Apple Store at Conestoga Mall in Waterloo Opens

This week I had the pleasure of speaking with Ron Charles from CBC’s The National about the new Apple Store opening up in Waterloo’s Conestoga Mall, and why Apple was coming to a “non major urban centre.”

Apple Store soon to be joined by Target, others

As I told Ron, major retailers are tripping over each other trying to get to Waterloo – Target, Apple, Coach, Paderno, Spring Rolls, Oliver & Bonacini, Lee Valley, Sephora have all opened recently or are coming soon – because Waterloo Region has a great demographic – we skew younger, more educated, have more disposable income and are generally more tech savvy than many other regions in Canada. And the 70,000 students at WLU, UW and Conestoga College don’t hurt either !

To get a sense of how hot the Kitchener Waterloo commercial real estate market is for retailers, just drive down Ira Needles Blvd and take a look at The Boardwalk, 1 million square feet of premium retail space – and there are new retail developments on either side of it too.

Waterloo Region is now also one of the top 10 largest urban centers in Canada, and with the announcement of the Apple store coming to Burlington, Apple will have an official store in each centre.

Source: Ehmac.ca

I do not think they are opening a store here in response to RIM at all – I think that is a sensational perspective that some people are trying to see, but I don’t think it’s reflected in the reality.

The CBC clip also features Avvey Peters from Communitech discussing the health & vitality of Waterloo Region’s hi-tech sector, which is expanding every day.

And for the record, I’m a BlackBerry guy.

(All Apple Store photos are from ehmac.ca)

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3-333 Northlake Drive, Waterloo Ontario

Looking for a great condo in Waterloo, but don’t want to pay the prices that new buildings like Bauer and 144 Park are going at?  Take a look at this great two bedroom condo close to RIM, the Universities, the expressway, and picturesque trails & the St Jacobs Farmers Market.

Priced at under $150,000, this property offers exceptional value.

Tenants desire the location, which will only improve if plans for the LRT go ahead.  Also, there is almost a million square feet of new office space planned for across Weber Street, as we discussed here in Look Smart By Investing Where The Jobs Are.  Buying near new development has historically always been a good thing for real estate investors!

Take a look at the details below, and then email or call me ( 519 772 4376) to schedule a private viewing
Well maintained two bedroom condominium in a terrific Waterloo location near high tech companies like RIM, Descartes, AGFA, Google, Open Text, as well as the two Universities and Conestoga College.

There is a Light Rapid Transit (LRT) station planned  at Northfield & Parkside, a short walk away.

The proposed LRT plan would allow access to Uptown Waterloo, Fairview Park Mall, and eventually Sportsworld Crossing and into Cambridge, Ontario.

Offered for sale at $ 144,000

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Buy Property Near The Jobs!

Are you looking to invest in an area where the employment capacity is increasing? Take a look at residential investment properties near Weber Street North between Northfield and Benjamin Road.

This short stretch of road in North Waterloo adjacent to an investment property we just sold is seeing a lot of intensification through redevelopment. Let’s take a look at what’s in the pipeline:

North Waterloo Development Projects

580 Weber Street North, Former NCR Site

Purchased by GPM Investments in 2008 for ~ $20,000,000

Plans for 350,000 – 500,000 square feet of offices in 8-12 buildings

The former NCR site is huge – 37 acres with an existing building of approx 280,000 square feet as is.  To give you an idea of the expansion potential, the site currently houses a couple baseball fields.

GPM (the same firm that is developing Sportsworld Crossing) has plans to add an additional 8 buildings (between 2,670 and 50,000 sq ft) to the site, to compliment the existing building.  According to The Record, they’re debating whether to modify or replace the existing office building.

–

600 Weber Street North

Under redevelopment by the Marsland Corporation – 106,000 square feet

The Marsland Family owns some prominent office real estate in Kitchener Waterloo, including the Marsland Centre on Erb in Uptown Waterloo, two buildings RIM leases on Phillip, the Sybase building in the University of Waterloo Research & Technology park, and several Class A high-tech offices on Randall.

They are currently renovating their 100,000+ sq ft property at 600 Weber Street North, and have plans for a new 50,000 square foot building next door at 598 Weber Street North.  This site is immediately north of the NCR site

–

Redevelopment site, 630 Weber Street North

15 acres, existing building is 152,000 sq ft

This site, just south of Benjamin Road on Weber, is being redeveloped into a hi-tech office campus.  The site was recently sold by CBRE to Cooper Construction.

Location, Location, Location

Oh – there is also a proposed Light Rapid Transit (LRT) stop at Northfield and Parkside, one block from Northfield & Weber.  And SmartCentres just poured millions into a new retail development anchored by Walmart a minute away in St Jacobs.

Your future tenants enjoy things like that.

When you are investing in a residential rental property in Waterloo, you can buy one of the shiny new condos for $$$ in uptown, or buy a comparative bargain in the Northlake neighbourhood near major tech firms, new retail development and LRT.

Your money, your call. For a list of affordable investment opportunities in the North Waterloo area, send me an email at Benjamin @ BenjaminBach.com or call me at 519-772-4376

Note: Leasing at the NCR site is handled through Colliers; 600 Weber is for lease through DTZ Barnicke.

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RIM, the Waterloo, Ontario based manufacturer of the BlackBerry, made big news in the technology world today with the unveiling of the PlayBook, their new iPad competitor. (see The iPad and Real Estate: What you need to know)

RIM is a major employer in Waterloo Region, so real estate investors who buy property here like to keep tabs on what RIM is up to.  Recently, there has been concern that BlackBerry’s were losing their “cool” factor – this announcement will make a lot of people happy.

From the official press release:

Perfect for either large organizations or an “army of one”, the BlackBerry PlayBook is designed to give users what they want, including uncompromised web browsing, true multitasking and high performance multimedia, while also providing advanced security features, out-of-the-box enterprise support and a breakthrough development platform for IT departments and developers. The incredibly powerful and innovative BlackBerry PlayBook is truly a game-changing product in the growing tablet marketplace.

“RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry with cutting-edge hardware features and one of the world’s most robust and flexible operating systems,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “The BlackBerry PlayBook solidly hits the mark with industry leading power, true multitasking, uncompromised web browsing and high performance multimedia.”

The Tablet You’ll Want to Take Everywhere

This beautifully designed and incredibly powerful tablet is ultra portable, ultra thin and super convenient for both work and play. Measuring less than half an inch thick and weighing less than a pound, the BlackBerry PlayBook features a vivid 7″ high resolution display that looks and feels great in your hand. With such a unique mix of utility, performance and portability, you’ll want to take it everywhere.

The New Benchmark in Tablet Performance

At its heart, the BlackBerry PlayBook is a multitasking powerhouse. Its groundbreaking performance is jointly fueled by a 1 GHz dual-core processor and the new BlackBerry Tablet OS which supports true symmetric multiprocessing. Together, the abundant processing power and highly sophisticated OS enable the BlackBerry PlayBook to provide users with true multitasking and a highly-responsive and fluid touch screen experience for apps and content services.

Uncompromised Web Browsing

With support for Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1, Adobe® Mobile AIR® and HTML-5, the BlackBerry PlayBook provides customers with an uncompromised, high-fidelity web experience and offers them the ability to enjoy all of the sites, games and media on the web. For more than a decade, the mobile industry has worked to bridge the gap between the “real web” and mobile devices through various apps and technologies and, in fact, a significant number of mobile apps today still simply serve as a proxy for web content that already exists on the web. The BlackBerry PlayBook closes that gap and brings the real, full web experience to mobile users while also opening new and more exciting opportunities for developers and content publishers.

High Performance Multimedia

The BlackBerry PlayBook features premium multimedia features to support high-quality mobile experiences. It includes dual HD cameras for video capture and video conferencing that can both record HD video at the same time, and an HDMI-out port for presenting one’s creations on external displays. The BlackBerry PlayBook also offers rich stereo sound and a media player that rivals the best in the industry.

BlackBerry Integration

For those BlackBerry PlayBook users who carry a BlackBerry smartphone*, it will also be possible to pair their tablet and smartphone using a secure Bluetooth® connection. This means they can opt to use the larger tablet display to seamlessly and securely view any of the email, BBM™, calendar, tasks, documents and other content that resides on (or is accessible through) their smartphone. They can also use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data. This secure integration of BlackBerry tablets and smartphones is a particularly useful feature for those business users who want to leave their laptop behind.

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‘Waterloo on the radar of every business person,’ U.S. ambassador says

By Greg Mercer, Record staff

WATERLOO REGION — United States Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson paid his first visit to Waterloo Region — a place known around the world for innovation, he said — with radar, BlackBerrys and theoretical physics on his mind.

Before returning to Ottawa late yesterday afternoon, the former Chicago lawyer and President Obama fundraiser made three official visits here: at Research In Motion, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and Waterloo radar systems maker Raytheon Canada. The places he chose may say a lot about how this region is viewed as a centre for technology and research by his administration in Washington.

“I’ve known about Waterloo for quite some time, particularly about the innovation that goes on here between the business community, tech community and the universities,” Jacobson said, during an interview at the Record. “Waterloo is on the radar of every business person in the world.”

He described himself as “one of BlackBerry’s best customers” — and one of its first — and said the chance to meet with co-CEO Jim Balsillie at RIM’s world headquarters was a thrill. His boss, Barack Obama, is a well-known user of RIM’s smart phones.

“It’s kind of like going to the Holy Grail for me and my boss, the president,” Jacobson said.

He described his visit as a learning trip, part of his broader plan to get to know Canada better since becoming ambassador last October.

Yesterday afternoon, he was given a crash course in string theory and other out-there ideas in the world of physics from the Perimeter Institute. The ambassador met with institute director Neil Turok and wanted to know about how PI’s model of bringing together experts from various backgrounds could work for similar “centres of excellence” in African nations.

“I’m very interested in their efforts in math and science in Africa,” he said, before his visit.

Perimeter spokesperson John Matlock said the institute is “happy to share our model with the world,” and pleased the ambassador has taken an interest in its work. But Jacobson is far from the first international visitor to want to see the region’s successful formula for combining research and innovation with commercial ventures.

Jacobson’s final stop of the day was at Raytheon Canada, the company that makes all the radars used at U.S. airports. Jacobson wanted to know how the company’s high-frequency surface wave radar systems, recently bought by the Romanian government for surveillance on the Black Sea, could be used to improve American border security, said Raytheon general manager Brian Smith.

“He understood we had some very interesting technology in that sector and he wanted to see it first hand,” Smith said. “We’re not just on his radar, we are his radar.”

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Google Buzz, the latest Social Media platform, came out of Google’s office that I drive past every day, right here in Waterloo Ontario.

http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/technology/story.html?id=2542955

Just as Google’s simplistic homepage belies the advertising power, technological sophistication and global reach of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, Google Waterloo’s unassuming offices appear a cover for what has become a rising star among Google’s network of regional offices.

Since its opening in 2005, Google’s Waterloo operations have grown from three employees to a team of several dozen and have become one of the company’s most vital recruitment centres and product development hubs.

Yesterday, the technology world watched as Google unveiled Google Buzz, a new tool that adds social-networking capabilities popularized by such sites as Facebook and Twitter to the company’s Gmail email service. Although millions of Gmail users around the world will begin using Buzz today, most will be unaware that the Google Waterloo team played an integral role in the creation of Buzz. 

Whether it’s building Gmail and YouTube applications for the iPhone and BlackBerrys, sowing the seeds for the company’s ambitious Chrome operating system or refining Google’s core advertising technology, Google Waterloo’s engineers are key players in many of the company’s most ambitious and strategic initiatives.

*******

Google, much like other technology giants before it, sees the University of Waterloo and the surrounding region as one of its top three recruitment centres for undergraduates, alongside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

"Waterloo graduates and people from this area who come into Google … have done really well, not just at this site, but other sites and Mountain View," Mr. Woods says.

RIM’s connection to the University of Waterloo and its ability to use the school’s engineering and computer science departments as a de facto farm system has been well documented. Other home-grown tech companies, including Open Text, have also recruited heavily from the university.

Microsoft Corp. is another tech giant that has viewed the Waterloo region as a key recruitment location. Microsoft chairman and co-founder Bill Gates has been a regular visitor to the university over the years to speak to students.

…

Still, it is not just the nearby wealth of talent that makes Google Waterloo special. The engineers here are at the centre of a number of projects key to Google’s strategy going forward. According to several internal metrics, Google Waterloo has more impact per engineer than any other Google site.

When it comes to Google’s online advertising business – the lifeblood of the company and its primary revenue generator – Google Waterloo is responsible for overseeing and refining key pieces of the company’s advertising technology.

 

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Exciting news announced yesterday: Tim Jackson (@timothyjackson on twitter) has been appointed CEO of the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo.  The Accelerator Centre is one of the premier high tech incubation centres in the world, housing 26 hi tech companies. It is in the Research and Tech Park at the University of Waterloo, across from RIM, Google, and more.

Congrats Tim!

Tim Jackson new CEO of Accelerator Centre
TheRecord.com

WATERLOO – Technology entrepreneur Tim Jackson is taking on another assignment.

Jackson, a partner of venture capital firm Tech Capital Partners and a board member of several local non-profit organizations, is the new chief executive officer of the Accelerator Centre, a technology business incubator in the University of Waterloo Research and Technology Park.

He also has been appointed associate vice-president of commercialization at the university, it was announced today.

“His dynamism and passion for entrepreneurship have been instrumental in building Waterloo Region’s technology leadership on the world stage, and his hands-on leadership will be invaluable in advancing commercialization technologies incubated within the university setting,” UW president David Johnston said in a news release.

The Accelerator Centre was launched in 2006 to help accelerate the growth of emerging technology businesses. It offers supports services as well as office space, and currently is home to more than 25 startups.

Jackson, who previously served as the centre’s vice-chair, will continue in his role as partner of Tech Capital.

Jackson co-founded the Waterloo-based venture capital firm with Andrew Abouchar after serving as chief executive officer of PixStream, a video networking startup that was shut down in 2001, just months after Cisco Systems bought it for $550 million.

Tech Capital invests in technology companies that serve the wireless, communications, new media and internet markets. Local companies it has invested in include Sandvine, Covarity, Avvasi, Coreworx, Livehive Systems and Metranome.

Jackson also has a high profile in the non-profit sector. He is the president of the board of the Food Bank of Waterloo Region, chair of the Waterloo Public Library Board and chair of the board of Centre in the Square. He recently completed a term as chair of the board of the Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum.

Jackson also has been a key player in efforts to have Kitchener and Waterloo hold a referendum in this fall’s municipal elections on the issue of holding merger talks between the two cities.

He also has been heavily involved in efforts led by the Prosperity Council of Waterloo Region to boost funding for local arts organizations.

At the Accelerator Centre, Jackson succeeds Tom Corr, who recently was appointed president and chief executive officer of the Ontario Centres of Excellence.

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Long time readers of our Investment Real Estate Blog will remember the BMO Report I discussed in the post ‘Why People across Canada Invest in Kitchener Waterloo Real Estate’ about the region and the great economic fundamentals and conditions contributing to the growth, and here is even more support for this viewpoint:

“Waterloo is the new tech capital of the country”

So says Karen Mazurkewich in this weekend’s National Post.

A horse waiting patiently in the left turning lane - Waterloo, Ontario

“In this former agricultural heartland, still heavily populated with stoic Mennonite farmers, the story is upbeat. The tech sector here generates more than $15-billion per year, and the employment growth rate is 7%, significantly higher than Ottawa or Toronto.

Technology firms in the Waterloo region employ 28,000 people, and there are at least 2,000 more jobs looking to be filled. The community now boasts 550 technology companies, including the region’s anchors: Research in Motion (RIM), Open Text, the largest software company in the country; and Christie Digital Systems Inc., make of a high-end projection system, to name a few.”

RIM, one of the major businesses in the area, continues to see growth in their market share:

RIM dethrones Apple as US BlackBerry sales in Q1 soar

“According to recent analysis by The NPD Group, the BlackBerry Curve was America’s best selling smartphone in Q1 of 2009. It steals the title from the iPhone of course.”

BlackBerry Curve 8300 Series Chops iPhone in Q1 Sales

“RIM’s consumer smartphone market share increased 15 percent to nearly 50 percent of the smartphone market in Q1 2009 versus the prior quarter, as Apple’s and Palm’s share both declined 10 percent each”

Also, as I mentioned in my twitter stream (follow me at http://twitter.com/benjaminbach or by clicking in the Twitter box on the right!), Blackberry is now 16th on the Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands (pdf link), ahead of Disney, Visa, AT&T and Mercedes Benz, among others.  Impressive for a relatively young company!

What does all this mean to You as an investor ?  Well, while many local economies are seeing limited growth (and remember, the real estate market is going to reflect the local economy), the local economy around here is humming along, companies are hiring, the employment growth rate is “significantly” above that of Toronto and Ottawa.

Where jobs are, people go. That’s where you want to invest!

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