Exchange continues to create a buzz

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This article was published 15/08/2016 (3375 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city’s historic Exchange District continues to act as a magnet for professional- and creative-services companies.

The Exchange District Business Improvement Zone doesn’t keep a running tally of how many of these types of companies — concerns such as architect and engineering firms, software-development companies, design studios and advertising and marketing agencies — there are in area.

“But there’s a whole whack of them,” BIZ executive director Brian Timmerman said recently.

The latest one to migrate to the area is 6P Marketing, which moved into the seven-storey Ryan Building at 44 Princess St., at the end of July.

Company president and founder Paul Provost said 6P needed to find a new home because it had outgrown its old office on Mulvey Avenue. He said he never considered moving to anywhere but the Exchange.

“I’ve always had a fascination with the Exchange District. It’s a beautiful, gorgeous area. It’s also a vibrant area of the city and one that has some of the most positive buzz and energy of any area in the city.”

Another plus was all the other creative-services firms in the area.

“Over the last five to 10 years it has become quite the little creative hub,” Provost said. “There is just such an entrepreneurial and industry flair here that is just not that easy to replicate anywhere else.”

He also noted several of 6P’s clients are located in the office towers at Portage and Main, “so this makes it really easy for them” if they need to come to the office, he added.

Provost said his co-workers also like the fact there are other communications and marketing agencies in the area.

“It allows our creative talent to feel they are at the heart of the industry and close to where their colleagues are.”

6P leased the entire third floor of the century-old Ryan building. The roughly 4,000-square-foot space is triple the size of its old office, Provost said, “so it really does give us room to grow.”

Provost admitted he initially was worried office space in the Exchange might be too expensive for 6P. “But it ended up being quite comparable” to the cost of similar space in other areas of the city, he said.

‘There is just such an entrepreneurial and industry flair here that is just not that easy to replicate anywhere else’– Paul Provost

Timmerman said he’s been told the average rental rate for the area is $15 to $17 per square foot, which he described as “reasonable.”

He said the influx of professional- and creative-services companies to the area began about a decade ago. Asked why he thinks they’re drawn to the area, he said, “These are very creative, forward-thinking people, and I think they just want to be in a cool and funky space when they get to work. A lot of the times they want the open-office concept, and the buildings in the Exchange kind of fit that bill.”

With the arrival of 6P, there is only one small office still vacant in the 36,000-square-foot Ryan Building, said the president of the family-owned Winnipeg company that owns and manages the building — Leon A. Brown Ltd.

Bob Brown also noted there were already a number of other professional- and creative-services firms leasing space in the building, including an architecture firm, an engineering firm and a couple of designers. There is also a computer company, a printing firm and a map-publishing company.

He said Leon A. Brown acquired the building in the 1980s, basically gutted the interior and installed new plumbing, electrical and sprinkler systems. It also created two residential units in the building. One takes up about half of one floor as part of a home/office-type of arrangement. The other is a 1,500-square-foot penthouse unit that was built on the roof.

Brown said the building has been fully occupied most of the time since the renovations were completed. Timmerman said while there used to be quite few empty, or near-empty, buildings in the Exchange, that has changed in the last five years.

“I’m seeing a lot of buildings, even ones that have been vacant for a few years, starting to fill up now.”

The seven-storey, 77,000-square-foot Bedford Building at the corner of King Street and McDermot Avenue is one of the buildings that had struggled to find tenants. But the property manager for the Winnipeg firm that owns the building — Bedford Investments — has recently made some headway in filling some of the building’s vacant space.

Judy Hansen said the second floor is now fully leased, and there are also tenants on the third and seventh floor. (Bedford occupies the main floor).

“Now we’ve just got to sandwich the middle,” she added.

She said an out-of-province construction company recently leased about 4,200 square feet on the second floor. But she’s not at liberty yet to disclose the name of the new tenant.

With that signing, the building is now about 35 per cent occupied, she added.

Hansen said a lot of the prospective tenants she encountered are looking for smaller spaces to rent, and Bedford has mainly larger spaces in its building.

“But sometimes you get some that come along that are looking for a larger space. So if you’re lucky, and you offer them a half-decent deal, they then generally they’ll take it,” she added.

Know of any newsworthy or interesting trends or developments in the local office, retail, or industrial real estate sectors? Let real estate reporter Murray McNeill know at the email address below, or at 204-697-7254.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca