Developer: Oxford Properties Group, Ports Toronto
Architect: Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
  
Address: 30 Bay St, Toronto
Category: Commercial (Office, Retail)
Status: Pre-ConstructionCompletion: TBD
Height: 848 ft / 258.46 mStoreys: 59 storeys
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Toronto The HUB | 258.46m | 59s | Oxford Properties | Rogers Stirk Harbour

Huge shot in the dark, but I wonder if this has anything to do with Santander. They are a banking giant from Spain and are apparently looking to enter the Canadian banking sector, hoping to succeed where ING and HSBC failed. The formal decision on their banking license application is due by April 2025.
 
Yes I am bumping this. John Peets clearly states that the office absorption rate for AAA space is under 6%. He advised on LinkedIn to sign a lease for 5 years so that you can be ready to onboard to The HUB. So he is clearly hinting something is up and happening soon. With all the RTO happening, space will be needed. I knew it would be in 2025 cause the big US banks are all coming back to work full time and I am in mgmt and I have to be in 3 days a week minimum and soon to be increased.


I have two friends that work in the finance field. They have been mostly working from home since COVID. They were both told in the last two weeks they are going to have work at offices 5 days a week.
 
I have two friends that work in the finance field. They have been mostly working from home since COVID. They were both told in the last two weeks they are going to have work at offices 5 days a week.
My work is mandating 3 days a week now as well. Feels like it has been busier in the PATH lately.

This is good, maybe the Hub, CC3, Union Center, and Union Park may finally be built.

It's crazy but there are so many condo development I needed some office towers for a change.
 
This is good, maybe the Hub, CC3, Union Center, and Union Park may finally be built.

One day, maybe, but there is certainly not enough market interest (that I've heard about) to support all of those.

Even 2/4 is ambitious is the near term........but there are more players looking than current, ideal, space..........soooo we'll see.
 
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Huge shot in the dark, but I wonder if this has anything to do with Santander. They are a banking giant from Spain and are apparently looking to enter the Canadian banking sector, hoping to succeed where ING and HSBC failed. The formal decision on their banking license application is due by April 2025.
They should have bought out HSBC. HSBC was making 600 million a year in Canada. I find it odd for Santander, considering they are looking to pull out of the UK. ING was doing well and making money here. Problem was they had issues back home which they needed to focus on.
 
ING was doing well and making money here. Problem was they had issues back home which they needed to focus on.

Exactly this.

A real shame too, I opened an account with them......I mean imagine, a bank actually paying you interest to borrow your money, LOL Best commercials in Canadian banking history!

I don't know if they had a 'no compete' with Scotia after selling, but I assume if they did it would be over by now.... I would welcome them back if they could be similarly disruptive.
 
I have two friends that work in the finance field. They have been mostly working from home since COVID. They were both told in the last two weeks they are going to have work at offices 5 days a week.

Many Bay Street law firms - the larger ones at least - are now moving to four minimum, for most levels of staff. Now, do some of these firms have the space for it - as some shed entire floors over COVID - that's the big question.
 
One day, maybe, but there is certainly not enough market interest (that I've heard about) to support all of those.

Even 2/4 is ambitious is the near term........but there are more players looking than current, ideal, space..........soooo we'll see.
I get it... Let me dream :(

I have been looking forward to these four for a while...
 
They should have bought out HSBC. HSBC was making 600 million a year in Canada. I find it odd for Santander, considering they are looking to pull out of the UK. ING was doing well and making money here. Problem was they had issues back home which they needed to focus on.
Yeah I’m surprised that a different foreign bank didn’t end up buying HSBC Canada. The justification for Santander’s possible entry into Canada is that our banking sector is extremely profitable - the article I linked says that in the quarter preceding when the article was written, RBC made $4.2B (not identified if this is revenue or profit) off of just 17M clients, whereas Santander Group made $4.9B off of its ~170M global clients.

Seems like they want their slice of the pie and see themselves as having the ability to disrupt our banking sector.
 
Work from home existed before Covid. Companies renovation plans included more hotelling stations than assigned workstations before Covid too. It's not going away. The most aggressive companies to get people back in the office full time have a surplus of long term leases. CIBC's CEO has been very public about it and CIBC Square is one if not the biggest leases in Canadian history. Will they renew those leases is the real question and that could effect the vacancies for the next 10 to 20 years.

It's a cyptic post on LinkedIn. Enjoy it. I'm too old to get excited over it like back in the day, 20 years ago, with all the Bay Adelaide rumours or supertall Manulife rumours sponsored by forumer, VofE.
 
I was and still am very good friends with a VP at Manulife, now retired who at the time when asked if Manulife had any plans centralizing operations said no such plans exist. Given the size of that individual's department and influence, I believe there was nothing behind the Manulife supertall . If anyone can show me solid evidence otherwise...
 
Work from home existed before Covid.

Yes, it did.

But not nearly at the scale it reached during and immediately after the pandemic.

****

The suggestion that reintegrating a large portion of the workforce into full-time or near-full time in office is somehow isolated to a handful of companies with excess leased space on their hands is flat-out wrong.

It's happening across dozens of very large companies in the U.S. and Canada and indeed globally.

It's not limited to banks or law firms, though they are certainly at the forefront locally......government is also pressuring people back into the office. The Feds, in Canada are hard pushing a return to 5 days in.....and they've already let go of so much space that may be very challenging....

The province has quietly snapped up another downtown office property to meet its ongoing needs, that despite MacDonald Block coming back online.

Will there be some holdover effect of remote and/or hybrid work in some businesses, business units and sectors? Sure. We're not going to get back down to or below, pre-Covid levels.

But I think we're walking back ~80% of it.

In any event...... all headlines to he contrary Toronto's population is actually still growing month to month, and our banks are churning out profits and growing organically and by acquisition, and those head office jobs will be in Toronto.

So there is demand.
 
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You say flat out wrong with an assessment of large companies and governments pushing people back to the office. Large companies make up the majority of tenanted space however, they represent a little more than a handful of all companies in Canada. As for the Feds, Trudeau hired like crazy in a make jobs atmosphere. Opposition parties, in our populist politic environment no less, are known to do the exact opposite and they are most likely going to win the next election

There are large blocks of continuous space in Toronto. There are entire never occupied buildings available. I can't see Oxford building boldly with 300 to 400,000 square feet pre leased in a 1.4 million square foot tower with respect to the hit they've taken in the last few years The number of tenants that can occupy more than 400,000 square feet is literally a hand. There's the matter of super high construction costs that will be reflected in the minimal lease rates. I can't see an tenant signing such an expensive lease in the current climate.

This post on linkedin is not any different than any commercial project that stats we can deliver at x time if you lease with us.
 

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