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This article was published 9/1/2016 (2367 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Would-be homeowners are starting to boot, scoot and boogie to condominiums planned for the site of the now-closed Palomino Club.
Construction on a four-storey, 60-unit building to be called the Icon is scheduled to begin at the beginning of May and wrap up next spring.
Keith Merkel, president of the EdgeCorp Group, a local real estate development company spearheading the multimillion-dollar project on Portage Avenue, said about 20 per cent of the units have already been sold.
He said he typically won't go into the ground until at least 40 per cent of a building is spoken for, but he's confident that will happen.
"We just put signs on the building and our website went live Dec. 20. We haven't done any marketing, just the website and on Facebook," he said. "There's not a lot of new product in that area. You'd have to go (downtown)."
Before any work on the new building can be done, however, there's the matter of demolishing "the Pal," which will start in February.
"We're taking it down," he said, noting the process should take two to three weeks.
The Icon will be made up primarily of one- and two-bedroom condos with four three-bedroom units.
One-bedroom units start at $169,900 while two-bedroom condos start at $219,900. Each one comes with an indoor parking spot and all appliances.
Merkel said EdgeCorp has built a half-dozen condominium buildings and carved out a niche among price-conscious consumers.
"We're known for building affordable condos," he said, noting both buildings of the Station condos in Transcona sold out before construction had wrapped up.
Merkel doesn't have complete profiles of everyone who has bought so far, but the majority of them were patrons of the Palomino Club at one point or another.
"There's a certain intrigue to the whole thing because (the property) had been the Palomino Club," he said.
Cary Paul, who ran the Palomino Club since its inception in 1988, had planned to move the club into new premises downtown, but that deal fell apart. He is still mulling over the idea of reopening the country bar somewhere.
geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca
