common downtown. So the conversion of the basement space to parking made some sense as retrofitting, but not in other ways.

For instance, lest we forget, before that happened, much of that basement space was actually leased to various retailers. I suspect often to tenants who wanted more affordable space, who then were shuffled around wildly to fill empty spaces on the main, second and perennially problematic third level (that probably should have never been added IMO). It turned out to be a terrible management decision for the retailers and did not go well.

However, as long as parking is a more profitable use of space, what is there will likely remain as is. So I don't see the west above ground parkade disappearing until it is lucrative to build something else, maybe in 10 years or so.
 
IanO said:
IKEA in the Bay with a distribution centre given how much room and loading bays are there.
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Was in Stockholm in August and was able to visit the IKEA in one of the main shopping malls, would absolutely love one in city centre, especially because it's much easier to get to than the Southside
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When I worked on the Ikea expansion a few years back. I talked with the Ikea Project manager about YEG, He indicated that they would eventually build a new larger facility since Edmonton and Calgary are considered to be quite small facilities currently. The expansions were just to get storage area up to a more usable level. No word on going with a smaller store front version since we lack warehouse facilities as is. And yes he did say if they build it will be in the west more likely.
 
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