In June 2015, a new president and chief executive officer, Sandip Lalli, was hired by the board of directors of Keystone Excavating Limited (Keystone) to turn the company around and increase its value. In its 35 years of operations, Keystone had failed to articulate a purpose, and for the past five years it had been in double-digit decline. The economic downturn in Alberta from 2014 to 2016 had made the situation dire, and by September 2016 Lalli was going to recommend closing the company. But how should she do this? How should she tell the shareholders of this family-owned business that things were unlikely to improve and that there would be another challenge ahead? How could Keystone cease operations while retaining its legacy?
It was 2014, and the chief executive officer (CEO) of Knightsbridge Custom Homes Limited (Knightsbridge) had just purchased a site for his next project in the rapidly gentrifying East Village neighbourhood of Calgary, Alberta. He had built Knightsbridge on a commitment to three core values: finding great locations, catering to underserved markets, and providing niche products. Since it's founding in 1990, these values had remained the same, but the type of projects undertaken by Knightsbridge had changed dramatically. The company started by building infill homes in inner-city Calgary and estate homes on the city’s outskirts. Then it built multi-family homes in the suburbs and tackled a transit-oriented development in an established area. Now, the CEO was considering developing a no parking, high-rise condominium tower close to the downtown core. High-rise living without parking would be an entirely new concept in car-centric Calgary. Was developing a residential site without parking a viable plan in this growing city? Knightsbridge’s CEO needed to find an effective way to answer this question.
In early summer 2012, Brookfield Residential Properties Inc. (Brookfield), a Calgary-based residential property developer with holdings throughout North America, had an opportunity to develop a vacant site in the inner-city community of Scarboro, in the southwest quadrant of Calgary. Brookfield did not own the site but was working with the landowner to request that the city of Calgary rezone the site from single family to Direct Control to allow a proposed 52-unit project. Brookfield’s proposed housing development project was planned by following the policies set out in Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan. The plan was focused on the densification of Calgary’s population, particularly in the inner city and along established public transportation routes. The question was, how could Brookfield proceed to get buy-in for its project from Scarboro and the surrounding communities?