Well worth the price of admission

You can’t beat the smell of fresh popcorn or the big screen presentation of a movie in a cinema.

Movie theatres like all entertainment venues have struggled to hang on during the unending global turmoil of the pandemic.

Will they ever get back to business as usual?

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Big divide between YXE downtown & suburban office vacancy

This Saskatoon office vacancy graph illustrates it well.

We see the relative similarity between downtown and suburban office vacancy trends for the 12 years between 2008 and 2020; then, suddenly, in 2020, the divide begins to swell.

We currently have over a 10 per cent vacancy spread between the two submarkets.

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Up to 165 per cent variance between SK municipal CRE property taxes

My colleague, Eugene Hritzuk recently completed an interesting study of property taxes in 16 Saskatchewan cities. 

In each case, the estimate was calculated based on a $4 million commercial property assessment from 2021. 

The variance was substantial depending on where he looked.

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Can a grocery store in a district with too few residents work?

The current Saskatoon downtown population is 3,106 individuals according to eHealth Saskatchewan which is down from a high of 3,331 in 2020.

With this limited population base, Saskatoon has struggled to attract a downtown grocery store.

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Time was up for Continental Hotel

Saskatoon’s beleaguered former Continental Hotel has met with the wrecking ball.

The Continental Hotel had been in in operation since 1967 before they officially closed their tavern in 2007.

It only took a few hours to erase the storied history of the building.

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Face Your Fear and Do It!

That was advice I received from a client many years ago when I was considering investing in my first commercial real estate property.

I took his advice, partnered with a colleague, bought the apartment building, and had no regrets.

It was the right message, delivered at the right time and have since repeated that same message to clients when the time was appropriate.

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Buy yourself a dream

What if you have a vision but no money to implement it?

This a common thread points of all start-ups.

There is a spate of miniseries on streaming services right now regarding high profile business struggles that I think are worth checking out.

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