General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[MidTowner]

That one has been mentioned here before. It's actually up for sale right now.

[tomh009]

54 Queen South is looking quite good now.  Similar to the Working Centre, but not identical.  A big improvement to the facade on this block, I think.  Black Arrow Bicycles is due to move into the building in February.

[KevinL]

Another look at 54 Queen. I like the new sign for Queen Street Yoga.

[Spokes]

I wonder if the city of Kitchener will expand it's King St Facade incentives to the rest of the downtown at some point?

[mpd618]

Both of the ground floor spaces in the Kitchener Market on the King/Eby side seem to have active interior work happening.

[Viewfromthe42]

And in other news...

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Big development in downtown Kitchener will be announced Monday. Look here more deets. We are talking about a global brand folks.</p>&mdash; TerryPender (@TerryPender) <a href="[url=https://twitter.com/TerryPender/status/695625993432735744">February]https://twitter.com/TerryPender/status/695625993432735744">February[/url] 5, 2016</a></blockquote>

[Lens]

Shot in the dark that it's a redev. of the Tannery site including the old hide house building with a major anchor tenant. Maybe Tesla is investing in the area?

[MidTowner]

That’s probably not the worst guess. There were a few stories about Stratford wanting to become a cold-weather real-world test site for autonomous cars that national and international media saw fit to publish. And Tesla has worked in the past with Toyota. Establishing a presence in Waterloo Region wouldn’t be illogical for them.

Rumours said it was a “professional services” (or something) firm that would be opening in that space, though, if I recall correctly.

[notmyfriends]

McAfee moving downtown might make sense, maybe bringing some Intel work back to town with it, if we're taking shots in the dark.

[ookpik]

Shot in the dark that it's a redev. of the Tannery site including the old hide house building with a major anchor tenant. Maybe Tesla is investing in the area?

Close: GM launches innovation lab at Communitech 

Initially, the lab in the Tannery building will focus on advanced smartphone applications for connected vehicles, autonomous driving technology and new approaches to sharing electric and autonomous vehicles...

[jgsz]

Could it be the Charles/Gaukel development that 'insider' was hinting at in September?

[rangersfan]

Jgsz, that is what I was thinking but I remembered that the Tannery building was supposed to have a global tenant announced soon. Whatever the case is I am looking forward to meeting more about it.

[panamaniac]

Deloitte will occupy the tannery building that is being restored.

In other news, Stantec has now moved out of its Market Square office. The optimist in me wants to see this as an opportunity for some upgrades at Market Square.

[MidTowner]

How many Deloitte jobs are planned in the Tannery?

I'm going to enjoy seeing their logo in downtown Kitchener. They're bigger than KPMG.

[tomh009]

Deloitte will occupy the tannery building that is being restored.

That's definitely good news for the downtown, even though for Kitchener overall it's fairly neutral (Deloitte currently has a fairly large facility near Sportsworld).