A veteran Winnipeg real estate company best known for retail projects is seeing opportunities in both the multi-family and industrial sectors.
Shindico Realty plans to break ground early next year for a 124-suite apartment building at Grant Park Festival, a big-box centre in south Winnipeg.
Sandy Shindleman, president of Shindico, said the plan is to lease out the $60 million, four-storey building in the fall of 2021. The concrete, steel and glass structure will also have 1.2 parking spots per unit.
If the company can attract a major office tenant, it will also build a 60,000-square-foot office building on the same property.
This isn’t a one-off residential experiment for Shindico. Shindleman said the company plans to rezone land west of the shopping centre for a pair of residential towers. Both will have a high “walk score.”
“Residents will be able to [walk] to get groceries, go to restaurants and go to movies at [nearby] Grant Park Shopping Centre,” he said.
Shindico has recently invested in residential rental construction in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.
“We still maintain our expertise [in retail] but in order to do more, we have to go where the market is. We’ve gained a lot of experience over the past few years. We’re bringing the best practices to Winnipeg,” he said.
Shindico is also branching out into industrial space and plans to build an approximately 40,000-square-foot building on spec in the Plessis Business Park in north Winnipeg on more than 22 acres of zoned land it acquired recently.
Winnipeg’s overall vacancy rate in the industrial market rose to 3.3 per cent in the second quarter, up from 2.7 per cent in the first three months of this year, according to Colliers International.
“Tenants moving to newer buildings is creating vacancies and landlords are marketing their older inventory before the influx of newly constructed buildings arrive,” noted Colliers.
More than 600,000 square feet of new industrial space is expected to be complete in Winnipeg over the next 12 months, including 175,000 square feet under construction at Northwest Business Park.
