Sun Life Financial major presence
Sun Life Financial owns Canadian real estate assets valued at $4.8 billion in a diversified portfolio that includes office, industrial, retail and multifamily residential properties in most major Canadian metropolitan centres.
In Calgary, Sun Life is well represented, with more than 1.5 million square feet of office space and nearly two million square feet of industrial buildings.
Sun Life’s real estate asset management, investment and development operations are overseen by regional offices. Based in the Calgary office in Sun Life Plaza, managing director Rod Gatenby is responsible for all of Sun Life’s real estate functions across Western Canada.
To assist him in the increasing amount of activity in the West, particularly in Calgary and the Vancouver area, Gatenby has hired Scott Sharples to join his team as senior director, real estate investments. He is responsible for the real estate investment program in Western Canada, as well as oversight of a significant asset management and development program in B.C.
Sharples is well experienced in this market, previously overseeing the asset management, leasing and property management for Tonko Realty Advisors in Alberta and Saskatchewan and as senior vice-president of Cresa Partners in its project management group.
In his new position, Sharples will be travelling a fair bit, particularly to the coast where Sun Life is developing industrial sites in metro Vancouver and has significant suburban office and industrial properties in Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby.
He will be spending most of his time in Calgary looking after the company’s current inventory as well as acquisitions, dispositions and asset management.
Sun Life has an exciting new development, Airport Crossing, on the north side of Airport Trail east of Deerfoot Trail N.E.
Enright Capital is the development manager of the master-planned, 55-acre site where Sun Life has made application for development permits to begin construction of the first phase that will offer two industrial buildings totalling 298,000 square feet that will be available for tenants by fall of next year.
Gatenby says they will be built to LEED-certified industrial standards and have been designed to bring to market bays from 6,400 to 12,000 square feet for smaller users who need to be close to the airport.
A second phase will offer two more similar buildings totalling 265,000 square feet planned for delivery starting in Q3 of 2014.
Sun Life Financial is a 50/50 owner along with CREIT of Sun Life Plaza, the distinctive office complex of three towers on 4th Avenue between Centre Street and 1st Street S.W. It consists of a million square feet of office space over a 31,000 square foot atrium with retail on its second level.
Sun Life also owns 640 5th Avenue S.W., the former EUB Building that recently welcomed MNP has its new tenant after spending more than $17 million on refurbishing the tower with new mechanical and electrical and providing tenants with a new fitness centre.
Other significant proper- ties in its Calgary portfolio include Deerfoot Atrium, suburban offices in Douglasdale Business Park, and the 850,000 square feet of warehousing in Rangewinds Park.
But Sharples will also be busy in Edmonton where two buildings are under construction for tenant Worley Parsons, part of a new five-building suburban office development.
Francisco Gomez, regional vice-president and general manager at the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel, has announced his retirement effective January 15, 2013.
Gomez has dedicated his entire 40-year career to the hotel industry and I first got to know him when he was appointed as general manger of the Delta Bow Valley hotel in 1993.
Still residing in Calgary, he was made regional vicepresident of the Prairie region for Delta Hotels and then transferred to Fairmont Hotels & Resorts in 2000 as general manager of the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto and regional general manager of the Central Canada Region.
Before taking on his current role Gomez spent three years as general manager of the Fairmont San Francisco.