ZEHR GROUP I CHANGE MAKERS
From retrofits of historic buildings to new builds, Zehr Group has a hand in wide range of projects
Company juggles range of services in commercial real estate.
REG LEVESQUE has built or renovated fast-food restaurants all over Ontario and the U.S.
One hundred and forty-five KFC restaurants and 15 Burger King outlets bear his imprint. In all, he has 42 years of experience in the construction business, specializing in commercial and industrial development.
John MacDonald first entered a construction site as a kid, toting water bottles for his dad, Ron, and other employees of Ball Brothers Construction. Steel-toed boots and a hard hat have been his uniform of choice for more than 25 years.
When asked why in the late 2000s these two construction veterans came to work for Zehr Group, a Kitchener-based real estate services company, both Levesque and MacDonald sum it up succinctly in one word: “opportunities.”
There have been opportunities aplenty for Zehr Group in the past decade. Downtown Kitchener has experienced a renaissance in the past five years and Zehr Group has played a leading role in the narrative.
Major retrofits of such historic properties as the Tannery, the Breithaupt Block and the Simpson Block, where the new CBC radio station is housed, owe their existence in part to the Zehr Group.
A handsome new Kitchener building at 1381 Victoria St. N. housing Laser Quest, a Nissan dealership in Waterloo and two new office buildings taking shape on North- >>
>> field Drive near the Conestoga Parkway in Waterloo. All these and more came to fruition under the direction of the Zehr Group
“I saw the company as a new star rising,” says MacDonald, who serves as vice-president of operations at Zehr Group.
Alice Butt, the company’s chief operating officer, could have had her pick of offers when she went looking for employment in 2012.
Her résumé was bursting with A-list accomplishments including 28 years in the real estate division of Manulife Financial. Her most recent job: managing the company’s real estate portfolio across Canada.
After researching potential employers, she zeroed in on the Zehr Group. “I knew about their reputation but saw equally that there was great potential for the organization,” she says.
The man behind all this is a laid-back, quietly charismatic entrepreneur dressed in casual yet crisp jeans and a button-down blue shirt.
Don Zehr, the company’s chief executive officer, is the son of Lester Zehr and nephew of Clifford Zehr. Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few decades, you will no doubt recognize the name Zehr sitting atop a bunch of supermarkets in the area.
Lester and Clifford Zehr launched the ubiquitous and enormously successful Zehrs grocery store chain in Kitchener in 1950.
It’s been years since they ran the grocery business, selling out to Loblaws in 1963 and staying on to manage it for another decade or so. But it was during this time the seeds of a new business germinated in Lester’s mind.
In the late 1970s, he launched a new career in construction and real estate with the Zehr Group.
Don, who remembers working on his father’s construction sites as a summer student, initially dreamed of a career as an airline pilot.
In 1976, he enrolled at the Florida Institute of Technology, at that time a major training school for airline pilots across the continent. Canadian airlines would come to the school to hire grads as soon as they graduated, Zehr says.
But six months before he donned cap and gown, the airline industry went through a major economic crash. Dreams of a career piloting passenger jets evaporated.
Zehr signed on, instead, with a small commercial airline in Toronto where he flew planes for three years. But the home turf beckoned and he was lured back to
Waterloo Region in 1984 to help manage the family real estate business. Taking the helm of Zehr Group in the early 1990s, Don has put his own stamp on the company. Under his watch, Zehr Group’s suite of services has gradually expanded, especially on the construction side, where Levesque and MacDonald appear to have infused the firm with new energy. Nowadays Zehr Group offers a full gamut of services in commercial real estate from initial acquisition to development, construction, project management, asset management and property management. “One-stop shopping” is the what Levesque prefers to call it. The company’s ability to offer a broad range of services “puts us in a unique position in the marketplace,” adds Butt. Among the construction projects it has in the pipeline right now is a new building in Fort MacKay, Alberta, north of Fort McMurray. It’s being built for Mammoet, an industrial lifting and transportation company based in the Netherlands.
Through his property management work, Zehr met the owners of Mammoet, who hired Zehr Group first to build its new western Canada head office in Edmonton and then the plant in Fort MacKay.
Zehr Group is also building a new plant for Mammoet in Puslinch, south of Guelph.
Levesque is supervising the Alberta end of the company’s business, spending two weeks a month directing construction in Fort MacKay. “My forte is in the field,” he explains.
Zehr Group’s website also lists more than one million square feet of property under management, including Forest Glen Plaza and the Driftwood Centre in Kitchener and other sites in Waterloo, Brantford and Cambridge.
But properties can change from month to month depending on acquisitions and sales, says Butt. Zehr Group owns some, shares ownership in others and manages some for third-party owners.
With so many properties on the go or under management, it might seem as if Zehr Group employs hundreds. Not the case. A lean corps of 25 employees works out of an office on the second floor of a plaza at 607 King St. W. in Kitchener.
Zehr Group contracts out much of the work to an array of trades, subtrades and consultants. Even on the property management side, third-parties step into the fray.
Levesque and MacDonald are partners and shareholders with Zehr in Zehr Levesque, the construction arm of the business. The umbrella corporation, Zehr Group, is >>
>> owned by Zehr and the Zehr family trust.
While Levesque, MacDonald and Butt busy themselves with the day-to-day operations, Zehr is free to focus on the big picture, forge new relationships in the real estate industry and procure fresh projects.
Levesque calls him the “hopper fillerupper,” while Butt describes him as “our in-house Bono,” a reference to the leadsinger of the mega-successful Irish rock band U2 who also dabbles in business, philanthropy and social causes.
“Don is such a well-respected and active member of the community, he draws a crowd wherever he goes,” says Butt.
Though laid-back and easy-going, the man seems to ooze a Bono-like charisma.
“He’s so engaging that those who don’t know him, want to,” adds Butt.
And the boss does much more than wield a pick and shovel. The company is a major contributor to local charities while Zehr sits on the boards of the Grand River Hospital Foundation and Junior Achievement of Waterloo Region.
He also serves as a member of the Rotary Club of Kitchener, Downtown Action and Advisory Committee and the Centre in the Square business advisory committee.
If he feels any discomfort living in the shadow of his famous dad, Zehr doesn’t show it.
It’s not something he trumpets, but when prompted he speaks with pride about the Zehr patriarch, who was inducted into the Waterloo Region Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in 2010 and still lives in Kitchener at 87.
“He surrounded himself with great people. It’s what made his life successful and easier,” says Don. “I’m a great believer in that.”
Lester also treated everyone with respect, he says. Throughout Lester’s life, Don says he rarely heard a negative word said about his father.
Zehr Group’s work on the Tannery redevelopment in downtown Kitchener showcases the diverse strengths of the company. Now home to Google, Desire2Learn and the Communitech Hub incubator for high-tech startups, the Tannery has been a major catalyst for growth in the city’s core.
Zehr Group first jumped on board as property manager of the building, but when work began to renovate the sprawling old leather tannery, the company threw its hat in the ring. The owner at the time, Cadan Inc., liked its work so much, Zehr Group was hired to manage the bulk of interior renovations in the byzantine building.
In all, the company directed 20 separate construction projects over a 2½-year period inside the Tannery. The task was mindblowing in complexity, admits MacDonald.
“It was a complicated project in terms of
managing the paperwork on it. It was a big building with existing tenants inside the building, so it was a very, very challenging project.” Zehr Group met the challenge with flying colours, and for its efforts won a building excellence award from the Grand Valley Construction Association. A breather might have been expected after climbing this mountain, but not for Zehr Group. Next up was managing construction in the equally daunting Breithaupt Block, another giant old factory undergoing conversion into office space.
“We jumped into the Breithaupt Block with all the experience we learned from the Tannery,” says Levesque.
Taking on projects like this is no shortterm stroll in the park. Zehr Group has been on site for the past two years, managing the transformation for the Perimeter Development Corp., develop-
I’m so much in favour of light rail. I think it’s going to be a game-changer for our community and lead to an opportunity to become a world-class city.
Don Zehr
ers of the project. Renovation of the first two buildings has been completed, and Zehr Group is now eyeing a retrofit of the third building, at the corner of Breithaupt and King Streets.
Up on Northfield Drive in Waterloo, renovations are going full tilt on another Zehr Group project, called Northfield Station. There, it is converting an old water-bottling plant into new office space for Cineplex Digital Solutions.
Zehr takes pride in pointing out the old steel trusses, reclaimed wood and barn roofing that Zehr Group is blending into the structure. Next door, concrete stairwells have just been poured for a three-storey office building to house the accounting and tax consulting firm MNP, among other tenants.
It seems there’s no easing off on the accelerator at Zehr Group, especially when one gets a glimpse of its next big project.
Adorning the walls of its boardroom are drawings of a three-storey retail-office complex with glass office tower rising behind. This ambitious project is slated to replace the bland-looking strip mall at 607 King St. W. where Zehr Group’s head office resides.
Construction is still 18 months to two years away and awaits the installation of an underpass, so King Street can travel beneath the railway tracks.
Coupled with the nearby Breithaupt Block >>
>> and University of Waterloo health sciences campus, the Zehr Group project promises to dramatically transform a once moribund section of the city.
Among the reasons why it has such a grand vision for the site is Waterloo Region’s plan for light rail transit running along King Street and a transit hub at King and Victoria Streets.
Zehr bristles at critics who suggest the region can’t afford or doesn’t need a light rail transit system. Redevelopment of 607 King will boost taxes tenfold from that site, and create hundreds of construction and permanent jobs, he points out.
“I’m so much in favour of light rail. I think it’s going to be a game-changer for our community and lead to an opportunity to become a world-class city,” he says.
As if all this has not been enough, last fall Zehr Group dipped its toe in the hotel market for the first time, joining a partnership to purchase the historic Walper Hotel in downtown Kitchener. Plans include spending $3.5 million to convert the Walper into an upscale boutique hotel.
Tim Sittler, managing director with Mammoet Canada Eastern Ltd., doesn’t hesitate to sing the praises of Zehr Group.
About a decade ago, he personally invested in several commercial strip malls in Cambridge and Waterloo. A short time later, he met Zehr who offered to eliminate the hassle of managing the properties for Sittler.
When Mammoet began pricing a new building in Edmonton in 2006, it encountered problems with its Alberta general contractor. “Every time we had a meeting, the price went up one to two per cent,” Sittler recalls.
He suggested Mammoet hire Zehr Group to manage the project. Goodbye price increases, hello cost stability and an open-book policy, which brought transparency to the process.
“It allowed us to know we were getting a fair price,” Sittler says.
Zehr Group did such a great job with the Edmonton project that it was hired to manage construction of Mammoet’s Puslinch and Fort MacKay buildings.
One of Zehr Group’s key strengths is that it understands the local market, says Sittler. This might sound trite but not in a world of big-shot Toronto competitors who trumpet their experience but don’t always provide the required level of service, he says.
That and Zehr Group’s integrity are what separates it from the competition, Sittler says.
“I felt they were always straight up. If we have issues, we can call them and they get looked at.”
Despite marking his 30th anniversary this year at the helm of Zehr Group, the 57year-old Zehr has no plans to hang up the hard hat anytime soon. There’s still plenty of work to do and besides, he’s having too much fun.
“When you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t feel like you’re working. You’re doing what you want to do.”