The Construction Source

DECEMBER 2020 taking place in the market and stay on top of them,” he adds. “We are able to have deeper relationships with tenants. We’re able to build facilities that provide the most added value for our clients.” Michael has personally been working in the Canadian industrial real estate and development industries for almost 20 years. He has been working with his father, Andy Smele, and with Wade Dobbin – two of the three partners of Panattoni Canada – since 2001, originally for a different company. When company founder Carl Panattoni first ventured into Canada, he reached out to Andy and Wade for help with his first property. When Carl decided to start an official branch in the country, he reached out again, and Michael joined them when they launched the office in 2005. From the start, the company had a clear vision of the kind of projects they wanted to be doing, and they have stuck to that vision to this day. They wanted to develop best-in- class industrial developments, either by building them from scratch or by purchasing existing facilities and adding value through renovation. They planned to create the majority of their work on spec, but they also wanted to deliver built- to-suit projects for clients who wanted that service. One of the first projects Panattoni Canada was involved in was a large speculative facility totalling 1.1 million square feet – the largest of its kind in the country at the time. “Because of the unique perspective Panattoni had from being in a lot of markets in the United States, they were very comfortable with that type of scale,” Michael recalls, “whereas other local groups just had not experienced that before.” The company’s boldness quickly paid off. The property was 100 per cent leased to Canadian Tire before it was even completed – it was “a tremendous success,” Michael says.