Posts Tagged building
Tomorrow Campaign
The Tomorrow Campaign is the story of a community’s journey. Although this story is focused on the present and the future, neither could exist before understanding some of the history of Toronto’s Jewish community.
The Jewish community of Toronto can trace its roots back to the 1800s. As the Jews of Eastern Europe, living under oppression and persecution, fled their towns and villages, many arrived in Toronto seeking freedom and a brighter future.
Regardless of which shtetl the new Torontonians came from and any hardships they faced, they all shared one common vision: a city that could sustain a growing population and fulfill their need to live vibrant Jewish lives.
In 1917, Toronto’s first Jewish federation — the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies — was incorporated, replacing the unorganized collection of individual Jewish charities, each knocking on doors and raising funds for their own causes. The Federation’s primary responsibility was fundraising for what was to become United Jewish Appeal.
As Toronto’s Jews became an increasingly organized, unified force, so too did their dreams. Understanding that the Jewish community would continue to grow due to the waves of immigration flooding into Toronto, their dreams turned to building a city where Jews could flourish and succeed.
In 1930 the YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association)was born, offering members various programming opportunities in rented rooms in the Brunswick Avenue and College Street area. By 1953 a new facility was built — the Bloor Street “Y” at Bloor and Spadina — today the Miles Nadal JCC, to house the growing membership of a burgeoning community.
As Jewish life began moving north up the Bathurst Street corridor, so too did the Jewish facilities and services. 1958 saw the groundbreaking of the North “Y,” the current Bathurst Jewish Community Centre.
Building for the
Next Generation
A tradition of one generation building Jewish infrastructure for the next was born. Many of the visionaries who worked tirelessly to ensure that the North “Y” was built, would never use the facility, live near it, or benefit personally from it. Nor would their own children. But these visionaries understood that a strong Jewish identity is fostered in a robust Jewish city, and the way to keep a community thriving is to keep meeting its needs.
UJA Federation’s Tomorrow Campaign is the next logical link in the chain that has connected Toronto’s Jewish community from one generation to the next. It is the Campaign that has worked to revolutionize Jewish Toronto, bringing our community to the forefront of innovation. It is the Campaign that will raise $350 million dollars to continue the tradition of building infrastructure to preserve and enrich Jewish identity and culture. It is the Campaign that will change the landscape of Jewish Toronto forever.
reviewed by Moishe Alexander, CFC CEO
http://tomorrowcampaign.com/index.php?action=history&camp_id=2
Property Woes Slam Cities Across Continent, But Not Vancouver
Moishe Alexander, CFC CEO : there is a basis for careful optimism.
The picturesque city of Vancouver, Canada, has turned into an unexpected oasis in the bleak desert of the commercial real-estate market.
In most cities in the U.S. and Canada, sales activity has frozen to a standstill. Would-be sellers are unwilling to accept the steep drops in value of office buildings, shopping centers and other commercial property. Even if they were, buyers can’t get financing.
But then there’s Vancouver, a city of about 578,000 people with views of the Pacific Ocean and the Coast Mountain range. Its office market has logged seven building transactions this year capped off by Germany-based Deka Immobilien’s recent $263 million purchase of Bentall V, a 33-story tower in the heart of the city’s district. Just as impressive, prices have held up well. By contrast, only five office properties valued at $5 million or more have sold in Manhattan in the first two quarters of this year, and average prices paid are off 32%, according to Real Capital Analytics, a New York-based real-estate research firm.
First of all, Vancouver’s office market hasn’t suffered the sharp increase in vacancies seen in most other cities. Vacancies are ticking up and putting pressure on rents. But the diversified economy, driven by a mix of companies that include mining, lumber and port-related businesses, and a lack of significant new construction leave it better positioned to weather the stormy global economy, brokers say. The first-quarter office vacancy in downtown Vancouver was 4.2%, below downtown Toronto’s 5.7% and downtown Calgary’s 6.9%, according to CB Richard Ellis. “It’s quite incredible compared to the rest of the country,” says David Eger, senior director with the Toronto-based Altus Group.
Such a high volume of sales is unusual for Vancouver, a city where small investors and pension funds are known for buying and holding properties. The seven office transactions that took place this year through May in downtown Vancouver, a city with a total of about 21 million square feet of office space, compared with two transactions in the year-earlier period, according to CB Richard Ellis.
But amid the global financial crisis, institutions have looked first at properties that have retained value as a less painful means of unlocking equity in their portfolios. The seller of Bentall V was SITQ Vancouver Inc., a real-estate subsidiary of Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. SITQ says it wasn’t under pressure to sell the building and only did so after getting an unsolicited bid. “We made a profit. That’s why we sold it,” says Amelie Plante, an SITQ spokeswoman. “It was very satisfying.”
Buyers in Vancouver have included Canadian pension funds and private investors, CB Richard Ellis says. Deka Immobilien Investment GmbH is a real-estate asset manager and a subsidiary of the DekaBank Group. The seven deals this year have had a total value of C$502 million (US$449 million).
By contrast, Manhattan, with some 1.6 million residents and about 366 million square feet of office space, saw the number of large office transactions this year through May slip to just five deals valued at a total of $984 million, from 45 sales in the year-earlier period, according to Real Capital Analytics. The average price paid per square foot in Vancouver this year fell just 2% to C$355 from the year-earlier period, compared with a 32% drop in Manhattan to $451.
The Bentall property sale price also has given hope to area sellers worried by deep discounting seen elsewhere. The nearly 100%-occupied building sold for a price that equates to a capitalization rate in the 6% range, just slightly higher than the 5.5% range it might have traded at during the height of the market a year or so ago, according to Jim Szabo, executive vice president with CB Richard Ellis, which represented Deka Immobilien in the transaction. Cap rates are closely watched valuation metrics in the commercial real-estate industry derived by dividing a building’s net operating income by the price paid.
http://futurerealestate.blogspot.com/2009/06/property-woes-slam-cities-across.html