Non-Residential

In an email to OBJ on Monday, Group Germain’s vice-president of operations, Hugo Germain, said the Quebec-based hotel chain is still working with the Ottawa International Airport Authority on a proposal to build a 180-room Alt Hotel that would be attached to the airport terminal.

Altea Active, which signed its lease with RioCan REIT last week, will take possession of the old Canadian Tire retail store on Carling Avenue in August.

Several prominent local real estate experts say they expect vacancies to keep rising as businesses rethink their space requirements.

More than half a million square feet of industrial space is in the works at two sites in west Kanata as developers scramble to satisfy demand for warehousing and light-manufacturing facilities in the city’s tightest submarket.

Speculation about alternate locations heated up last week when Mayor Mark Sutcliffe suggested the prime parcel of development land just west of downtown “is not the only option” for a new rink.

The Ottawa company in charge of developing and leasing a four-building industrial park near Amazon’s warehouse in Barrhaven says it expects a flood of calls from potential e-commerce and logistics tenants eager to capitalize on the city’s close proximity to major markets.

Empire Life, which marks its 100-year anniversary in 2023, is moving out of the iconic heritage building and office complex in downtown Kingston that has served as its home base since 1936.

Located just south of Hwy. 417 about 56 kilometres southeast of Ottawa, the facility is slated to open this spring and will serve as a parts distribution warehouse for Ford Motor Co., which has a 15-year lease on the property.

Building owners, property managers and other Ottawa commercial real estate insiders itching to get a sense of which assets the federal government plans to offload from its downtown office portfolio in the wake of COVID-19 will have to wait a little longer.