KITCHENER — In 2013, the Mayfair Hotel is scheduled to become a cultural centre and community hub for the downtown, city councillors were told Monday.

A local trio of experienced businesspeople are partnering with Andrin Investments Limited to turn the 106-year-old Mayfair at 11 Young St. and the building next door at 156-158 King St. West into a boutique hotel, spa, restaurant and bar.

David Strucke, a local entrepreneur and chair of the board at Themuseum and a board member at Centre in the Square, Bernie Nimer of Ridgewood Holdings, and veteran restaurateur Jodi Palubiski have joined Andrin in the redevelopment of the historic properties.

“We are now at the stage where we have to move into detailed design,” Anne Marchildon, of Andrin Investments, told city council Monday.

Andrin wants to see construction start on the redevelopment of the Mayfair next spring, along with a 17-storey condominium project at Young and Duke streets that will rise above two podium buildings.

“We are very excited to be here as part of this project,” Strucke said to city councillors. “We are very happy that this is a local solution.”

The partnership means the old hotel will be redeveloped eight to 10 years ahead of the original schedule approved by city council in 2009.

“Nobody in this community wanted to see this building sit empty for another 10 years,” Strucke said.

The vision is to have the redeveloped hotel, which will see three storeys added to the Mayfair and six floors to the building next door, service businesspeople travelling to the city as well as people living and working downtown, offering restaurants and entertainment.

“This will be a link to all of the cultural activities that are going on in downtown Kitchener as well,” Strucke said.

“We want to be connected to some of the live musicians and some of the art shows and things like that,” Strucke said.

The main floor of the hotel will feature a restaurant catering to daytime crowds for breakfast, lunch and some dinners. The main floor will also have a traditional bar. A pool, spa and hotel rooms will be on the upper floors.

“We have plans for an entertainment complex room in the basement that will be the link to some of the arts and cultural things that we can tie into the downtown,” Strucke said.

The presentations to city council Monday marked an important milestone in the 11-year-long efforts by the city to redevelop the western half of the block bounded by King, Young, Duke and Ontario streets. It is being branded as City Centre by the developers, bringing new life to the block next to City Hall.

City councillors were clearly pleased to hear of the new plans for the old buildings.

“It sounds very exciting, especially in light of trying to bring it forward in the development of that block that has been an issue for quite some time,” Mayor Carl Zehr said.

Added Coun. Berry Vrbanovic: “This is great news and a great proposal and has the real potential of adding to the excitement downtown.”

Canada’s old ‘German capital’ is once again learning the art – and politics – of reinvention.

In its postwar heyday, Kitchener was a lunch-bucket town. Most men and many women rose before six, packed their sandwich and thermos, and walked, rode the bus, or briefly drove to the large brick factories circling the city’s downtown. On the city’s western edge, assembly lines rolled out nearly all of Canada’s tires in “Canada’s Akron.” Closer to downtown, they made boots and condoms at Kaufman Rubber; shirts at Cluett Peabody and John Forsyth; leather goods at the Breithaupt and Lang tanneries; radios and Canada’s first colour television at Electrohome; and sausages and the local delicacy, pigtails, at J.M. Schneider’s.

Kitchener remained dominant, with its 111,800 citizens. Both cities were unhappy with the regional government forced on Waterloo County in the early 1970s. The trouble came from south of Highway 401, where the Ontario government created one city out of Galt, Hespeler and Preston. The new city of Cambridge was larger than Waterloo, and while smaller in population than Kitchener, it had a strong, feisty voice in regional politics. Kitchener sensed its dominant role as the county town was threatened and responded with new development schemes.

The so-called “Kitchener market fight” of 1971 was a harbinger of future troubles. A developer associated with Eaton’s promised to build a large mall that would reinvigorate the downtown, which was facing competition from suburban malls. The city had to agree to destroy its admired city hall and its historic, albeit decrepit, Kitchener market. All was done secretly until the University of Waterloo’s leftist student newspaper leaked the proposal, and a classic culture war of the ’70s erupted.

University of Waterloo professors and students lambasted the secrecy and the destruction of green space and historic buildings. Bill Thomson, Kitchener’s planning director, denounced the opponents as a “small, immature and erotic [sic] minority of our society.” The proposal was part of Thomson’s dream of a reinvigorated central city anchored by two malls with giant parking garages, fashionable stores and pedestrian walkways. A ring expressway would enclose both Kitchener and Waterloo and speed goods and people to the city centre. His vision captured the civic imagination: a referendum approved the development by a large margin. Alas, it didn’t work. As in so many other smaller Canadian cities, the Eaton’s mall was a commercial disaster. The downtown continued to decline, the population of the region grew less than projected, and the ring road was never finished.

Waterloo, too, had earlier succumbed to the mall mania and had turned its city centre into a parking lot. Nevertheless, as the two universities, Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier—the latter founded in 1911 as a Lutheran seminary—grew, and new high-tech firms began to cluster around them, the city changed its face, with the appearance of alternative cinemas, art galleries, a private bilingual school, student pubs and new monster homes.

But Kitchener in the ’70s still had Electrohome, with almost 4,000 employees. Moreover, its civic leaders responded to the cultural needs of the broader community with an outstanding arts centre and, in the early ’90s, built a striking new city hall, which could serve a larger population if then-premier Mike Harris amalgamated Kitchener with surrounding towns and cities, as he did to so many other communities during that time. For reasons that remain obscure and controversial, the amalgamation movement stalled when it reached the Region of Waterloo. Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge retained separate civic governments, while a regional government made up of the mayors of the cities and of rural townships, along with elected representatives, took on more functions.

One heard less talk about the “twin cities” and more about Waterloo’s separate identity as a university town and a high-tech centre, one that compared starkly to the crumbling industrial infrastructure of Kitchener. Electrohome closed its Kitchener production facilities in 1984. Uniroyal, the shirt companies, and some auto parts plants were casualties of the recession of the early 1990s. B.F. Goodrich produced the last tire in Kitchener in 2006, and its closing was followed two years later by the shuttering of the successor to Budd, a unionized automotive plant which had employed over 4,000 during the ’80s.

While industrial jobs vanished, Waterloo’s new high-tech and older insurance sectors thrived. Reflecting international trends, professional salaries rose quickly, while lower-middle and working-class incomes stagnated and even fell. BMWs, Lexus SUVs, and upscale stores and restaurants proliferated. The region’s first major shopping centre, Kitchener’s Fairview Park Mall, had empty stores and a Casey’s chain restaurant, while Waterloo’s upstart Conestoga Mall raised its rents and lured Toronto’s Oliver & Bonacini Café Grill.

Research in Motion became the region’s largest employer, and Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie its first billionaires. Open Text, Dalsa, Waterloo Maple, MKS, and a host of other companies quickly grabbed the graduates of the computer science and engineering progams at Waterloo and the business program at Laurier. Canada’s Technology Triangle and Communitech, voices of the high-tech sector, called for easier visas to fill vacant jobs.

Advertisers and political operatives poring over demographic maps discovered that Waterloo had become one the most highly educated and wealthiest communities in Canada. A political map for the 2008 election, which identified polls by grades ranging from D to A reflecting education and income, had overwhelmingly As and Bs for Waterloo and mainly Bs, Cs, and even Ds for Kitchener. Ken McLaughlin, the leading historian of the region, summed up the difference: “One of the twins went to university and developed in his teenage years into a leading professional and the other twin went to trade school and chose a trade that once had been respected, but that has gone out of style.”

The list of the region’s largest non-public employers underlined the problem: Research in Motion, Toyota Canada, University of Waterloo, Manulife Financial and Sun Life Financial. All except Toyota, which is based in Cambridge, are Waterloo-centred. Kitchener’s population, however, remains more than double that of Waterloo.

More recently, Kitchener has begun to play Waterloo’s game. Spurred on by Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig’s bold and successful attempt to buy the University of Waterloo’s school of architecture, which moved into a former silk mill overlooking the Grand River, over 45 minutes from the main campus, Kitchener Mayor Carl Zehr has used financial reserves and badgered other levels of government in an effort to reinvigorate Kitchener’s downtown.

Wilfrid Laurier moved its faculty of social work into the deserted St. Jerome’s high school. Zehr persuaded the University of Waterloo to establish a school of pharmacy on the site of an early rubber plant, and subsequently got McMaster University to open a satellite of its medical school in the city. Nearby, the former Kaufman rubber factory became a fashionable loft conversion, although its prices in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars pale beside a new Waterloo condominium building advertising $2.5-million suites. On another Kitchener corner, the former Lang Tannery became a high-tech hub with Google as a prestigious tenant. Desire2Learn and Coreworx proved Kitchener could do high tech, too. Finally, the region bought a site across from the new medical complex for a transportation hub that would link city buses with the rail line to Toronto. Later this year, regional GO trains will finally provide service, even if the speed of the trains will roughly equal that of those travelling the same route in the 1850s on the Grand Trunk.

Although some could argue that competition spurred Kitchener’s turn to high tech and higher education, others, including the Waterloo business community, suggested more co-operation and integration would create a stronger region. Evidence to support these arguments ranged from petty bickering over Waterloo’s contributions to Kitchener’s cultural institutions to more serious allegations over lost investment. Moreover, Waterloo’s civic administration stumbled badly when it signed an agreement with MFP Financial Services in 2000 to develop RIM Park, a massive recreation facility. The total cost was thought to be $113 million, financed at a rate of 4.7 per cent. A reporter for the Record (formerly the Kitchener Record, then the Kitchener-Waterloo Record after Waterloo became a city in 1948, then simply the Record in 1994 and now the Waterloo Region Record) spotted some bad math and revealed that the true interest rate was 9.2 per cent and the total cost to Waterloo taxpayers could reach $227 million. An inquiry argued that a more sophisticated administration would have prevented this mess.

Waterloo’s entire council, including the mayor, was tossed out in the 2003 civic election. Still, Waterloo boomed. RIM went global and briefly had the highest market capitalization of any Canadian company. In 2007, the city won an award as the world’s “most intelligent community.” Waterloo’s new mayor, Brenda Halloran, even became chairwoman of the international Intelligent Community Association. Some Kitchener residents, presumably less gifted, quietly seethed.

While Waterloo politics boiled over, Zehr, a soft-spoken Mennonite, was re-elected as Kitchener’s mayor virtually without competition after winning office in 1997. Confident of his position, he began to muse about a merger between Waterloo and Kitchener that would improve administration, share burdens and allow new innovations that would assure future growth.

Ken Seiling, a church organist and museum curator, has served as head of Waterloo Region for 26 years. Gerry Thompson, who’d served as Seiling’s chief administration officer, brought forward an innovation that captured Seiling’s imagination and fitted Zehr’s agenda. Thompson eloquently advocated a light-rail transit (LRT) line that would take advantage of Kitchener and Waterloo’s unusual configuration: King Street East and West in Kitchener and, absurdly, Waterloo’s King Street North and South are a single street and form a spine extending through the two downtowns. Thompson compared the cities to Portland, Ore., where an LRT system had taken advantage of a similar pattern, and LRT stops had become a catalyst for downtown intensification.

Seiling often jousted with Cambridge Mayor Craig, who ran on a platform best described as “Cambridge first.” But Craig, who badgered Seiling about Cambridge being overlooked, was intrigued by the LRT and today claims that he introduced the proposal that came forward after 2006. He was simultaneously seeking a GO train stop, which would have linked a future LRT to Cambridge. But GO chose Kitchener alone, and the extension of an LRT to Cambridge suddenly made less sense.

Thompson’s enthusiasm caught the spirit of the moment in Kitchener, where intensification seemed essential for renewal, and among Waterloo’s tech leaders for whom innovation had become a mantra. He persuaded the regional council that light rail was not simply or even mainly about transportation; it was a new “urban form” with a “visionary nature.” In June 2009, regional council approved the LRT proposal 15-1, with only Craig dissenting. Kitchener and Waterloo seemed united at last.

The embrace fuelled a move to consider a merger. The Waterloo Region Record reported that “prominent business leaders” were lobbying for a referendum on a merger, arguing the cities would have more clout on the world stage and draw more business investment if merged. Zehr was openly enthusiastic, but the Waterloo council would only consider “discussions” of a merger. The question of whether the two city councils should begin discussions was tacked onto the Oct. 25, 2010, municipal election ballot.

In Kitchener, the merger question attracted little attention. The Record declared itself in support of the discussions and, implicitly, the merger. In Waterloo, the question set off a firestorm. The Waterloo Chronicle, although owned by the Record, strongly opposed discussions, and its pages carried an advertisement in the final weeks where three former Waterloo mayors warned voters of the perils of even discussing merger. Kitchener voted two to one in favour of the discussions of merger, Waterloo two to one against. Waterloo council subsequently voted unanimously not to talk with Kitchener. But the LRT proposal was still on the agenda of both cities.

Although Halloran had once supported light rail, she began to move away from open support during the municipal elections. In her “state of the city” speech on March 25, 2011, she was hesitant. “There still is,” she warned, “a lot of concern about the cost, about the routing.” She called for a referendum, which prompted an angry denunciation of her lack of courage from the Record and a firm rejection of her proposal by the regional council on June 1.

Calling the LRT “critical” for Waterloo Region’s future, the Record conducted a poll. Its results demonstrated that the issue was “driving a wedge” through the community: young versus old, Waterloo versus Kitchener, Cambridge versus all, and transit users versus motorists. The debate heated up as the vote approached. Communitech, already troubled by stumbles by high-tech firms including RIM, bought full pages of the Record to press the LRT case, claiming that “for the cost of only one meal per person per year we can have a world-class transit system.” To make their case, former Waterloo councillors and mayors denounced the LRT at an open forum at Kitchener city hall. The powerful Record strongly urged support while the Waterloo Chronicle vigorously dissented.

On June 15, a weary Waterloo Region council voted. Jane Brewer of Cambridge could not attend for medical reasons; four declared a conflict of interest, including Seiling and Craig, whose children owned property near the future LRT route. In a chamber crammed with LRT supporters, council surprised with a 9-2 vote in favour. Two Waterloo councillors joined Zehr and his Kitchener colleagues to assure the victory. Former Cambridge mayor and current councillor Claudette Millar voted against, as did Halloran. As Kitchener celebrated its triumph the next day, RIM announced disappointing results and layoffs. In the best of times, in the worst of times, the tale of two cities persists.

John English is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo, a former MP for Kitchener, and currently Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and General Editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. He began his working life on Schneider’s hogkill in Kitchener.

Within the historic brick walls and post and beam construction, you will find all the elements that make The Breithaupt Block distinct. Built as a rubber manufacturing plant in the early 1900’s some of the original elements remain and others improved. There are hardwood floors throughout, sandblasted brick feature walls with some top floor suites with massive timber trusses and cathedral ceilings. 

The workplace is changing and this is at the core of the vision behind the Breithaupt Block. Companies have unique and ever-changing needs and the Breithaupt Block will be there to support the growth and success of your company. With unit sizes ranging from what you need now to what you will need as you grow, we want to be partners in your success.

We understand that tenants each have their own individual styles and needs and to embrace that, we can accomodate a number of different types of businesses and office styles.

Want to build a culture around stand-up desks and meetings? No problem! Open-concept offices where the CEO sits next to the software developer and HR team? Let us be a part of your vision for what the workplace should look like!

Perimeter Development is a people company committed to creating opportunities and value in real estate developments in the communities in which we work. Our commitment extends beyond strictly real estate and encompasses many other aspects of community life including arts, social charities and non-profit organizations.

I think that we need a bit more text here about what the Vision looks like. Perhaps a bit of a description of the images that are in the gallery below to provide context and actually highlight a few of the features.

Features include LRT, Go-Train, Multi-Modal Station, Parking Facilities, Green Roofs, Shared Space, anything else???

The Breithaupt Block will have a shared lounge for everyone to enjoy, with comfortable chairs, couches, cappuccino maker, games tables and a library. The communal meeting rooms, with tables, chairs and idea boards can be booked to meet your needs. We want to build a creative space for creative people. 

Is this text still accurate? Need to verify that this can still be described in this way or if more information is needed here.

Not sure if we can really describe much about these lifestyle images, but perhaps some context could be provided. Searching for related, interesting articles about “Creative City” projects, and how that might related in terms of collaborative, integrated work environments.

The four-storey factory had been on the market for a year before Toronto developer David Gibson considered buying it. Looking at the 1904 property, he saw something others had missed: the chance to transform a brick-and-beam building into premium office space for Waterloo’s technology sector.

The former car-parts factory stretches over a block of Kitchener’s old warehouse district. “It was pretty gruesome, but you could see the opportunities here,” Mr. Gibson recalls of his first impressions of 51 Breithaupt St. in 2009. The building at the former Collins & Aikman plant still housed mammoth machinery. The 4.3-acre site also needed an environmental cleanup – a potential financial risk.

Mr. Gibson, who is chief executive officer of Perimeter Development Inc., looked beyond the uncertainties, convinced that a nearby rail line and the tech sector’s appetite for “cool” spaces would play in his favour. His hunch will be tested later this year when the first phase of Breithaupt is available for lease, likely in the high teens to low $20s a square foot for Class A space.

In the new economy, as in the industrial past, transportation can define the value of real estate. The vacant plant is close to major roads and sits beside a rail line that once shipped its goods. Today the rails carry commuters to white-collar jobs in the city.

“The supply chain now is people,” says Rob Horne, commissioner of planning, housing and community services for the Waterloo region. Describing new-economy workers as “footloose capital,” he says Waterloo “must acquire and retain its talent capital, and one way to do it is to create and occupy interesting spaces.”

Perimeter purchased the property for $500,000 and later sold a half interest to Allied Properties REIT, an experienced player in renewing old buildings.

Two subsequent transit investments by the government have added to the lustre of the location.

Last year, the Region of Waterloo purchased three acres of land across the tracks from 51 Breithaupt to build a transit hub for Via Rail, GO Transit and inter-city buses (GO plans to introduce a commuter service to Kitchener later this year). And two months ago, the regional government approved an $800-million light rail project, with funding from the provincial and federal governments.

Mr. Gibson also decided to buy 51 Breithaupt because of the growing appreciation for repurposing dormant factories in downtown locations, a concept that appeals to tech-sector workers who want to be close to amenities.

“City centres are being revitalized and restored,” he said. “If you believe in that, and believe in mixed use and the future of city centres, then this was a natural project to take on.”

In Kitchener, Mr. Gibson has seen how new investments, such as the University of Waterloo’s new pharmacy school, and the restoration of defunct industrial buildings have added cachet to a once-overlooked downtown.

Two blocks away from the property on Breithaupt St., a $40-million conversion of the 1908 Kaufman Footwear factory into residential lofts was completed in 2005. Also nearby, a $30-million redevelopment of the former Lang Tannery has attracted high-profile tenants such as Google Inc.

“We will see more and more redevelopment of some of the industrial areas here,” predicts John Jung, chief executive officer of Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc., a public-private partnership that promotes economic development in the Waterloo region. “I view these kinds of buildings in a region as true assets,” he says. “They create unique opportunities that you cannot replicate.”

A recent report by Colliers International describes the Kitchener office market as “strong,” adding that “the trend to brick-and-beam office space is expected to gain steam.”

Colliers managing director Karl Innanen says “there now is a real demand for high quality Class A office space, especially in unique and interesting buildings like the Lang Tannery and Breithaupt.”

Midway through a $36-million renovation that began with the removal of 1,200 tonnes of assembly-line machinery, the Breithaupt’s interior now features large windows, high ceilings, brick walls, oak floors and foot-square beams of oak, Douglas fir and hemlock. The environmental cleanup is expected to be completed shortly.

Some historic features have been restored, and the window replacements are consistent with the original 1900s style.

Two sections of buildings were demolished to create modern courtyards, and as a result the gross leaseable floor space has dropped to 176,000 square feet from the original 256,000.

Mr. Gibson hopes to lease 60,000 square feet later this year and fully rent the property by 2013. His company will be the property manager.

With a real estate philosophy that combines passion and patience, Mr. Gibson is confident his initial hunch about Breithaupt will pay off: “If you do the right job, the financial returns will look after themselves.”

The renewal of downtown Kitchener has moved into another interesting phase as work crews have started to restore the Breithaupt Block. The developers, Perimeter Development Corp. and Allied Properties REIT, will transform the block in a way that the original owners and workers at the site could never have imagined.

The first building in the block was built in 1902 for the Merchants Rubber Co., which produced rubber for footwear. The automotive industry later used buildings that were added to the property. The last company was the International Automotive Components Group, which left in 2008.

Perimeter Development and Allied Properties now want to figuratively move the block, located on Breithaupt Street between King and Waterloo streets, into the high-tech era of the 21st century.

This is a wonderful story of renewal and growth. Although change is often painful as industries close, the emergence of new companies in entirely different fields offers hope on a macro level. Kitchener and other parts of Waterloo Region have had their economic challenges but they have gone a long way to overcoming those problems.

The Breithaupt Block is just one of the sites in Kitchener that has been renewed. The Lang Tannery building at Charles and Victoria streets once processed hides but now attracts digital companies such as Google. The old Kaufman rubber building on King Street is now the Kaufman Lofts, which contain 270 units.

These redevelopment projects have a significance that goes beyond the boundaries of the properties involved. The success of each one of these initiatives encourages other developers to think of redevelopment projects. Optimism is contagious. The Mayfair Hotel on Young Street could be the next redevelopment site.

The redevelopment projects in Kitchener’s core blend well with the entirely new buildings that have arisen in the area. The school of pharmacy and the medical school at Victoria and King streets are good examples of the progress that has occurred in recent years.

Interestingly, these development projects are occurring near the main north-south transit route. They are also not far from the transit hub the region plans to build at King and Victoria streets. Regardless of whether the region ultimately endorses a light rail line for that route or enhances the bus system, sooner or later the region is going to have to improve transit services for people who work or live near that route. As more people move to the region, downtown roads will become too congested unless the region plans alternative methods of transportation.

In addition to the economic benefits that come from the redevelopment of core properties, they also provide an intangible but important educational value. They remind us of our past, and that society constantly changes. We are who we are and what we are today because of what our predecessors did in the past. Old buildings remind us of our history and the debt we owe to generations that have departed. Let us hope that 100 years from now the residents of Kitchener can still see the buildings constructed in the early 1900s along with the structures we are building today.

KITCHENER – The City’s transformation from rubber and steel to software and information continues.

Sandblasting crews will begin work today on a $35-million redevelopment to turn six Breithaupt Block industrial buildings into 175,000 square feet of office space for the creative information technology age.

The buildings that used to manufacture rubber and automotive parts are on Breithaupt Street between King and Waterloo streets in the old industrial heart of Kitchener.

The developers, Toronto-based Perimeter Development Corp. and its partner Allied Properties REIT, threw a “block party” on Thursday to officially launch the redevelopment.

“We will be going full tilt right away. We have a crew of sandblasters ready to start at 7 a.m.” said Craig Beattie, one of Perimeter’s partners, along with David Gibson, the firm’s founder.

The original building dates back to 1902, when the Merchants Rubber Co. was founded to produce rubber for footwear. Over the years, more buildings were added to the complex.

They eventually began producing automotive parts, first for Uniroyal and later for Collins & Aitkman Corp. But the workforce dwindled, and the buildings were sold to International Automotive Components Group, which shut down the manufacturing in 2008.

Now, the developers hope to attract high-tech business tenants, much like the Tannery building at Charles and Victoria streets, where Google and other companies now occupy offices.

Joan Lazarski, a neighbouring resident who was at the launch, said she is happy the Breithaupt buildings are being preserved and will be occupied by businesses paying property taxes. “I see this as a complementary anchor to the Tannery building and as a nice use of heritage buildings” she said.

Beattie says his company is excited about playing a role in “the continued rejuvenation of downtown Kitchener.”

The developers intend to preserve the old brick and exterior heritage features. The offices will have an “industrial chic” look with high ceilings, timber trusses and hardwood floors, along with modern rooms for relaxation and meetings.

High-tech tenants want “cool spaces and an interesting work environment” Beattie said. “They view their real estate decisions as integral to their culture and to attracting and retaining talent.”

Beattie and his partner were involved with the First Gulf development that converted the former Waterloo Town Square complex in Waterloo. They also are developers for eight buildings in the Galt core of Cambridge. “We view this as our showcase entry project for downtown Kitchener” Beattie said.

The first phase of the redevelopment should be ready to house its first tenants by the end of this year. The other phases will follow over the next two years.

There is “a growing momentum” of interest in this type of office space, Beattie said.

The developers will include parking for 350 cars, underground and across the street. But the site is also near a rail transit node that can bring people in.

Kitchener Mayor Carl Zehr said he is excited the developers have chosen to invest in the site. “We are on the cusp of something great” he said.