April 6, 2010

Profile

Green building a way of life for Kitchener, Ontario developer

PAT BRENNAN

correspondent

KITCHENER, Ont.

Before heading off each morning to his job in the city, Manfred Conrad liked to walk and talk with his friends — the trees on his farm. Then one day he decided to take them to work with him.

That’s what gave birth to one of Canada’s largest green roofs. The Accelerator Building, opened in the Research and Technology Park at the University of Waterloo in 2006, has a green roof of nearly 30,000 square feet.

Conrad, through his development company, Cora Group, has built many of the renowned high-tech buildings on the University of Waterloo campus and neighbouring research park. And he became one of Kitchener’s largest commercial landlords.

But the legacy he wants most to be noted for is the one he has built with his wife Penny — their tree-lined farm on the edge of Waterloo.

Manfred Conrad and wife, Penny, on their tree-lined Waterloo, Ont. farm.

When they bought the 27-acre horse farm in 1985 it was mostly pasture land. The farm has since grown to 375 acres and there are still some horses in corals, but they now share the farm with more than 70,000 trees the Conrads have planted.

Not only does he want to build sustainable forests that contribute to a healthier environment, Conrad also wants to build homes that do not leave a negative footprint on the world.

He plans to build the most environmentally friendly homes in the country in a Waterloo subdivision. “We’ll use every energy-saving device, every environmentally-friendly material, design, construction technique and technology we can find to build these residences,” said Conrad.

He knows he’ll never earn a penny on these homes — and that’s the point. “We want to demonstrate that if society is going to get serious about building better ecological communities with real energy savings and little or no environmental damage then government and the building industry are going to have to find a way that the average home builder and the average consumer can afford such homes.”

Conrad can afford to build his demonstration homes at a loss. In 2008 he sold his development firm, five large office buildings in Kitchener and his property management firm for $141.8 million to Realex Properties of Calgary.

When he arrived from Germany in 1963 Manfred Conrad started work as a house painter. He took some of his pay as chunks of equity in housing projects and eventually became a home builder.

In 1978 he started Cora and moved into commercial development just as the University of Waterloo was emerging as a world leader in mathematics education and engineering technology.

They grew together, with Cora constructing offices buildings to house the spin off companies coming from the technology research at U. of W.

Conrad likes to tell the story of two young men coming to one of his office buildings on bicycles wanting to rent a small office from him. “They wanted the smallest office we had in the building and they asked if I could supply a bicycle rack to secure their bicycles.”

Riding the bikes were Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin, founders of Research In Motion, creators of the Blackberry.

That was the start of a long, lucrative relationship between RIM and Conrad, their landlord for many of their research facilities.

The Manfred and Penny Conrad Family Foundation — they met at a dance in Kitchener shortly after he emigrated from Germany and she from England — has become a significant philanthropist for Kitchener-Waterloo.

Last spring they took over the nearly $1 million debt load of a King St. theatre to keep its doors open as the home of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.

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