Toronto Union Centre | 298m | 54s | Westbank | Bjarke Ingels Group

I read this as holders of Office properties are in a world of hurt right now and need to find cash to de-leverage fast. They probably did not want to sell these assets - but had to to shore up their balance sheet. US office valuations are falling off a cliff.
 
ProjectEnd said:
Unbelievably short sited. In a world where (sigh) AI is becoming more and more mainstream (not to mention WFH in general), the requirement for serious computing power is only going to increase. Yet here we have Allied doubling down on the notion that everyone is going to return to physical workspaces in the near future and selling off their extremely profitable UDC spaces. I do not get it.
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Maybe not. 151 Front has always seemed to be at or near capacity as a data centre. To expand it would likely require significant investment (space conditioning, power, additional cooling, network, etc). The payback on that takes a while, even if/when AI applications drive demand for it. That combined with the probably good price they’re selling it for probably made the decision easy. Also people WILL be returning to physical offices, and soon. Count on it.
 
ProjectEnd said:
Interesting, thanks for the insight. I'm aware that latency issues with data centres are the reason they require urban locations and I would have thought that lots of the computing power undergirding things like AI / delivery app servers / etc. would also be handled by such facilities. I know that by and large the big boys don't use the smaller, downtown, facilities, but why would Microsoft be constructing a large data centre in the suburbs (Islington and 401) where direct access to the sort of cooling power you describe would be just as unavailable as downtown? Perhaps more so as 151 Front is hooked into Enwave...
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It's not that big boys don't use urban facilities, they definitely do but the use-case is generally more interactive and less offline bulk-processing.

AI effectively has 2 phases. Creating the model which requires massive amounts of resources and is typically infrequently done (this is why ChatGPT doesn't know about events after 2021), and serving requests based on that model.

The AI model, being digital and significantly more compact than the source material, can be copied or moved after creation. Sometimes that means installing it directly on your iPhone or Android device (lots of camera related pieces for example) and other times it means copying it to those delivery app servers in the urban facilities which handle second-to-second activities.

The only place Google has which is setup for large-scale model creation is their Oklahoma facility with a large number of TPU v4 processors, their purpose built AI chip. When Waymo or GM (they both use Google cloud) are building new AI models for their car, it probably happens in Oklahoma. Iowa has older v2 and v3 chips for those on a budget or smaller requirements. The completed AI model is copied to hundreds of individual vehicles for use while driving. What might start as petabytes of training material can result in a model that's gigabytes in size.

Regarding Microsoft's new facility in Toronto, there are still lots and lots of interactive processes with end users.
 
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ProjectEnd said:
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Does not include the 20 York site. Doesn't mean we'll be seeing any building in the near or medium-term future though.
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*Dials it even further back*

You know, I have to say I really have no idea what's going on here. What Allied sold, what they kept back. What KDDI plans to do now it bought 1.35 billion dollar back alley parking lot or something. Or what will be built if anything in this wake. Seems to be awful lot of money handed around if this turns out to be a nothing burger structurally though...

...what I can say if I am reading this right, is that Allied likely took the quick cash over any long term investment return from what I gather, for good or bad here. Meanwhile 160 Front West maybe able to breath a sigh of relief that no mirrored wall will be blocking it's view from the lakefront or anything blocking it's view from the said vantage point for a while. Perhaps, a long while even.
 
UtakataNoAnnex said:
*Dials it even further back*

You know, I have to say I really have no idea what's going on here. What Allied sold, what they kept back. What KDDI plans to do now it bought 1.35 billion dollar back alley parking lot or something. Or what will be built if anything in this wake. Seems to be awful lot of money handed around if this turns out to be a nothing burger structurally though...

...what I can say if I am reading this right, is that Allied likely took the quick cash over any long term investment return from what I gather, for good or bad here. Meanwhile 160 Front West maybe able to breath a sigh of relief that no mirrored wall will be blocking it's view from the lakefront or anything blocking it's view from the said vantage point for a while. Perhaps, a long while even.
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Allied sold 151 Front, which is wholly separate from 20 York, or, Union Centre as we better know it here. The site for that complex lies more over the Skywalk and Station Street, south of 151 Front:

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Allied retains the approval and the LDA over 151 Front so KDDI knew / knows there's no extra density to be sought there.
 
whatever said:
Office vacancy rates are approaching 20%... What update are you expecting to hear?
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I can guarantee you that Westbank has a plan to move a revamped project forward! The more that I am in Union (which is quite a bit these days) the more I see this site as amazing!

Hotel, venue, residential, some commercial, institutional and retail. And a height increase.
 
rdaner said:
I can guarantee you that Westbank has a plan to move a revamped project forward! The more that I am in Union (which is quite a bit these days) the more I see this site as amazing!

Hotel, venue, residential, some commercial, institutional and retail. And a height increase.
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Exactly how much were you thinking of wagering on this project moving forward in the next 18 months?

I know a guy...............his offspring could use a college fund...........he can afford it..........but if you'd like to fill it before the offsping hits elementary school

I mean, $50,000 should work out nicely given the timeline to college. 🤣
 
rdaner said:
I can guarantee you that Westbank has a plan to move a revamped project forward! The more that I am in Union (which is quite a bit these days) the more I see this site as amazing!

Hotel, venue, residential, some commercial, institutional and retail. And a height increase.
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Westbank need a "plan" to resolve their impending insolvency.
 
They've reworked the tower, which is much thinner and taller (tops out @ 307.8572 metres)... now a largely residential building.

Union-reve.jpg


There are still some issues to resolve around elevators:

1. where to actually put them

2. avoiding @ProjectEnd's derisive comments regarding cab to units ratio
 
3Dementia said:
They've reworked the tower, which is much thinner and taller (tops out @ 307.8572 metres)... now a largely residential building.

View attachment 557927

There are still some issues to resolve around elevators:

1. where to actually put them

2. avoiding @ProjectEnd's derisive comments regarding cab to units ratio
Click to expand...
Where did you see/read this?!
 
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