Former Watergate investigator joins Avison Young

Legendary commercial real estate executive Stephen Leopold has returned to his Quebec roots.
Avison Young announced Tuesday that Leopold has been appointed chair of the brokerage firm's Quebec operations.
Leopold, whose career spans four decades, will advise on strategy and growth in the Quebec marketplace.
In the 1970s, he served as an investigator on U.S. Senator Sam Ervin's Watergate Committee, which investigated former president Richard Nixon. In the 1980s, Leopold, a Montreal native, acted as executive assistant to Brian Mulroney during a successful Progressive Conservative Party leadership campaign that helped him become prime minister.
Leopold's many commercial real estate career highlights include serving as vice-president of Canada's largest mortgage bank, now known as RBC Capital; forming his own firm, Montreal-based Leopold Property Consultants, which became the largest North American company to represent corporate users of space; and conceiving and creating Skymarkets in the World Trade Center. In 2002, he was appointed chairman of William B. May International in New York, which was founded in 1866 and ranks as one of North America's oldest brokerages.
Avison Young chair and CEO Mark Rose says Leopold's appointment is part of the company's aggressive expansion plan and demonstrates its increasingly significant presence in North America.
Leopold will be based in Avison Young's Montreal office.

Investors showing more confidence as 2009 ends

Signs continue to point to a significant rebound in Canada's commercial real estate market in 2010.
While bloggers and tweeters in the U.S. are fretting about an impending market crash, the Canadian market is quietly moving into position for a turnaround. As 2009 comes to an end, institutional investors, especially REITs, continue to shore up their balance sheets and scout properties to purchase.
In many cases these days, the decision not to buy is based on a lack of supply, especially in in downtown Vancouver, where a new office tower is not expected to be built before 2013. Avison Young brokers predict that many investors will come off the sidelines next year as the effects of the global financial meltdown ease and they gain more clarity on their own business operations.
The general feeling, notably in Toronto and other Eastern Canadian markets, is that the worst of the recession is over. Investors will show considerably more confidence in 2010, especially if employment, considered a key commercial real estate benchmark, continues to rise.
A number of large transactions, ranging in price from $25 to $212 million are already in the works. They include Dundee REIT's announced acquisition of the 655,000-square-foot Adelaide Place office complex in Toronto for $211.5 million, which is slated to close in February.
Other pending deals range from office buildings in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa to large retail properties in Calgary and apartment buildings in Montreal.
The next 12 months should not break many records, especially when you consider the well documented glut of office vacancy in Calgary. But 2010 is expected to put commercial real estate investors in a better mood than they were this year.

(Follow Monte Stewart on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MonteStewart.)