Dave Boles is the vice president of Winnipeg Communities for Genstar Development Company – a development company with the vision of bringing land to life.

Why you should care:

Where do you live?  Are you happy there? Are you raising your family in a community you like?  Is your house overpriced?  Are there cost efficient alternatives to single unit housing in Manitoba?  If you have any questions about this topic you must listen to our conversation with Dave Boles.  As a leading representative in the development community, Dave shares the ins and outs of how developers sit at the crossroads of investors, the government, the real estate markets and infrastructure planning that helps define our housing marketplace.  Dave shares some of his wisdom of the market to help us understand what actually determines these decisions.  You will be surprise for sure.

Dave Boles understands all or this from the point of view as a developer with Genstar Development Company.  With a background in planning and years of experience with Winnipeg communities, Dave emphasizes the importance for a regional land use infrastructure and servicing plan within the Winnipeg METRO Region.  Dave explains how this will lead to increased predictability in the market, which is an asset to investors, and in the long run will benefit the Province as we stirive to compete in the global market.

On today’s podcast:

In this episode we talk to Dave Boles, Vice President of Winnipeg Communities for Genstar Development Company – a valued member of the METRO Region Partner Network – where we explore the link between good planning and investment attraction. Dave, who is not originally from Winnipeg, holds a masters’ degree in planning from the University of Guelph and an MBA from the University of Winnipeg.

Dave has a long history as an urban planner and brings his experience from other jurisdictions to link regional land use with infrastructure planning in the Winnipeg METRO Region and he echoes what many leaders in land development are saying: to ensure that communities thrive long into the future, good planning makes for better decision making.

Dave sees firsthand housing market trends in the Winnipeg METRO Region. There are a variety of different housing types that cater to different household situations, demographics and certainly immigration is an influencing factor.

With the development community making major investments in the Winnipeg METRO Region, it is important that we build partnerships and find collaborative ways to work together to ensure that our region becomes even more attractive for investors and long-term planning in the region is a great place to begin to build these partnerships. 

Highlighted Quotes

I got into planning because I believe in good community building, good city building, good region building and that’s what drove me in the first place, it interested me.

We’re making large investments in land, sometimes longer-term land, particularly when your making an investment in longer term land the infrastructure isn’t necessarily in place yet but there is a plan to put it in place. That’s important. 

The driver for us now in the decisions we’re making and where we already have made investments in land and where we’re developing communities, it’s all about affordability.

Looking at it from sort of more the perspective of “where would we invest?” you follow the pipe, but the pipe is going to go where it makes the most sense to go, the most efficient to go — We’re going to make investments where there’s adequate infrastructure or will be in the future.

I believe firmly in doing good planning obviously and it leads to better decision making for everybody weather you’re on the municipal side, the regional side, the private industry side. We would be coordinated in our thinking.

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