Q2 saw a decrease in the commercial real estate sales compared to recent years. But there's a glimmer of hope.

Morguard has snapped up the International Council of Shopping Centers' award for innovative design and development of a new retail project, for their Uptown Shopping Centre project in Saanich, presented at this week's Canadian Convention. It's a project that Morguard director of development for Western Canada Geoff Nagle (with colleagues Margaret Knowles and Rina Zigler) says is "transformational" for the community.

The project was seven years to plan, then five years to build. It isn't quite finished--still around three acres of land left to build on, good for another 500K SF of development. Uptown is a true mixed-use project, with retail at grade, more retail at a second level, and offices on top (around 240K SF, with Shaw having just signed on for 30K SF).

With LEED Gold designation, the project used an innovative design to take advantage of the grade changes on site, creating a multi-level 860K SF site on just 15 acres. Margaret, the company's SVP of development, calls it, "It wasn't Disney-esque in its design," and is authentic and sensitive to area architecture.