Colliers International’s 3rd Annual Market Outlook Breakfast

This past Wednesday, we held our annual Market Outlook Breakfast at the newly renovated Cambridge Mill restaurant and event space.  Quite possibly our best year yet, the event was a great success with many in attendance from a wide variety of backgrounds ranging from; developers, investors, tenants, lawyers, appraisers and City/Regional staff.

The Mill was the perfect venue for the event.  What better place to discuss the growth and opportunity of our Region than a recently transformed building that has quickly become a Waterloo Region success story?  If you haven’t had a chance to experience The Cambridge Mill, I highly suggest that you do.  I’ve been told they have a fantastic Sunday brunch if that helps!

Karl Innanen, our Managing Director began the presentation by discussing the top 5 factors that influenced the commercial real estate market in 2011.  The list is as follows:

1. LRT Approval

2. Dundee REIT’s purchase of the Realex Portfolio – now controlling 77% of the office towers in downtown Kitchener

3. RIM – How their recent challenges have affected commercial real estate in Waterloo Region

4. New Zoning Changes – to increase density along the LRT corridors

5. Investments in Infrastructure

The remainder of the presentation was broken up into three sections; The Industrial Market, The Office Market and the Investment Market.  Each section focused on developing trends throughout the Region and our industry experts, John Lind (office), Ron Jansen (industrial) and Karl Innanen (investment)  shared some excellent insight into how our clients can capitalize on these opportunities.

Later this week, we will be posting an online video of the presentation for those of you who were not able to make it.  If you have any questions or comments regarding the material presented, please feel free to post your comments here!

Below are links to some of the coverage our event received in both the KW Record and the Cambridge Times:

“Mill A Reflection of the Region” – Cambridge Times

“Real estate industry still keen on local market despite RIM’s woes” – KW Record