HINES ABUZZ OVER URBAN ROOFTOP HIVES PROJECT
As director of property management for Hines properties in Canada, Gordon Menzies is responsible for looking after more than 5,500 tenants in the two majestic towers of Eighth Avenue Place downtown.
Last year, he added several thousand more charges by inviting Honey Meadows Bee Farm to keep two hives on the green roof section. The project did exceedingly well and Menzies was able to offer almost 200 jars of Urban Bee Honey to his human tenants at Christmas. The 2016 bee project was managed by Hines’ assistant property manager, Melissa Gerry, who had to add more levels to the hives for increased honey production. Early production was primarily from dandelions, but as spring and summer plantings flowered they enjoyed yarrow, sedum and other flowers.
Menzies has become a passionate keeper of the bees, and this year the number of hives on the 2,500 square feet of green roof has doubled to four. He is lobbying Hines to place hives on all of its properties, a suggestion welcomed on his recent speaking trip at company meetings in Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Toronto.
Within the portfolio of buildings Menzies will manage is the massive three-million-squarefoot Bay Park Centre in downtown Toronto for CIBC.
In Calgary, Hines recently purchased the eight-storey former Alberta Wheat Pool building on 2nd Street S.W. across from Bow Valley Square. The roof of that structure, renamed Prospect Place, is home to two bee hives managed by Hines assistant property manager Amanda Verge, who is working with local schoolchildren who painted the hives. They’ll receive regular updates on their queen’s activities and share in some of the honey harvest at the end of the season.
Menzies is pleased that bees are thriving on his buildings; the Eighth Avenue Place hives are above where Henry Singer is relocating its Calgary store into 6,000 square feet on the main floor level. Over the past few years, farmers and scientists have been alarmed by the loss in numbers of bees that are vital to pollinate crops and fruit trees. Menzies and his team are keen to do their part, while also planning to distribute packets of wildflower seeds to tenants to help ensure honey bees have enough forage to keep their colonies healthy.
NEWS AND NOTES
The Stampede chuckwagon sponsored by Painted Pony Energy and AltaGas will have a tarp worthy of an art gallery show. The companies commissioned Calgary artist Paul Van Ginkel to paint a 48-by 72-inch mural of a small herd of stampeding paint horses that will be reproduced on the tarp. Van Ginkel and his wife, Kristin, are big enthusiasts of the Stampede.
David Eisenstadt grew up in Calgary but, after graduating with a political science degree from the University of Calgary, left for Toronto and founded tcgpr — The Communications Group. He was the first of two fellows elected as a Fellow of the Canadian Public Relations Society, and was recently awarded the CPRS Shield of Public Service for his commitment to the Mikey Network, which works to raise awareness of heart-healthy lifestyles and the importance of public-access defibrillators.