1946 – 2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Patience pays off for local realtor

Spending 50 years in the business, Steinbach realtor Bob Schinkel has learned to “go with the flow” and just as he made the transition from working on houses to selling houses and on to selling farms, he has always been ready to try something new.

Celebrating 25 years in real estate sales back in 2001, Schinkel shifted from livestock farm sales to clients in Europe to concentrate on selling farms on the Canadian prairies.

At the time, poultry, dairy and grain farms were much in demand and the upside was the elimination of all that travel and the endless patience that out-of-country sales demanded.

Europeans looking to buy farms in Canada were never in any hurry to buy the first farm they saw, Schinkel explained in a 2001 interview with The Carillon.

“First they would come to visit people they knew who have immigrated to Canada. Then they would come back a year later to look at farms. Finally, after another year passes, they may come back ready to buy.”

It usually took three years from first contact to final sale when dealing with Europeans who wanted to move to Canada, Schinkel said.

Going with the flow over those first 25 years saw the Schinkel family business move from sales to construction, and on, to a large extent, to property management.

Schinkel Properties was launched in 1984 as a commercial and residential rental company and over the years grew to become a large commercial leasing business as well.

Today the company manages over 2,200 condominium units, 570 apartment units and 300,000 square feet of commercial real estate.

The family-run business owns and manages hotels in Winnipeg, Steinbach, Winkler, Edmonton, and Calgary. Their son, Justin oversees operations of Schinkel Properties, while their son Evan owns Superior Projects, the construction arm of the family firms.

Schinkel shifted his focus from strictly real estate sales to property management with the construction of Victoria Plaza in Steinbach in partnership with Winnipeg developer Curtis Steiman’s Winfield Developments in 1984.

In the late 1980’s, Bob Schinkel headed up Blumenort Development alongside his friend Reg Penner.

In 1990, Bob’s wife Dorothy left her clothing store in the Clearspring Centre to become the manager of Schinkel Properties.

Dorothy had been one of the first tenants of the mall, occupying 500-square-feet with Denim Drawer.

She sold $500 worth of merchandise the first day the store opened and that was pretty well an average sales day for the next five years. Along the way, the name was switched to Electric Blue and Schinkel opened a second location in Winnipeg.

In 1989, the Winnipeg store closed and Schinkel sold the Steinbach location to join the family business.

The Schinkels had a growing business as well as a growing family in the 1980’s. Two sons and a daughter were born in the span of three years.

Justin, 40, the CEO of Schinkel Properties, was the first to join his father in business in 2007, after graduating from university with a commerce degree.

Before that, both he and Evan had been working together with their father on a number of projects, including the purchase and development of a two-acre Seine River Trails subdivision on a former buffalo ranch between La Broquerie and Marchand.

The buffalo were sold off and the yard site was sold and the rest was subdivided into two-acre lots.

At the same time, the Schinkels were starting construction of their first hotel, the Days Inn in Steinbach, which had its grand opening in 2001.

Schinkel Properties continued its rapid growth over the next 15 years. In 2005, Grande Pointe Development was purchased, and in 2008, Heartland Inn in Winkler was purchased and rebranded as Quality Inn and Suites.

Justin, current CEO of Schinkel Properties, became the general manager of the Winkler hotel a few years later.

Evan, 37, who graduated from the University of Manitoba with an engineering degree in 2012, took a leave of absence from Flyer Industries to join the family business for the renovation of Hanover Terrace in 2014. The apartment building constructed by Ernie Penner had not been renovated in 30 years when Schinkel Properties took over the building.

Evan returned to New Flyer when that project was completed, but six months later he was back in Steinbach on a more permanent basis.

The Schinkels were in the process of adding to the Super 8 they own on Fermor Avenue in the eastern part of Winnipeg. when it burned in September of 2015.

In 2016, Superior Projects, the main building partner of Schinkel Properties, was founded by Evan Schinkel.

The new company headed the rebuild of the Super 8 East and the new KFC in Steinbach.

One year later Super 8 East had its grand reopening.

Superior Properties now occupies half of the second floor of the new Schinkel Properties building in the 98-acre industrial park west of Highway 12 North in Steinbach.

In 2019, Best Western Plus in West Edmonton became the first hotel purchased by Schinkel Properties outside of Manitoba. In 2023, a second Edmonton hotel was purchased and the latest hotel venture saw a 110-room hotel in Calgary added to the Schinkel chain in 2025.

Closer to home, another major Superior project is nearing completion with the $15 million Steinbach Bible College campus on Loewen Boulevard expected to be completely ready for occupancy by the end of the year.