A Saskatoon developer is looking for a new lead tenant to continue construction on a proposed seven-storey office building, overlooking the South Saskatchewan River. Construction at 509 12th Street is on-hold after the original tenant backed out, according to Modus Ventures Corp. The Broadway office development won’t move forward until a new anchor tenant to occupy the professional office space is found. “We’ve been working on this for four years,” Devin Stus, president of Modus Ventures, told CTV News. “We had to get the site rezoned, do all the detailed design, permitting. So we’re excited to find that new lead tenant to be able to keep going.” The building’s design includes retail space on the ground floor, above-ground parking on floors two through four, and office space on the upper three floors. Architecturally, the building’s design pays homage to the Prairies: plank-formed concrete reminiscent of Saskatoon’s bridges, reflective glass to catch sunsets and outdoor benches made from repurposed railroad steel. The site has remained vacant since 1988. Michael Bratvold, senior vice-president and managing director at CBRE, said finding large, lead tenants can be difficult in Saskatoon. “Anchoring tenants, large institutional-type tenants are not common here. We don’t have a lot of large companies that are headquartered in Saskatoon,” Bratvold said. “Most of our tenants are small and medium-sized businesses. And those tenants, while they’re critically important for any type of development, they’re smaller.” About 17 per cent of commercial office space in downtown Saskatoon is vacant, according to Bratvold. Bratvold said most of the vacancy is in the “B Class market” — real estate in good locations, but slightly older than newer A Class properties The construction of the River Landing towers shifted the market, according to Bratvold. “It emptied out a lot of our existing A Class product into the shiny, new space — creating vacancy,” Bratvold told CTV News. Once a tenant is secured at 509 12th Street, construction is expected to take two years.
