Once their projects are complete, Alston also takes pride in building loyal and longterm relationships with their tenants. They achieve that loyalty by being transparent, by treating all tenants with respect and honesty, and by responding to their concerns quickly and effectively with their own inhouse team. Alston Properties is a private family-owned company, originally founded in Vancouver in the 1980s, by President Michael Alston. His son, Bryce – who oversees of the company’s operations in Winnipeg – joined the business out of university in 2012. Initially, he spent a couple years working alongside his father in Victoria, and then moved to Winnipeg in 2014 in order to establish a Manitoba office. When he first came to Winnipeg, Bryce recalls the city’s downtown was “on the precipice of revitalization,” and there were a number of grants available for redevelopment projects. Heritage projects were already an interest of his, and Alston Properties had a lot of experience doing heritage projects in Victoria – so “it seemed like a great opportunity,” Bryce says. Alston Properties’ first project in the city was a six-storey heritage warehouse building. Following the success of that project, the company began acquiring THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA “A lot of the new rental apartment construction that we’re seeing in Winnipeg right now is very similar,” he says. “There are a lot of suburban builders putting up the same type of product. But the stuff that we’re bringing to market is different. What we do is unique – it’s more boutique.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTYzNTg=