Category: Hicks on Biz columns from The Edmonton Sun
Hicks on Biz columns from The Edmonton Sun
Hundreds of truckers joined the Truck Convoy in Nisku on December 19, 2018 to support the oil and gas industry in Alberta.Larry Wong / POSTMEDIA NETWORK
By GRAHAM HICKS
What a contradictory year 2018 has been for metropolitan Edmonton’s business community.
On the one hand, Edmonton entrepreneurs are growing super frustrated.
For the fourth year in a row, they’ve been double-clutching through non-stop muck, barely making any progress, seeing profit margins drop from 10 or 20 per cent to two-to-three per cent, dipping into the red ink for longer and longer periods of time. The doors are staying open, but barely.
The big truck convoy protest out at Nisku earlier this week, 2,000 trucks strong, gave shape to that frustration. The ‘S’ word — separation — no matter how hypothetical, is working its way back into the political conversation.
On the other hand, there’s growing resiliency and resolve.
The small-to-medium sized enterprise ...
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The JW Marriott hotel in the Edmonton Ice District reaches into the clouds on March 19, 2018.Shaughn Butts / Postmedia, file
By GRAHAM HICKS
Enough of this pipeline doom ‘n’ gloom!
‘Tis time to be a tad optimistic about Edmonton’s future. (I’ll try to be optimistic. In my heart of hearts, I am dead worried about the future of my children in this province.)
Three major land-use projects are underway in the downtown.
If properly done, prudently funded, they should gently contribute to the city’s economic wellbeing and quality of life.
The one I like best — the Central Warehouse Park — is well underway.
The City of Edmonton is creating a big (1.4 acres — about a square city block) new, traditional city park in the downtown.
It’s north of Jasper Avenue, from 106 Street to halfway between 107 and 108 Streets. Think of the surface parking lots behind the big Boston Pizza building (at Jasper and 106 Street), behind Audr ...
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The JW Marriott hotel in the Edmonton Ice District reaches into the clouds on March 19, 2018.Shaughn Butts / Postmedia, file
By GRAHAM HICKS
Enough of this pipeline doom ‘n’ gloom!
‘Tis time to be a tad optimistic about Edmonton’s future. (I’ll try to be optimistic. In my heart of hearts, I am dead worried about the future of my children in this province.)
Three major land-use projects are underway in the downtown.
If properly done, prudently funded, they should gently contribute to the city’s economic wellbeing and quality of life.
The one I like best — the Central Warehouse Park — is well underway.
The City of Edmonton is creating a big (1.4 acres — about a square city block) new, traditional city park in the downtown.
It’s north of Jasper Avenue, from 106 Street to halfway between 107 and 108 Streets. Think of the surface parking lots behind the big Boston Pizza building (at Jasper and 106 Street), behind Audr ...
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Alberta Premier Rachel Notley (Right), United Conservatives leader Jason Kenney (Left)
By GRAHAM HICKS
What in God’s name is this spend-until-we’re-bankrupt socialist Alberta government doing, announcing a purchase of $350 million worth of railroad oil tankers to move an extra 120,000 barrels of dilbit (diluted bitumen oil) a day – about 4% of Alberta’s current daily oil output?
Look – we all knew the oilsands crisis was going to happen, as sure as night follows day.
And now the day of reckoning has arrived.
Oilsands production has grown. New extraction plants started before the 2014 oil-price collapse are now on stream. The ability to move additional oil from Fort McMurray via pipeline, as has been explained ad nauseum, has not.
The smart oil-patch money knew this would happen.
They knew the soft and wishy-washy Justin Trudeau federal government, for political reasons, would passively allow this economic crisis to happen.
The smart oil-patch money – l ...
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Premier Rachel Notley speaking at the Rural Municipalities of Alberta at the Shaw Conference Centre on November 20, 2018 in Edmonton.Shaughn Butts / Postmedia
By Graham Hicks
FINALLY!
In Calgary, the taxpayers finally spoke with a loud, clear voice.
No Olympic bid! We can’t afford it!
For once, the madness of profligate government spending has been curbed.
The irresistible attraction of politicians like Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi to firmly fix their fingers around glittering baubles with no realistic return has been thwarted.
Imagine! Spending unnecessary millions/billions when Calgary’s commercial tax base has dried up due to half-empty office towers, when Calgary has such a high unemployment rate — not necessarily among the lesser-skilled, but also of skilled professionals.
Imagine! This drowning-in-debt New Democrat party, that will govern Alberta for at least the next six months, was prepared to spend yet another $700 million (that it did not have) ...
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In 2017, after extensive negotiations/discussions with city planners, city council approved a revised Century Park master plan, reflecting current urban trends with more, but smaller apartment units.Elise Stolte, Postmedia Network
Two-parts businessman, one-part dreamer.
You don’t know him, but the fingerprints of George Schluessel, president and CEO of real-estate development company ProCura and the new Optown, are all over Edmonton.
ProCura is behind the re-boot of the 42-acre, 4,000-unit Century Park urban village, snugged in beside the LRT’s southwest terminal. By comparison, downtown Edmonton has 10,000 apartments/condos.
ProCura is now building Central Tower, the fifth of up to 10 architecturally impressive residential towers within Century Park’s grand urban plan.
Downtown, ProCura has transformed Jasper Avenue and 109 Street, re-fitting and re-imagining the once-aging Associated Engineering Tower (now WSP Place) and the gleaming black Intact office building. Two new ProC ...
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Robyn Luff, MLA for Calgary-East poses for a photo in her Calgary office on Aug. 20, 2018.Al Charest/Postmedia
DOES ANYBODY KNOW THESE PEOPLE?
When the Alberta NDP government was elected in May of 2015, the same question reverberated through business circles. “Does anybody KNOW any of these people?”
Outside of their own constituencies, you still hardly see or hear from those NDP MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) who are not cabinet ministers.
Representing Metropolitan Edmonton constituencies for the NDP are Erin Babcock, Jon Carson, Estefania Cortes-Vargas, Lorne Dach, Nicole Goehring, Trevor Horne, Jessica Littlewood, Rod Loyola, Annie McKitrick, Chris Nielsen, Marie Renaud, Heather Sweet, Bob Turner and Denise Woollard.
Does anybody even recognize their names? The only non-ministerial Edmonton NDP MLA with any kind of public profile is Edmonton Centre’s David Shepherd!
Now we know why. Calgary MLA Robyn Luff, kicked out of the NDP caucus for spilling confidenti ...
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Rendering of the North West side of the LNG Canada.Supplied / LNG Canada
By GRAHAM HICKS
Congrats to British Columbia.
But is that the sound of one-hand clapping?
It looks like the $40 billion – that’s BILLIONs, not MILLIONs – LNG Canada project/port is going ahead. At least all the permits and processes and environmental this ‘n’ thats have been approved.
LNG Canada will build a mega-specialized transfer port at Kitimat – in the same general region as Prince Rupert on the northern B.C. coast – to receive natural gas through as yet-unbuilt-but-approved pipelines from the Montney natural gas fields of northeastern B.C.
The gas shipped to the Kitimat plant will be super-cooled to the point of liquification, pumped into specialty LNG tankers and transported across the Pacific Ocean to countries where natural gas prices are five times higher than in North America.
Thanks to new drilling and extraction technologies, Canada and the ...
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The city skyline, in Edmonton Alta. on Tuesday May 10, 2016. Photo by David Bloom ... Stock photo STK skylineDavid Bloom / Postmedia Network
By GRAHAM HICKS
Edmonton’s high-tech companies often receive gobs of publicity when they are new-born, touted by government-funded economic development agencies as can’t-miss companies with breath-taking new technology.
The expectation is of instant success.
The reality is most new, innovative companies face 10 years of blood, sweat and tears, are chronically short of investment cash, barely make their payroll and take two steps back for every three steps forward.
Everybody is looking for the next Microsoft, Apple or Amazon.
That’s not going to happen. For most start-up companies, on-going success is A) not going out of business, B) being a sound, small business generating $3 to $5 million in revenues a year, making a niche product with 10 to 50 employees, and C) if a company does shut down, its principal partne ...
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These are examples of the small containers in which legal, AGLC-approved cannabis will be sold in Alberta come October 17, 2018. Photos by GRAHAM HICKS/EDMONTON SUN
By GRAHAM HICKS
Somehow I had this vision of Alberta’s new legal pot stores (as of October 17, 2018) being like a Bulk Barn, where you would scoop your favourite cannabis buds out of a bin, fill your baggie, weigh, pay at the cashier then home you’d go to roll joints.
Nope, nope, nope.
While we are soon to embark on the Wild West of legalized marijuana, this Wild West comes with rules as decreed by Health Canada, the province, the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) and municipalities.
I toured Alberta pot-retailer-in-waiting Fire & Flower’s concept store on Jasper Avenue West.
This is no Bulk Barn. It’s more like an Apple or a Nike store.
Spotless, modern, art on the walls, display merchandising, no loose pot to be seen. Definitely no bins of pot buds.
(The words cannabis, ...
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