A building once used for top-secret, high-tech military research is now home to artistic and high-tech businesses.
During the First World War, a gas company building in the Ramsay area was used for research into extracting helium from natural gas to provide lift for military airships.
 |
| Dave Olecko, Business Edge |
| Leanne Hughes, John McConomy, Neil Scott and Richard Hertle work together in hip building. |
After its research role in the war against the Kaiser, it later served as a flour mill, a coffin company and a fur farmers’ co-operative.
The large wood structure at 1701 11th St. S.E. has been owned since 1991 by developer John Holt.
Tenants now include an artistic furniture maker and a media company, says Holt, who has his home and offices in the building.
Holt heard its history from a neighbour who lived to the age of 103 and had watched the construction of the building during the war.
The wooden-frame construction hangar was home to the experiments in the last two years of the First World War as engineers sought to extract the one-per-cent helium content from local natural gas.
A 1919 article in a Calgary newspaper revealed the project and its success just after the end of the fighting.
Holt says plank floors and walls were added to the building at a later date. The building is still brightly signed as a co-op feed mill. “It’s very important to me to keep the exterior the same. I went to great lengths to keep the siding and so on,” the proud owner says.
Holt calls his living area ‘stealth housing’, because it doesn’t look like a dwelling.
“I strongly believe in maintaining historical buildings in the same character . . .” he adds.
Downstairs from Holt’s home and office, a character office is home to Full Motion Media, a partnership of three companies.
The office decor is a bright mixture of old wood, 1950s artifacts and modern technology.
The corporate logo looks as if it belongs on a car with fins and possibly a ragtop – which turns out to be the motif of the web page.
Cinematographer Neil Scott, digital animator Richard Hertle and multi-media editor John McConomy each have their own companies and work together on projects.
“It’s still a high-tech building,” says Hertle, adding that Holt spared no expense.
“This is the first time I’ve met with a landlord and he wanted to make sure we suited the space,” he adds.
Royal LePage has acquired the Canadian rights to Big-E, a real estate portfolio management tool on the web.
“We represent large users of real estate,” says Pierre Bergevin, corporate services vice-president of Royal LePage Commercial Inc.
Big-E, developed by Business Integration Group in Tempe, Ariz., allows tenants, owners and managers of commercial real estate to generate reports on any aspect of their portfolio.
The Big-E website outlines modules for call centre functions, lease administration, space and building maintenance management.
Rick Legge, Western Canadian account director for Royal LePage corporate services, says Big-E doesn’t create a massive IT overhead because it’s an ASP application that runs on the web.
The customer continues to own the data, and customers’ executives can access data through the web any time.
Legge says the corporate services department is part of the trend to outsourcing non-core functions.
A Calgary-based residential landlord had a record quarter for rentals and a loss on a technology write-down.
Boardwalk Equities Inc. (BEI-TSE, NYSE) had total revenue of $51.7 million and funds from operations of $14.9 million or 30 cents a share for the third quarter of this year.
Boardwalk said its net income was affected by a one-time write-down on technology investments of $27.5 million, or $18 million after-tax.
Most of that was associated with the Suite Systems subsidiary, which management decided to curtail in October.
Boardwalk president Sam Kolias said the company will be putting its money where there is a better return for less risk to capital.
He noted that the third quarter was the company’s strongest rental quarter.
