On February 5th, Scott Armour McCrea, CEO of The Armour Group, took to the airwaves to ridicule Alexandra Baird Allen, the Manager of our Economic Intelligence Unit … the cause of his angst, an earlier CBC radio interview with Alex on the results of a Halifax Central Business District (CBD) survey which revealed an office vacancy rate of 17.3%. Labelling her conclusions “manufactured hysteria” Mr. McCrea disparaged the survey results, questioned the competence of Alex, her survey team and Turner Drake … and ignited a gender war: “Mansplainer” was perhaps the most polite invective hurled in Mr. McCrea’s direction (we are keeping a list… it’s not pretty but quite informative… we might publish it). So what was it all about?

Scott Armour McCrea is a developer and a very important man, as he so informed the CBC, the largest private office landlord in the city. In sonorous tone and displaying gravitas befitting a man with gaze firmly fixed on his own navel, Mr. McCrea revealed that “no other real estate professional uses the Turner Drake data”. In fact, he confided, no actual practitioner agrees with them! He then proceeded to reveal why … the full Monty so to speak.

Turner Drake, Mr. McCrea intoned, is a minor player in the leasing field completing only 2% of leasing transactions while actual practitioners such as brokers CBRE, do 30% to 40% and publish their own survey. CBRE pegged market absorption at “about 300,000 ft.2 a year” stated Mr. McCrea, “not the 25,000 ft.2” calculated by Ms. Baird Allen. The Armour Group, Mr. McCrea’s company, did their own survey as well and estimated the vacancy rate at 13% to 14%. … and most vacancies were in buildings most people would “never, ever want to work in”. And the problem was exacerbated by the Province who were so concerned about saving taxpayers’ money, they insisted on consigning their employees to space that only the private sector would tolerate. But that, he confided, was about to change. The real reason though for the problem: “if there is a problem in Halifax and I am not suggesting there is”, was that the City was “under-demolished”.

So what are the (non-hysterical) facts?

Alex has been a valued colleague for twelve years, is a Chartered Surveyor and has a degree from the University of New Brunswick, a Diploma in Urban Land Economics from the University of British Columbia and an Advanced Diploma in Geographic Information Systems from the Centre of Geographic Sciences at Lawrencetown, one of the top three GIS institutes in Canada. She combines her work as Manager of our research group with her role as a mother of twins. We have never known her to engage in hysteria, manufactured or otherwise. The office surveys are, we believe, the most comprehensive conducted in Halifax and cover all rental buildings 5,000 ft.2 or larger. They are a structured survey using purpose designed survey instruments and software, deployed by a team of trained researchers. The survey to which Alex alluded in her CBC interview had a response rate of 89% (previously we have achieved 98% but this time a large landlord, The Armour Group, refused to participate). We do have human and programmatic error traps in place for quality control purposes but recognise that they are not yet infallible so seek to have as many eyes on the results as possible and offer the full survey to any participant who would like a copy. 40% take advantage. One such recipient, was kind enough to point out not one, but two errors, in our December 2016 Halifax office survey. We are not perfect, but we are transparent. We corrected the errors, reissued the survey, changed our software to catch similar human errors and published a correction, apology and thanks in our Spring 2017 Newsletter to the gentleman who had so diligently scrutinised the survey, Mr. McCrea.

Our Market Surveys are undertaken by a research team independent of our Brokerage Division. The volume of their lease transactions is therefore unrelated to the amount of research undertaken for the Market Survey. In any event we cannot utilise data gathered by our Brokerage Division for the Market Surveys because that would be a breach of confidentiality.

The CBC interviews were focused on the Halifax CBD. Ms. Baird Allen’s data referred to the Halifax CBD. Mr. McCrea’s interview focused on the Halifax CBD… unfortunately the CBRE data he referred to did not. It pertained to the wider HRM metropolitan market. CBRE’s estimate of the vacancy rate for the Halifax CBD is very similar to our own (18.5% versus our 17.3%). A world away from the 13% to 14% cited by Mr. McCrea. CBRE’s vacancy rate for the entire HRM office market was 15.5% (we place it at 14.97%)… probably the source of Mr. McCrea’s confusion. There will always be some differences between the Turner Drake and CBRE survey results, an important factor being that our survey does not just focus on larger buildings but covers some as small as 5,000 ft.2. Mr. McCrea’s comment that the “annual market demand was 300,000 ft.2 not the 25,000 ft.2 quoted by Turner Drake” was similarly erroneous. Alex’s figure of 25,000 ft.2 referred to the CBD, which, after all, was the subject of the CBC interview to which Mr. McCrea was responding. It was based on the average market absorption over the past five years. CBRE’s estimate of annual market absorption of 308,944 ft.2, referenced by Mr. McCrea, referred to the entire HRM market.

Mr. McCrea’s comment that most of the vacancies were in buildings that most people would “never, ever want to work in” does not accord with the facts. Class A buildings have an average vacancy of 21.8%.

We concur with Mr. McCrea that many office buildings will have to be demolished or repurposed, Alex pointed this out in her CBC interview. However 625,750 ft.2 of the 879,665 ft.2 of currently vacant space would have to be taken out of service to restore equilibrium to the downtown office market… the aggregate of the former Bank of Montreal tower, the former Royal Bank tower, Founders Square and … volunteers anyone? Oh but Mr. McCrea is adding another 125,000 ft.2 at Queen’s Marque… let’s see, what else for the wrecking ball…?

We politely pointed out to Mr. McCrea his confusion with the CBRE survey statistics and gave him the opportunity to rectify the error. He did not respond. As for the mansplainer moniker… nothing we can do about that… we trust he is not consigned to the couch. Probably have to make his own coffee from now on though.

For more information on mansplainer consult Wikipedia. For information on the office market in the Halifax CBD and lots of other areas in Atlantic Canada, contact Alex Baird Allen the (very calm) Manager of our Economic Intelligence Unit at 902-429-1811 Ext.323 (HRM), 1-800-567-3033 (toll free), or