A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE IN CALGARY’S FUTURE
Slate expanding its profile here, including revitalized Stephen Ave. Place
Confidence in the future of this city by out of town companies is always a compliment, and none has shown it more over the past couple of years than Torontobased Slate Asset Management.
In 2017, it transferred vicepresident of asset management Michael Molyneux here from Ontario to take on the responsibility for the firm’s western Canadian business, which was launched with the purchase of 12 office towers in downtown Calgary from Dream.
Molyneux says Slate is a big believer in the future of Calgary and its real estate, and continues to expand its portfolio here.
It currently owns 21 buildings — adding to those in the core another nine suburban office buildings — amounting to a total investment in 2.3 million square feet of space.
Molyneux says one site that Slate is most excited about is Scotia Centre, which was purchased from Cominar REIT in the spring of this year.
Working with the Calgary office of Zeidler Architecture, Slate is in the process of redesigning and repurposing the complex under the new name of Stephen Avenue Place.
The big, red S logo has been removed from the 620,000-square-foot office tower due to the relocation of Scotiabank, and work will begin shortly to renovate the ground floor lobby entrance on 2nd Street. New amenities for tenants will include a lounge and conference centre.
The complex boasts around 100,000 square feet of retail, including the food court on the main level, but Slate has redesigned much of the ground floor to accommodate a tenant lounge and games area.
A major improvement will be relocating the escalators on an angle to alter what has always been a barrier wall for those walking into the centre from the mall.
Pedestrians along Stephen Avenue will welcome a spectacular change to the former retail bank area facing onto the mall.
Approved plans are for the current entrance to be shifted slightly to the west, allowing for an enclosed glass elevator to whisk people up to The National’s rooftop patio.
The entire area west of the new entrance to the street corner will be home to a high-end, highenergy restaurant with outdoor patio wrapping around the corner of 2nd Street. The second floor will become an eclectic food hall.
Both areas will be run by the new partnership of Calgary’s Concorde Group, which has been successfully running a number of unique restaurants here for three decades, and Oliver & Bonacini, one of Canada’s premier independent restaurant and event groups that opened its first restaurant in Western Canada with The Guild on the main floor of The Bay.
Besides the restaurant and food hall, the same owners will open a large restaurant on the 40th top floor of the office tower. It promises to offer Calgarians the same quality and style as Oliver & Bonacini’s highly respected contemporary Canadian cuisine Canoe restaurant on top of the 54-storey TD Bank Tower on Wellington Street in Toronto.
Molyneux says Slate always hires the best local real estate firms to manage and lease its properties.
Stephen Avenue Place will be managed by Colliers Real Estate Management Services, office leasing will also be handled by a Colliers team, and retail leasing is in the experienced hands of Taurus Property Group. It already reports a positive interest in the newly renovated complex that includes a newly full-glazed third floor area opening onto the Plus-30 pedestrian walkway into The Core.
Slate has years of experience in repositioning and redeveloping its assets, boasting a portfolio of more than 28 million square feet in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. And Molyneux says he intends to help the company acquire more in Calgary and out to the West Coast.
NOTES:
Amy Whiteside, studio director at Boston-based Stoss, is the speaker in the next Design Matters lecture series on Nov. 7 at the St. Louis Hotel. She will address “Building Resilience, the expanded role of urban/ landscape hybrids in a changing climate.”
Whiteside is a graduate of the Harvard School of Design with a Master of Landscape Architecture.