Steve Mesler has a request for a charitably-minded landlord looking to fill their vacant office space with a little inspiration: welcome Classroom Champions as a tenant.
The international charity, which connects Olympic and Paralympic athletes with over 1,000 classrooms across North America, is headquartered in Calgary, where founder and past bobsled gold medal-winner Mesler just received word that his organization is being booted from its present location, which a company provided to Classroom Champions rent-free.
"They just went into receivership," Mesler said, in an interview on The Eyeopener.
Recession woes continue
Mesler speculated the recession that has battered Calgary commercial real estate since oil prices collapsed in mid-2014 is still extracting a toll, despite the recent uptick in commodities prices.
"People get maybe the misunderstanding that [oil] prices are up a bit and everything is going to be fine — and we're moving along — [but] I think this is still the hangover from that," he said.
That was a shame, because the arrangement was a win-win for both landlord and charitable organization, Mesler said.
"We moved into the space, we were able to give them a sponsorship in kind back to them, and they were able to support classrooms and schools in their communities," he said.
Young, growing charity
The organization currently has offices until the end of July. Mesler hopes to hear from another company with a long-term lease which has more space than it needs, and wants to fill them with Classroom Champions.
"We're looking for 4,000 to 5,000 square feet. We're a young growing charity at this point," Mesler said. "We're looking for five to eight offices, a boardroom, [and] some space. We're hoping over the next few weeks we can make that transition."
While their first choice would be to relocate to another downtown location, Mesler said the organization is flexible.
"Downtown is nice, because a lot of our partners are downtown, so its nice to build the relationship between a charity and a lot of our partners who are still downtown — but parking would be cheaper out of the core.
"We're open to any possibility."
If the organization is unable to secure donated office space, they'll be forced to pull from their operating budget.
"We had it budgeted for a five year term with the organization — the company we had this deal with — so we didn't budget this $30,000/$50,000/$70,000 per-year expense that is rent here in Calgary for a charity our size. So we'll have to pull from programming budget and that money will come out of our community and school programs and go to rent," he said.
With files from The Eyeopener