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Ashlar Urban Realty, a local commercial real estate firm, has compiled an interesting stacking plan that focuses on who is moving into Toronto’s 10 newest office buildings, and what space remains available. We've taken the liberty to re-arrange the buildings in the order they are scheduled to be completed. We thought you'd be interested. Click the image to see it larger.
The MaRS Discovery Centre, RBC WaterPark Place, Bremner Tower, Queen Richmond Centre West, The Globe & Mail Centre, Bay-Adelaide East Tower, One York Street, Richmond Adelaide Centre Phase III (EY Tower), Queen's Quay Place, and 171 Front Street are all included in this stacking plan.
The first eight of these buildings are under construction, while two are in the proposal stage: Queen’s Quay Place and 171 Front Street West. They are awaiting a commitment from a major tenant to commence development.
The organizations that have so far committed to setting up offices in these pristine towers include Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG), March & McLennan, First Gulf, The Globe & Mail, RBC, Public Health Ontario, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), and Sapient. Typical reasons to move can include consolidating far-flung offices into contiguous space, moving into more technically advanced buildings, the chance to put a logo on the skyline, moving into more energy efficient buildings.
Many older office towers in the core, meanwhile, have embarked on major retrofit programs to improve energy efficiency and modernize their services in order to remain attractive to tenants.
Meanwhile, more several office towers beyond those shown are also in development, also seeking major tenants. Some readers may have concerns about the current amount of un-leased space coming on the market. Last November real estate services firm CBRE reported that the Downtown Core market had started to display signs of a slowdown and that it was experiencing soft tenant demand with an increased vacancy rate of 5.8%. CBRE stated that demand for large blocks of space was diminishing in large part because more than half of the top 25 law firms, the big four accounting firms and most of the big banks have signed their leasing deals within the last few years. The speed at which of the current crop of buildings under construction attract more tenants will determine when yet more office buildings come to market in the city's core.
For a higher resolution image of the original stacking plan, you can download it here. (PDF)
Want to know more about the buildings above? UrbanToronto dataBase files for the eight under construction are linked below. Each includes several renderings and has links to associated Forum threads where you can join in on the discussion. Otherwise, you are always welcome to leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
