The former entertainment area called Electric Avenue remains a business-friendly Eclectic Avenue even as the dot-com wave recedes.
For a time last year, the dot-coms were the driving engine of the new economy, and growing companies were pushing space to a premium in the E-Avenue district.
The old, loud club scene had faded away into obscurity and bankruptcy while the young e-commerce companies were on the rise and looking for non-traditional office space to design and showcase their new Internet toys.
“We used to get a call an hour from dot-coms saying: ‘I need space anywhere for six months because we’re going to be huge,’ ” says Dennis Djonlich of CB Richard Ellis Alberta Ltd.
Today as dot-coms shrink their business plans to more realistic proportions, they’re starting to sublease space they no longer need. It’s not like an slump in the oilpatch, because dot-coms are clustered in pockets around Calgary, so there are no gaping vacancies.
And the high-tech scene in Calgary has always been more telecom and communications than B2B or B2C dot-coms. The heart of the communications industry has been in the industrial northeast rather than in the Beltline.
Yet along E-Avenue and in other areas of sunny Beltline, the dot-coms live on, sharing buildings with lawyers, accountants and other businesses who love the proximity to downtown without the wind-tunnel effect.
Rob McElhoes, research director for Colliers International in Calgary, agrees the Beltline is not a pure high-tech corridor that waxes and wanes with the economy.
Vacancies, he notes, are as tight as they’ve been in 15 years.
Meanwhile, IBM’s announcement of a campus-type facility in the Beltline is a huge boon to the area, says Djonlich.
IBM wants a campus environment that nurtures creative thought in a location close to its customers in the downtown core, says vice-president John Sokolowski.
The company has 800 to 900 employees in its services business in Calgary. They work on such things as integrating hardware and software for customers. IBM wants its “thought capital” in one place, says Sokolowski, the senior executive in Calgary.
The company works in three teams in Calgary. One is an industry team, aimed at the petroleum industry. A second sells hardware and software and the third works on innovative software. If all those people providing thought leadership are in one place, they can provide more effective solutions for clients, he says.
One group of IBM employees is in a long-term lease at Shaw Court but others will be brought together eventually in three buildings.
The complex will allow for five to seven years’ growth for IBM in Calgary, says Sokolowski.
A Calgary developer plans a 50-acre business park near the Riverbend district that could be home to 10 to 20 businesses.
The development at 24th Street and 86th Avenue S.E. is tentatively called Riverbend Business Park, says associate broker Wayne Hill of Target Realty Corp., who will market the project for Robert Calvert of Courtland Development Corp.
Lot sizes haven’t been decided yet, but parcels could run five to 10 acres, with some parcels under five or over 10 depending on interest. Outside storage areas could be a factor for some businesses as well, he says. That could lead to parcels of 10 to 20 acres.
Home ownership costs were kept in check by declining mortgage rates and rising household income in the second half of 2000, says the Royal Bank of Canada.
The bank’s housing-affordability index rose to 34.6 per cent in the second quarter of last year but fell to 34.2 per cent at year end. In 1999, it was 32.3 per cent.
The index is expected to fall below 32 per cent in this quarter, the bank says. The index measures the proportion of pre-tax income needed to service the cost of owning a home. It is based on a detached bungalow, a typical first-time purchase.
A Victoria-based real estate company with more than half of its holdings in Alberta is crediting its acquisitions last year with big improvements in its financial results.
Western Spirit Investments Ltd. says it beat its cash-flow targets for the year ended Sept. 30, 2000, and expects higher returns for the following year.
Western Spirit reported cash flow from operations of $342,327 or six cents a share. Total revenue was $2.97 million, up 36 per cent from fiscal 1999. Assets grew to $35 million at current values, the company said.
Company president Rick Tanner said Western Spirit would like to do more business in Calgary. Its properties here include warehouses, manufacturing facilities and a 120,000-sq.-ft. flex building near the airport.
Western Spirit trades as WST.A on the Canadian Venture Exchange, where it closed unchanged Friday at 40 cents.
E-commerce solutions provider Basis100 has signed a subsidiary of General Motors Acceptance Corp. as a customer in the United States.
GMAC-Residential Funding Corp., an equity investor in Basis100, will use Basis100’s Solimar valuation technology in automated property valuations for loan purchase decisions. The technology estimates the value of a specific property in real time over the Internet. It covers about 85 per cent of the residential properties in the U.S.
GMAC-RFC, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors Acceptance Corp., operates in the U.S., Europe and Latin America.
Basis100 provides e-commerce technology solutions to financial institutions and service providers. It trades as BAS on the Toronto Stock Exchange and closed Friday eight cents down at $1.90.
Web Watch:
www.western-spirit.com
www.basis100.com
www.royalbank.com
