Real estate investment and management firm Colonnade BridgePort has expanded into Atlantic Canada, opening new offices in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as part of its long-term strategic growth plan.
The Ottawa-based company said Wednesday it has set up operations in Dartmouth, N.S., and the New Brunswick capital of Fredericton. As of Jan. 1, Colonnade BridgePort began managing more than one million square feet of industrial/flex space in the Halifax region, Fredericton and Moncton, N.B.
Colonnade BridgePort CEO Hugh Gorman said the East Coast “felt like a natural place to go” for the firm, which now manages more than 12.5 million square feet of office, industrial, retail and residential property in the National Capital Region, the Greater Toronto Area and southern Ontario as well as Atlantic Canada.
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“It’s a market where we feel like our services offering, the platform that we’ve got, would resonate with the people in that community,” Gorman told OBJ on Wednesday morning. “As we saw the opportunity with existing clients, we decided we would take the plunge.”
Created from the 2016 merger of Colonnade Management and BridgePort Group of Companies, Colonnade BridgePort is Ottawa’s largest privately owned property management company.
The firm’s recent push into the Maritimes follows its expansion into the Greater Toronto Area in 2018. The company further added to its footprint in southern Ontario last year when it agreed to take over management of more than 2.3 million square feet of industrial and retail space in Burlington, Brantford and Brampton that is owned by Toronto-based Fiera Real Estate.
Gorman said Colonnade BridgePort had received requests from existing clients to take over management of some of their properties on the East Coast, and the company decided the time was right to make the move.
“We’ve been evaluating a bunch of different markets, and that just seemed like a natural fit for us,” he said. “A lot of our clients are institutional, and they’ve got portfolios across the country. They understand our capabilities.”
The firm now has six employees in the region. Gorman says he expects its management portfolio in Atlantic Canada to continue to expand into other markets and asset classes, including office, retail and residential.
“We think there’s an opportunity for us to establish a larger presence there,” he said. “We’re always looking for opportunities to grow. Whether that’s through either merging or acquiring somebody down there or it’s through organic growth, we’ll be aggressively pursuing both of those growth opportunities.”
Major development pipeline
For now, Gorman said, Colonnade BridgePort is focusing solely on managing properties on the East Coast rather than launching new developments.
While the firm is “looking for opportunities to deploy capital” in new projects in Atlantic Canada, he said it will likely be at least a year before any concrete proposals are in place.
“That way we’ve got boots on the ground, people in the market and the deal flow who can help with understanding where the opportunities are in the market,” Gorman explained.
The expansion comes at a busy time for Colonnade BridgePort, which has a slew of major residential and mixed-use projects in its Ottawa development pipeline.
Asked if the company plans to expand to other parts of the country, Gorman said Colonnade BridgePort is “looking at all alternatives for growth” but added nothing is imminent.
“It’s about growing strategically and doing it in a way that allows us to improve our platform, as opposed to growing for the sake of growing and putting a lot of stress on the organization and as a result maybe compromising client service, which is the last thing we want to do,” he said.
