Allied Properties Real Estate Investment Trust has acquired five infill properties and expects to close on a sixth before year-end. A cumulative fourth quarter investment of $125 million will secure sites in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver, in keeping with REIT’s portfolio of brick-and-beam office and converted light industrial properties with potential for mixed-use intensification.
Properties include:
- 668 King Street West, a 17,400-square-foot site currently housing a fully leased two-storey building, at the corner of King and Bathurst Streets in Toronto;
- 644 Courcelle Street, a four-storey brick-and-beam building with 64 associated surface parking spaces in Montreal’s Saint-Henri neighbourhood;
- 802 11th Avenue SW, a 7,300-square-foot one-storey building with 19 associated surface parking spaces, which will give Allied REIT contiguous ownership of a half-block in Calgary’s Beltline district; and
- Three Vancouver properties, collectively representing 81,500 square feet of leasable space in the Yaletown and Gastown submarkets.
“We’re particularly delighted to have achieved meaningful penetration in urban Vancouver at a time when it’s clearly transforming into a primary Canadian office market,” maintains Michael Emory, Allied REIT’s president and chief executive officer.
Allied’s active development program and acquisition strategy for 2019 will draw on $250 million of upward refinancing on the REIT’s $150 million unsecured term loan, which had been coming due in mid-December. Cecilia Williams, the REIT’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, affirms Allied will begin the new year with room to manoeuvre.
“In addition to funding our acquisitions in the fourth quarter, it will assist us in pursuing our development program over the next four years with financial flexibility and discipline,” she says.
