Click on the image below to enlarge

For a survey of available commercial real estate anywhere in Toronto Contact Us. We will collect floor plans, organize the tour and help you secure your new office space with our fees paid by your new Landlord!

Contact Us

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

Click on the chart below to enlarge

If you would like floor plans or to arrange a tour for any of these office space please E-mail Me or call 416-992-9869. Remember, our services are free to you, the Tenant, until we find the right office space and then our fees are paid by your new landlord!

Contact Us

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

OfficeSearchToronto.com tracks available office space across the GTA. Want a survey or availability report somewhere else in Toronto? Are these space too big? Call us at 416-992-9869 or E-mail Me!.

Contact Us

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

By ALBERT WARSON

Published: October 13, 2009

TORONTO — The financial district of this city, the fifth-largest metropolitan area in North America, with a population of 5.4 million, is the scene of an exceptional flurry of development, especially in light of the recession.

Three green towers with a combined 3.1 million square feet of office space are opening before the end of the year in the downtown financial district. In addition, within a 20-minute walk, three high-rise condominium-hotel towers costing about 1.23 billion Canadian dollars (about $1.19 billion) will open next year.

This unusual burst of construction has rejuvenated the lower edge of the Bay Street financial district. The district has also projected to the south into a vacant 30-acre site across Front Street toward the Lake Ontario waterfront.

Despite the worldwide economic downturn, “Toronto’s real estate investment fundamentals and its place as Canada’s financial capital are more sound than most international capitals — New York included,” said Blake Hutcheson, a partner and head of global real estate investing at Mount Hallet Capital, a New York-based private equity fund.

He said the torrent of development in Toronto’s financial district was the culmination of a process that had taken 20 years “from concept to completion.” The three new downtown office towers were started before the recession.

Their developers have preleased more than two-thirds of the space, taking advantage of pent-up demand for modern office space. No significant office towers had been built in the financial district for 17 years, according to the city’s planning department.

The first of the financial district towers to be completed was the 51-story 1.2-million-square-foot Bay Adelaide Centre West, developed by a partnership of the Brookfield Properties Corporation, based in New York, and BPO Properties Ltd., based in Toronto. It opened this month and has been 73 percent preleased to the accounting giant KPMG and other tenants.

The name of the tower includes the word “West” because two more phases, encompassing another 2.6 million square feet of space, are planned. Construction of this first tower, which cost 308 million Canadian dollars, actually began almost two decades ago but was aborted after the foundation was completed in 1991, during an earlier recession, when Toronto’s office vacancy rates hit 20 percent.

Tom Farley, president and chief executive for Brookfield’s Canadian commercial operations, says the new building is the first high-rise office building in downtown Toronto to be awarded a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating. He said that the building would have “an estimated 40 percent energy savings relative to other buildings built to the Canadian Model National Energy Code,” another voluntary standard that gives builders green bragging rights

Another new building, the RBC Centre, a 43-story tower with a 10-story podium and three underground parking levels, is the Royal Bank of Canada’s new head office. It was developed at a cost of about 420 million Canadian dollars by the Cadillac Fairview Corporation of Toronto on behalf of its parent, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. The new tower, which is to open later this month, is at the edge of the financial district, in a thriving entertainment district that includes a circular concert hall, an opulent 1900s-era theater, and other entertainment venues, restaurants, bars and recycled period buildings turned into offices, studios and loft condos.

The final new building, the 30-story Telus Tower, which is costing about 250 million Canadian dollars, is on a corner of the windswept 30-acre former railway lands, which have been abandoned for about three decades. It is to be completed next month. The site is near Union Station, the country’s busiest passenger transportation hub, used by about 250,000 passengers each work day.

Peter Menkes, the president of Menkes Developments of Toronto, the developer of the tower, says the building is 82 percent leased by Telus Business Solutions of Vancouver, which provides communications services across Canada.

The Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan of Toronto and Halcyon Real Estate Partners Fund, a New York-based institutional real estate equity fund, are joint venture partners with Menkes. “Nearly filling the building space in a difficult leasing environment was an accomplishment,” Mr. Menkes said.

The new buildings will all provide access to the 16.8-mile underground PATH system, a climate-controlled retail, service and food walkway winding under most of the office towers downtown, with access to the subway. The office buildings will also be connected by the PATH to Union Station, which itself will be redeveloped in 2010 at a cost of 640 million Canadian dollars.

The three luxury hotel-condominiums that are under construction are in the downtown Bay Street financial district or within a few blocks of it. They are the 70-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, which is to cost 500 million Canadian dollars; the 53-story Ritz-Carlton and Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, with a price tag of 300 million Canadian dollars; and the 65-story Living Shangri-La Toronto, projected at 430 million Canadian dollars. They are expected to open next year or early in 2011.

All of these properties are expected to be attractive to executives doing business in the financial district, and they will have conference facilities. The upper stories will be used for residential condominiums, a booming sector in Toronto. Another building just starting to go up in the area is 18 York Street, a 26-story tower across the street from Telus Towers. It is expected to open in the fall of 2011.

GWL Realty Advisers of Toronto is developing the tower for the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation of Vancouver. PricewaterhouseCoopers is expected to be the principal tenant.

Kaid Al-Ani, an associate partner of the Mitchell Partnership of Toronto, which is designing its mechanical systems, says 18 York Street will be noteworthy for its cooling system, which will circulate cold water drawn from Lake Ontario.

Doug Webber, a planner who leads the green practice for Toronto-based Halsall Associates Ltd., an engineering consulting firm responsible for green and sustainability features at 18 York Street, says all of these new buildings “meet several city of Toronto planning objectives, including expansion of the downtown business district, employment growth, transit-oriented development and revitalization of the area surrounding Union Station.”

While it seems surprising to have all this activity during a recession, there was an acute need for new construction in the financial district, according to John O’Bryan, a vice chairman of CB Richard Ellis Ltd., a commercial real estate services company, in Toronto.

Until this year, the newest buildings there were almost 20 years old, and a number of major tenants had been pushing for more modern buildings with larger and more efficient floor plates and green qualities, he said.

Many of them also preferred to be downtown because financial employees are seen as increasingly eager to live in condos downtown.

Mr. O’Bryan noted that most of the tenants in the first two buildings came out of existing downtown buildings, leaving huge blocks of space to refill. “The older buildings that tenants left had never been retrofitted, and yet were always full,” Mr. O’Bryan said. “Owners will now retrofit those old buildings and fill them up over time.”

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

Click to enlarge the price list

OfficeSearchToronto.com tracks available office space across the GTA. Want a survey or availability report somewhere else in Toronto? Are these space too big? Call us at 416-992-9869 or E-mail Me!.

Contact Us

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

Commercial Real Estate Toronto October 2009

Redbourne Realty signs Thales to new 190,000 sq ft lease in Toronto Redbourne Realty – Thales Rail Signalling Solutions Inc., a subsidiary of Thales Group worldwide, has signed a multi-million dollar, long-term lease with Redbourne Realty Advisors Fund for 190,000 square feet at 105 Moatfield Dr. in Toronto. After a year-long search, it was determined that TRSS’s needs could best be met by relocating within Toronto at 105 Moatfield Drive, an office tower situated in a park-like setting overlooking the Don Valley.

Canada News Wire Wed Oct 21 2009

Whiterock REIT back in the hunt for properties White Rock REIT – WRK.UN-T – When many real estate executives waited anxiously for the market to normalize, Jason Underwood was signing an $82-million deal for two Toronto office towers conveniently nestled between major highways. The chief executive officer of Whiterock REIT helped the company raise about $30-million this year in stock offerings, and decided to put some money to work before his competitors made the first move.

Globe and Mail Fri Oct 23 2009

Island airport’s success may mean waterfront parking lot - A dramatic jump in passenger traffic at the island airport has triggered interest among other airlines and fears the airport’s controlling agency wants to build a giant parking lot along the waterfront. The Toronto City Centre Airport airport handled 500,000 passengers last year, compared with only 25,000 annually before Porter Airlines came on the scene, and that number is expected to hit 750,000 this year.

Toronto Star Fri Oct 23 2009

REITs get ready to buy - It’s an interesting time to be a REIT – money has been easy to come by on the capital markets, and the value of the properties so coveted in the industry have been driven lower by a sharp recession. Analysts estimate more than a billion dollars have been raised by Canadian REITs in the last year, as they issued equity to shore up their balance sheets and prepare for future acquisitions.

Globe and Mail Mon Oct 26 2009

Innovation at Toronto city core – Ryerson University is an urban university with a sprawling campus that has forged alliances with other landlords to reduce blight, share facilities and jointly improve existing or new buildings. Its president, Sheldon Levy, sat down to discuss smart cities with National Post Editor-at-Large Diane Francis.

Financial Post Wed Oct 28 2009

Landlords and tenants become allies to save energy Toronto Alliance – The GTA’s biggest landlords and tenants got together last week to figure out ways to make the area’s office and retail space more energy efficient through building retrofits. The group included Brookfield, Cadillac Fairview, GWL Realty Advisors, Oxford Properties – a who’s who of building managers and owners – as well as influential tenants such as Rogers, Telus, Wal-Mart and Canada’s Big Five banks.

Toronto Star Fri Oct 16 2009 – National Post – Canada News Wire

Prefab, Portable Green Roof Installed In Toronto ESRI Canada – Green roofs keep buildings cool, control water runoff and can be really nice to look at. But what do you do in an existing building, when you are a tenant and not an owner? That is one of the many problems that Alex Miller, President, ESRI Canada, and landscape architect Scott Torrance had to face.

Tree Hugger Fri Oct 16 2009

Lots of cash, no properties - Brookfield Properties and its partners have an unexpected problem: They have $5-billion to spend on commercial real estate, but markets have recovered so strongly that they can’t find the juicy deals they hoped would lead to 20-per-cent returns. The stock market’s resurgence from March lows has allowed many of the world’s most challenged real estate companies to issue stock or sell bonds to solve financial issues.

Globe and Mail Fri Oct 30 2009

Canada fights to pull out of slump - Canada’s economy continued to stagnate in August, a grim reminder of the country’s struggle to pull out of an ugly recession. Gross domestic product fell 0.1 per cent in August, following a flat reading in July. That means the first two months of the third quarter, when the economy had been expected to grow, have fallen flat as Canada continues to struggle out of recession.

Globe and Mail Fri Oct 30 2009

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

For a survey of available commercial real estate anywhere in Toronto Contact Us. We will collect floor plans, organize the tour and help you secure your new office space with our fees paid by your new Landlord!

Contact Us

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

Contact Us

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

Toronto Commercial Real Estate News – Oct 2009

Real Estate Impact Huge Under Accounting Changes – cbre.com – New accounting standards requiring property to be marked to market and proposed changes in lease accounting rules could have an immense impact on the balance sheets, income statements and overall financial outlook of US corporations, many of whom are unprepared for the changes, according to a new report from CB Richard Ellis.
Globe St., Oct 01, 2009

2009 BOMA Canada National Award Winners – The Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada has announced the winners of the prestigious 2009 national awards in recognition of excellence in the Canadian commercial real estate industry. The Chair of BOMA Canada, Ian M. Stewart, offered his congratulations to all finalists, each of whom has already been an award winner at the local level.
BOMA Canada News Release, Sep 25, 2009

Huge Thornhill project will transform Yonge Street – A massive development that will transform a key stretch of Yonge Street in Thornhill has generated a flurry of buyer interest, as subway expansion and other transit improvements better connect the 905 to the downtown core. Stretching along Yonge’s east side between Steeles and Clark avenues the 10-acre site also benefits from expansions to the VIVA bus system.
National Post, Oct 01, 2009

Colliers third quarter capitalization rate report for 2009 – colliers.com – Despite the recession and challenging financing conditions, there were very few distressed sales, and Canadian investors with capital earmarked for “value investing” have been largely disappointed. This has also been the trend in the United States, although to a lesser extent. One hallmark of this stabilization is the relative ease that many REITs are experiencing either with new equity placements, or the issuance of convertible debentures.
Colliers International, Oct 06, 2009

A Rare Building Boom Up North in Toronto – The financial district of this city, the fifth-largest metropolitan area in North America, with a population of 5.4 million, is the scene of an exceptional flurry of development, especially in light of the recession. Three green towers with a combined 3.1 million square feet of office space are opening before the end of the year in the downtown financial district.
New York Times, Oct 14, 2009

Buying a small, income-producing property – The timing could be right for small investors to get into the commercial real-estate market, according to some real-estate and investment professionals. There are still areas in Canada where good buys on small, income-producing properties – such as a store with apartments above – are possible, due to low interest rates and the rough economic climate.
Globe and Mail, Oct 14, 2009

Toronto’s Trump International at mid-way point – trumptoronto.ca – Toronto’s Trump International Hotel & Tower emerges from its tiny 15,000 square foot footprint today, as journalists were given a ‘‘mid-way update’’ and helicopter tour of the site. It is the two-year anniversary of the groundbreaking; the project is one of several luxury condo towers that remain under construction despite the downturn.
National Post, Oct 16, 2009

Commercial real estate bounces back – realnet.ca – Canada’s commercial real estate market is on the mend, as an 18-month slump in Toronto has ended and other urban centres are showing signs of renewed activity that suggest the sector has de-coupled from its troubled U.S. counterpart. After almost two years of flat or declining activity, industry tracker RealNet Canada Inc. said investments in commercial property in the GTA increased by 46 per cent in the third quarter.
Globe Investor, Oct 19, 2009 Bloomberg, Oct 19, 2009

Toronto now the bedroom community of 905: study – cfib-fcei.ca – If you ask Les Liversidge why he left Toronto for Markham, he is quick to answer: “It was the business taxes, principally the tax bill on the building itself that did it.” Four years ago, the 55-year-old lawyer owned a building in north Toronto out of which he ran a small firm that practised occupational safety and workers’ compensation law. His dilemma was property taxes.
National Post, Oct 19, 2009

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices

For a survey of available commercial real estate anywhere in Toronto Contact Us. We will collect floor plans, organize the tour and help you secure your new office space with our fees paid by your new Landlord!

Contact Us

Follow me on Twitter Subscribe to my RSS feed

Join me on LinkedIn Shared Offices