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Menkes acquires Foresters office tower, dev. land in Toronto
Menkes has acquired a 5.1-acre site with a 386,523-square-foot office building, owned and largely occupied by Foresters Financial, which has strong redevelopment potential. The $91.25-million deal for the property at 789-793 Don Mills Rd. and 10 Ferrand Dr. in Toronto
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Menkes acquires Foresters office tower, dev. land in Toronto
Mar 21, 2022
Menkes has acquired a 5.1-acre site with a 386,523-square-foot office building, owned and largely occupied by Foresters Financial, which has strong redevelopment potential.
The $91.25-million deal for the property at 789-793 Don Mills Rd. and 10 Ferrand Dr. in Toronto was brokered by the team of Nicholas Kendrew and Matthew Rakhit at Cushman & Wakefield.
“What we’re seeing in the market right now are a number of owner-occupiers that, in a post-COVID environment, are analyzing their portfolios and looking at their occupancies and trying to understand if they’re maximizing the use of their own facilities,” Kendrew told RENX. “That’s certainly something that Foresters was looking at very closely.”
Kendrew has also noted some office buildings are being viewed as good residential or industrial redevelopment opportunities, and he believes the Foresters head office could fit into this category.
“Our team has sold close to 650,000 square feet of office in the last three months and only 50,000 of that was to an investor client. The rest was all to developers looking to potentially redevelop with a different use on the site, whether it’s residential or industrial.
“I think Foresters really saw the demand for residential redevelopment and saw significant increases in value over their ownership period and thought now would be a really good time to combine looking at the future of their occupancy while taking advantage of a good time to monetize.”
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Residential redevelopment opportunity
While Menkes hasn’t yet shared specific plans for the property, Kendrew believes the company will reposition it and build out additional residential density.
“There’s a very large surface parking lot, so that would be an obvious starting point. The secondary plan for the area from the city supports some residential intensification on the site.”
View of the Foresters building on Don Mills:
The surface parking lot that runs along Ferrand Drive: