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Editor John Comba

For the past 7 years Royal LePage has hosted a charity golf tournament for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. The tournament is held in the first week of September and is one of the most successful golf events in the Ottawa area. It always sells out quickly and has raised over $300,000 for charity since it was started. I would like to congratulate Nathan Smith, Paul Hindo and their team for another very successful event ($55,000 was raised this year).

The few sales that occurred in July are listed below.

SALES

An 83,680 sq.ft. OFFICE building at 770 Brookfield Road was sold by Canada Post Corporation to 770 Brookfield Properties Limited for $3,070,000 or $37/sq.ft. This property is fully leased to JDS Uniphase. The building area included a 20,680 square foot basement.

The Canadian Building at 219 Laurier Avenue West in the downtown core was sold vacant by London Life Insurance Co. to 219 Laurier Avenue Developments Ltd. for $7,000,000 or $36/square foot of building area. This is an older Class "C" building that will require extensive renovations. However, with the vacancy rate in the core at less than 3%, this building should fill up quickly. Nathan Smith and Alan Desmarais of Royal LePage acted for the vendor in this transaction.

The Bank of Montreal sold a 31,275 square foot INDUSTRIAL building at 1424 Michael Street under Power of Sale to the adjoining property owner, Ideal Roofing Company Limited. The purchase price was $1,200,000 or $38/sq.ft. Nathan Smith and Alan Desmarais of Royal LePage teamed up for this listing as well.

Nordic Air Conditioning Industries Ltd. sold a 16,875 square foot industrial building at 2760 Fenton Road in the south end of the City of Gloucester to ODUM Holdings Ltd. for $720,000 or $43/sq.ft. This property was listed by Ian Shackell and Geoff Godding at CB Commercial.

There were two APARTMENT building sales in July.

A 115 unit building at 810 Pinecrest Road was sold by J.C. Building Investment Corp., Urigold Holdings Ltd and Arnon Miller to M810 Pinecrest Corp for $5,555,000 or $48,304 per unit. District Realty was the broker in this transaction.

A 23-unit apartment building at 320 Cooper Street was sold by Patrick Kam and Amy Mo Yin Pak to 1414815 Ontario Inc. for $645,000 or $28,043/unit.

Shenkman Corporation closed on two more of the VACANT LAND parcels they have assembled on the south side of Innes Road in the east end of the Region. Both of the purchases were at $13,500 per acre. One of the purchases was for a 114-acre site from the Estate of Henri Taillefer and the other was a 57.4-acre site from 1414469 Ontario Inc.

NORTEL continues to assemble land along Palladium Drive. The most recent purchase was the Double Deck Driving Range, a 26.5 acre site on the south side of Palladium Drive, the north side of Maple Grove Road and the west side of First Line Road for $5,975,000 or $225,000 per acre. This is across the street from the fibre optics plant that they recently constructed and sold.

The Corporation of the City of Ottawa sold a 2.142 acre site on the north side of Heron Road to the west of Bank Street to 1414875 Ontario Ltd. for $700,000 or $7.50/sq.ft. of site area. This is a former works yard.

The Czech Republic sold a redevelopment property at 98-100 Dufferin Road opposite the Governor General's property for $1,318,018 to Charlesfort Development Corp. The property is improved with a former school and an older single-family house. It is 22,056 square feet in size. Therefore, Charlesfort paid $60/sq.ft. of site area.

NEWS

Effective September 1, 2000, Colonnade Developments was appointed by Investors Group Trust Co. Ltd. as the property manager and administrator of their industrial/office portfolio in the Ottawa area. The portfolio consists of almost 500,000 square feet in four separate properties.

Colonnade Developments is also constructing a new two-storey office building for Magma Communications at the corner of Auriga Drive and Deakin Street in the Rideau Heights Business Park in the City of Nepean. The building is 31,000 square feet in size and is to be completed by December this year.

According to reports in both the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Business Journal, O & Y has plans to build an $80 million, 500,000 square foot, two-tower office complex on the parking lot they purchased earlier this year on Queen Street across from their Place de Ville complex. The towers will be 18 and 20 stories in height and will include 253 underground parking spaces.

Penreal Capital Management Inc., together with their developer Colonnade Developments, have purchased the 25-acre site at Terry Fox and Highway 417 that was recently purchased for $200,000 per acre. Penreal and Colonnade plan to develop the site with five, five-storey office towers having a total square footage of 500,000 square feet. The purchase of the site has yet to close. Details in the next newsletter.

Colonnade is also proceeding with the construction of a three-storey 47,000 square foot office building at 84 Hines Road in the Kanata North Business Park for SiGEM Inc. This building will be completed by April 2001.

Craig Callan-Jones is to convert an older industrial building on Aberdeen Street off of Preston Street into a 55,000 square foot office building, the majority of which has been leased to Hummingbird Inc.

The office market has become so hot that Richcraft Homes is constructing a two-storey 42,000 square foot office building on St. Laurent Boulevard in the Ottawa Business Park on spec. The foundation for this building has been in the ground for the past nine years waiting for the market to turn. I guess this is the sign that it has.

The Ottawa Citizen reported that Minto has purchased seven acres of land on Clearview Avenue in the west end of Ottawa close to Island Park Drive for $4,500,000. Minto is planning on developing the site with a combination of high-rise condo towers and townhouses. This site was owned by Sunlife.

The National Capital Commission has decided not to proceed with the Daly project as proposed by Canadian Gateway Development Corporation. The NCC is to re-tender the project. It should be interesting to see if there is more interest in the site given the improved market conditions.

According to the Ottawa-Carleton Real Estate Board, there were 1,250 properties sold in August bringing the total for the first seven months of the year to 9,274 as compared to 8,310 for the same period last year. The average price so far this year was $158,220 that is 5.6% higher than last year.

The unemployment rate in Ottawa increased a half-percentage point in August,the biggest month-to-month increase in five years. The increase is due to the large number of job seekers who have entered the labour market. In August 5,700 people joined the labour force with 2,000 of them finding jobs. The local unemployment rate in August was at 6.0% as compared to the Canadian average of 7.1%.