What do you think of this project?


  • Total voters
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^Principal Group of Companies/Principal Financial Group. A financial/investment company based in Edmonton that went belly up in the late 1980s.
 
Diverse financial, insurance investment with a crazy story of collapse in the late 80s.

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Well then. I had no idea.
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Hell I still call CWB tower Principal Plaza. So I may never get around to calling Manulife CWB tower.
Yes, for those of us who have been here a long time it will take a bit getting used to. Some of the hotel name changes confound me a bit.

I remember the Cineplex there, went there a few time and it was great. It had a nice variety of movies you could watch. Of course that was pre DVD or Netflix, when if you wanted to see a movie you either had to catch it at a theatre or wait forever (often years) for it to be on TV late night or something.
 
i believe they owned a half interest in the building - along with campeau who was the developer - as well as being the anchor tenant.

start to finish it was built in two years at a time edmonton was building a million sf of office space downtown a year, most of it on spec.

found this on some quick Googling on Campeau Corporation’s 1979 Annual Report (shout out McGill for putting this online) for more history on that.

Cool seeing the tower being erected. Wonder who the GC was.

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i believe they owned a half interest in the building - along with campeau who was the developer - as well as being the anchor tenant.

start to finish it was built in two years at a time edmonton was building a million sf of office space downtown a year, most of it on spec.
Yup we were busy then. my first major project was PP, then IPL tower then Manulife and Capitol square. There were smaller ones as well back then but those ones I still have vivid memories.
 
found this on some quick Googling on Campeau Corporation’s 1979 Annual Report (shout out McGill for putting this online) for more history on that.

Cool seeing the tower being erected. Wonder who the GC was.

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It may have been Poole, just because they were charging the Subs to use the elevator. The Mechanical I believe was Lockerbie and Hole and the Sheetmetal was Watson. They also did IPL and Manulife towers and Chembiomed out in the science park. Then they went under. Lockerbie Went under about 1988.
 
It may have been Poole, just because they were charging the Subs to use the elevator. The Mechanical I believe was Lockerbie and Hole and the Sheetmetal was Watson. They also did IPL and Manulife towers and Chembiomed out in the science park. Then they went under. Lockerbie Went under about 1988.
I thought IPL was Batoni Bowlen
 
It is now 2024

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I would have asked someone at the popup kiosk when their permanent location will finally open but they appear to be closed.

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I wonder if they are just closed because yesterday was a holiday and it was not expected to be very busy today. At least Manulife has gotten rid of some of the other laughable signage about something exciting coming soon.

I thought this was supposed to be temporary, I'm not sure why there is such a delay in giving this business a real store front location. Its not like there isn't a ton of empty space available.

Really this is the only thing positive thing in Manulife giving more life to this level. If the landlord is the problem, they should treat this tenant good and quit dithering.
 

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