The Glove Box | 6 fl | U/C

[nms]

Thanks for sharing the other businesses along the Uptown strip. I stand corrected, that at least in Uptown, there are a variety of shops, but there are still some empty spaces that have remained empty for a longer period of time. It will be interesting to see if Kitchener manages the same thing in their new builds.

[tomh009]

I wonder what kind of shops will move in there. Seems like half the time it's just restaurants (which is fine) but little else moves in downtown Kitchener. Very few or outright no clothing stores, shoe shoes, art stores, entertainment places, unique shops, computer stores, gift stores, hobby stores etc. You can take 3-4 blocks of any generic neighbourhood in the Toronto core and find more interesting stuff there than all of our downtown. Here it's usually just restaurants, banks, realtors, weed shops and other generic stuff. There's still very little to bring people from the suburbs downtown unless they're eating out or going to a one off event at like...a bar or to watch a band.

Big clothing stores need big space and lots of customers. I don't think we're there yet.

But we do have yoga clothing in DTK. Used clothing. T-shirts. Comic books. Used books. Used records. Used videos. Bicycles. Army surplus. Shoes. Household goods. A wide variety of ethnic grocers. An urban grocer. An organic grocer. A greengrocer. Flowers. Baked goods. Skin care/cosmetics. Jewelry.

Although we do want and need more, it's not nothing.

[nms]

Another factor is the per square foot rent. Are the rents in these new buildings significantly different than the commercial rents elsewhere?

[ZEBuilder]

I'm reviving this from the dead, but the office market in downtown Kitchener seems to be picking up again after a bit of a pause over the last few years. This building has had 3 different leases signed in the last 3 months, two smaller ones each around 6,500 sqft and a much larger one at 27,000 sqft. In total it's close to 30% of the building leased in the last 6 months.


KPMG already occupy's the sixth floor, Richardson Wealth occupies part of the third, Sunlife occupies part of the fourth, JLL occupies part of the second. The leases recently signed are for the 5th floor, part of the 2nd and another unit that I don't know maybe the rest if the 3rd? Regardless the building is almost fully leased now save for the ground floor three small units on the 2nd floor and whats left of the 4th.