Development Across Windsor-Essex - Summarizing The Projects in The Works (Part 3

Even as we get deeper into Fall and the temperatures are starting to drop, the development in Windsor-Essex is still red hot! The previous two parts of this series have garnered solid feedback, so much so that we decided to add a part three!

Starbucks - Leamington & Lakeshore

Everyone loves a good Starbucks! And they are clearly expanding in Windsor-Essex. Nearing completion is the new location in the South End of the County, in Leamington at 291 Erie St. South. They are supposed to be open sometime this fall and the developer is Brotto Family Holdings. You can see more info on this one here.

The Starbucks that's in the same building as Indigo (off County Rd 22, just east of Manning) is going into a standalone building across the street. Just west of the CIBC on the massive site of the St Clair Shores Plaza, construction has just begun and should be open next year. The developer is the Valente Group. The address of the site is 25 Amy Croft Drive.

Both sites are the standard Starbucks 2000’ building layout with a drive through.

Hotel Coming to Tecumseh

On the site of the old Tecumseh Golf, a hotel development is coming to Tecumseh. This is the first hotel development in several years in the area. Details on the hotel brand haven’t been disclosed yet.  The development is courtesy of Petretta Construction. Look for more details coming soon.

Metro Anchored Retail Plaza Coming to Tecumseh

Adjacent to the coming Hotel development, on the westside of Manning between Amy Croft and Lanoue, comes the area’s latest retail plaza. Look out Sobeys and Zehrs as Metro is coming to town.  There will be an approximate 8000’ of additional retail space to go along with the grocery store, with yet to be announced tenants. This development is a partnership between Petretta Construction and the Otis group. Site work has recently begun with construction starting soon.

Quicken Loans Opening an Office in Downtown Windsor - 156 Chatham St W

Hot off the presses! This one we have first hand knowledge of, as we represented Quicken Loans and Bedrock in securing their Windsor space! The company is opening a Windsor office to support their American operations; having this Canadian office will allow them to avoid more strict worker immigration rules that have come out of the US during the Trump administration. It will also allow them to recruit graduates from several Southern Ontario universities. The building is known as the “Fish Market” and was previously home to a couple different bars (Coach & Horses and The Loop). The building is owned by a partnership of local developers Dino and Anthony Maggio and also the Cypher Systems Group. Quicken Loans is taking 9000’, which encompasses the entire first floor of the building, with the right to expand to the second floor in the future. Construction has been ongoing at the property for several months and should be turned over to Quicken this fall for them to finish the office buildout and begin operations in 2019. 50 people are expected to make the move over initially and that number could grow to 100 in the near future.

A couple big ones for you guys to know about! Hopefully you find these posts informative as we love being your go-to guys for information. Readers: are you excited about these projects?

Love Is In The Air - Market Segments Clients Love

With Valentine’s Day just this past weekend, love is definitely in the air. After a weekend of blowing your budget on your significant other, our investor clients are thinking of ways they can reverse some of the damage by making a solid investment.

In honour of Hershey’s favourite holiday, we have a list of some of the market segments our clients are loving in 2016:

1. Industrial – During the downturn of 2008-09, the manufacturing sector was especially hard hit, with several of the large automakers on the brink of bankruptcy. The restructuring that went along with that has brought about the rebound of the last several years. This year we are looking at a record year for auto sales and the roll out of many new cars. This is all translating into super low supply of buildings, increasing rents and the start of a new construction cycle. We see continued upward pressure on prices and rental rates as new construction costs are prohibitive compared to resale in many cases.
2. Multifamily – The demand for yield with today’s near zero percent interest rates has fueled unprecedented demand for multifamily investment properties. This demand has far outstripped supply and prices have rose and cap rates have fallen. With continuing low supply and high demand we see this trend persisting and further downward pressure on cap rates. In our market specifically of Windsor ON, we still have a cap rate discrepancy with larger markets in Canada and we see that continuing to narrow.
3. Retail Plazas – Stable, long life assets such as these have always had plenty of investor interest and with cap rate compression this has increased demand. Cap Rates on Retail Plazas are still significantly higher than multifamily and as such we see a narrowing of this spread as plaza prices continue to rise.
4. Small Turn Key Office Space – Office space units of 1500-2000’ with good existing buildouts are in high demand in our market and landlord’s with these vacancies are sure to benefit. Office tenant’s seem to be doing more with less square footage these days and smaller spaces such as this are more marketable.
5. Townhouses & Condos – With our previous discussion about the aging population, demand from downsizing baby boomer has been buoyant in the townhome & condo market. Millennial buyers have also had a preference to this segment of property. New construction of townhomes have been booming and a new wave of condo construction has begun. We see this trend continuing as demographics continue to support it.

These are the segments being shown the love in our market. Where is the love in yours?

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Russel Lalovich
russel@lalovichrealestate.com
Office: (519) 966-0444
Cell: (519) 995-5620