Toronto CIBC SQUARE | 241.39m | 50s | Hines | WilkinsonEyre

  • Thread starter Suicidal Gingerbread Man
  • Start date
And not the black bloc nor the hooligans, nor the hundreds of losers planning to but failing to cause havoc....none of them were held accountable. A perfect example was that idiot who had legally changed his name to Mr. Nobody.

this argument's been had a thousand times, so I'm just going to leave it at, who were the adults in charge and who scurried under their desks for weeks?
 
Brookfield Place 3 occupies Brookfield owned 22 Front which is completely independant of Brookfield and cantilevers over the loading dock entrance. It would be extremely shortsighted to sell Oxford CCT and, at the same time, allow for future compensation for the construction of BP3.

The Well is being development by a team made up of two reits and a major residential developers. Reits are highly aggressive in buying selling and developing property. Sitting on property just doesn't serve them well.

Not aware of any Menkes office in the planning stage. They may have a stake in One York but, it certainly not a big one.

The Oxford owned CTT and the whole Brookfield Place co-ownership was a bit of a fiasco which saw people fired. Things may have changed but when it happened I'm almost certain the Oxford had the right to block or JV the development if it came to pass. Like I said, I don't know if it is still the case but I could find out.

REITs are highly aggressive in BUYING real estate, not aggressive in selling and like I said, development is capital intensive and when you have to distribute the vast majority of your funds from operation, development is a cash drag which is very difficult to manage. Allied and many others also have articles in their REIT charter which preclude over a certain % of their holdings to be properties under development. I'm fairly certain that AP could not do ALL of those buildings at once.

Menkes co-owns One York with HOOPP.
 
Allied has as many buildings in the pipeline as they do only so that they have a range of products ready to suit any potential client, so I agree, no, they could never do all of those buildings at once. Their chief priority right now is finding tenants for the office tower at The Well: their partners RioCan and DiamondCorp want to be able to do that project in one go. Union Centre will be an easy sell owing to its location, and everything else of Allied's is ready and waiting for whenever a company speaks up for any particular type of building or location.

42
 
The Oxford owned CTT and the whole Brookfield Place co-ownership was a bit of a fiasco which saw people fired. Things may have changed but when it happened I'm almost certain the Oxford had the right to block or JV the development if it came to pass. Like I said, I don't know if it is still the case but I could find out.

REITs are highly aggressive in BUYING real estate, not aggressive in selling and like I said, development is capital intensive and when you have to distribute the vast majority of your funds from operation, development is a cash drag which is very difficult to manage. Allied and many others also have articles in their REIT charter which preclude over a certain % of their holdings to be properties under development. I'm fairly certain that AP could not do ALL of those buildings at once.

Menkes co-owns One York with HOOPP.

I'm positive Sunlife bought a sizable stake in One York. They manage a real estate fund. Why would they lease space?

It's a given AP couldn't build all the buildings at once. Not sure why you are inferring it. Didn't mean to imply REITs are aggressively in selling but, they are more likely to sell to suit their needs than others. Point being, sitting on things is really bad for distribution . The clause is to protect the REIT by adding a sense of confidence to shareholders.
 
Last edited:
Your forecast seems highly optimistic. 16 York appears to have been shelved in favour of 156 Front. Oxford has been completely silent since the release of flashy renderings during the casino debate all the while others aggressively push to get their towers approved. I understand why people cling to it but, it's time to move on until the next update.

One of 45 Bay, Union Plaza and 156 Front will break ground in the next 18 months.

others to watch are BA3 and the Well office tower followed by Brookfield Place 3 and 16 York.

From a logistics point of view, 16 York would seem to be the easiest of them all to start since it's already a parking lot, has a simple and straightforward design, and the crews and some machinery are already next door. It also arguably has the most transit-friendly location and the cachet of being in the Southcore.

It's a pity that Vegas doesn't give odds on these things. ;)
 
Last edited:
I'm positive Sunlife bought a sizable stake in One York. They manage a real estate fund. Why would they lease space?

It's a given AP couldn't build all the buildings at once. Not sure why you are inferring it. Didn't mean to imply REITs are aggressively in selling but, they are more likely to sell to suit their needs than others. Point being, sitting on things is really bad for distribution . The clause is to protect the REIT by adding a sense of confidence to shareholders.

Just because a company has a large real estate portfolio, doesn't mean it rents from itself. A good example would be the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. Its offices are not in their subsidiary's office towers, its in a Manulife owned building. The apparent reason is their staff likes that location vs Cadillac Fairview's mostly downtown space.
 
^ Interesting article. Looks like this project is still a ways off. Probably another 2 years until we even get an approval. So the earliest this thing could start would probably be 2017, meaning the first tower wouldn't be ready until 2020-2021. I am excited to hear more details though, and Metrolinx did say more details are coming over the next couple weeks.
 
Also in today's Star... http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/14/big_office_towers_planned_across_from_union_station.html

"...Hines spokesperson Allison Kimmell would not elaborate on the plans when contacted by the Star. “We haven’t made a public announcement about this yet, so at this time we’re not commenting on it,” she said. She would not explain why the project page was removed from the company website, a move noted by forum users at UrbanToronto.ca"

http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/1126291/towering-office-buildings-planned-across-from-union-station/

Pretty much the identical article to the Star version was the front page cover story of Metro today. Unlike the online version, the print edition had a headline that was something like (I don't remember exactly): "Construction near Union to continue indefinitely"
 
In this case i am opposed to a modern addition to the Dominion Building. This isn't random urban fabric, the design and aesthetics here were deliberate, as was its integration into its context, the way its facade follows Front Street's gentle curve and the way it pairs with Union Station. This creates something unique in Toronto, being just about the only streetscape i can think of that even remotely approaches European beaux arts urban design ( à la Regent Street in London for example). It seems unwarranted and rather obnoxious to infringe on any of this.
 
Tend to agree - the proposed addition is on the obnoxious side of things. It would be preferable to transfer that floorspace to the rest of the development.

AoD
 
T-Bor:

Yeah I know - it doesn't mean building an atop a heritage building, thereby altering its' proportions and how it relates to the street and the area is desirable.

AoD
 

Back
Top