Industry Heavyweights Join Forces

In a way, they are like the Avengers, according to one industry source. Allied Properties REIT is Thor. RioCan REIT is Ironman.

“Tell Ed I want to be Ironman,” Allied CEO Michael Emory told us, referencing his RioCan counterpart, Ed Sonshine. Michael spoke with us after the launch this week of The Well, a 7.5-acre integrated mixed-use neighbourhood in Downtown West, on the soon-to-be-former Globe and Mail building site. It's the fourth JV between the two titans. Diamond Corp is the third part of The Well troika. (Would that make them Nightcrawler? Nerds, help us out.)

JVs of this scale are a growing trend, Michael says: “The biggest opportunities tend to be enormous inner city opportunities that require different areas of expertise.” RioCan owns and manages Canada’s largest portfolio of shopping centres. Allied is one of the country’s leading owners, managers and developers of urban office environments. Diamond develops award-winning residential and mixed-use projects.

Just last week, there was word of another RioCan-Allied JV, a mixed-use project at Palmerston and College. Michael says the companies share the same philosophy when it comes to industry trends—especially an understanding about how urban cities are intensifying. RioCan is responding to tenants that want to locate downtown in major urban centres and serve the burgeoning populations. Allied has evolved as an office owner, developer, and operator around downtown cores.

Along with this shared view is “risk diversification,” Michael adds. “Neither RioCan nor Allied needs the other for capital.” However there is a limit as to how much development a real estate trust like RioCan and Allied can engage in. They can take on more projects by working together, spreading that development risk over a number of projects. Both companies do business in a similar fashion, and can make fast decisions when opportunities come up. (This whole article makes us want to call up our high school BFF and try to patch things up.)

Then there’s the social side--senior level people on both sides work well together. Michael has known Ed for years. “Ed said to me when he first proposed (the development that has turned into The Well), ‘If it works, we will do a lot of stuff together. And if it doesn’t, we won’t.’ That’s really how it is.” With the Palmerston-College project, when the broker approached Allied, they said they wouldn’t do it without RioCan. And RioCan told the broker they wouldn’t do it without Allied. If one had to bet, there will be many more JVs over the course of time, Michael adds.