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Take a stroll on the streets of southwestern Ontario's Kitchener-Waterloo region and there's likely nothing evidently remarkable distinguishing the two mid-sized Canadian cities from others in the province. But the area of some 550,000 people — located within the Golden Horseshoe, where a quarter of the country's population live — is much more than the bricks and mortar of its main streets. This is where some of the nation's biggest entrepreneurial success stories were born, and the "Silicon Valley of Canada" is asserting its standing as one of the world's best hubs for technology and innovation.
The region is blessed with geographic and cultural assets. Kitchener-Waterloo is located only 100 kilometres away from Toronto, Canada's biggest city, and is only a few hours drive from New York and Michigan. The University of Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University have historically produced the talent that tech startups require to get off the ground. Silicon Valley has used the region that spawned BlackBerry as a talent farm in the past. California represented greener — and warmer — pastures for many recent university graduates itching to enter the always-evolving and exciting tech sector. But consistent public and private investments have boosted the profile and clout of the region, giving students a reason to stay beyond their four-year commitment.
Thank Communitech for Kitchener-Waterloo's ongoing tech renaissance. Founded in 1997, the private not-for-profit company supports startups at all stages of growth and development, and receives funding from all three levels of government. The number of startups registered with Communitech increased from about 150 in 2010 to over 500 four years later. As the company has grown, so too has its physical presence.
Toronto-based architects RAW Design have pumped new life into some of Kitchener-Waterloo's historic brick-and-beam structures. In Uptown Waterloo, the new Communitech Data Hub at 14 Erb Street West houses 19,000 square feet of collaborative office space within a heritage building dating back to the late 1800s. Formerly the head office of Dominion Life from 1899 to 1912, it most recently served as a division of the Waterloo Regional Police Department.
"By the time we got to it, the building had gone through a number of cycles," said Roland Rom Colthoff, Director of RAW Design. "It had been chopped up for the police department's use and had detention cells and typical bland office space with tile ceilings." Colthoff noted that the front lobby and foyer were preserved along with the building's historic bank vault, that RAW later converted into an office kitchen. "We kept the front portion of the building as it addresses Erb Street, which is basically intact in terms of his heritage qualities, but everything beyond that we brought down to be structure."
The result is a character-driven space surrounded by brick and accented by old radiators. These base building finishes, supported by a robust frame and a humanly scaled design, are complemented by new mechanical, electrical and communication systems. "We were keeping the exterior envelope of the building pretty much as it was because it's a heritage structure and you don't want to make large interventions in the existing fabric," added Colthoff. "It was just a matter of coming up with a plan and an organization for their space inside that worked for Communitech. We just kind of erased everything that was there before so we had an empty canvas to work on."
14 Erb wasn't RAW Design's first dance with adaptive reuse in the region. The century-old bones of Kitchener's historic Lang Tannery, most recently used as a tire warehousing facility, proved an ideal candidate for adaptive reuse. Selective demolition, large-scale restoration and new construction produced a 400,000-square-foot facility now occupied by Google and Desire 2 Learn. Communitech was originally seeking 35,000 square feet of space in the building, but RAW designed another 12,000 square feet for the company.
"We saw The Tannery as an engine of urban renewal and it created a space that's very friendly and meets the image that the software engineers have of themselves," said Colthoff, who is witnessing the region's evolution first-hand. "You're getting this kind of cluster of intellectual knowledge that they can share. That's a natural maturation of the industry and The Tannery was well-positioned to capitalize on that. It became a magnet for all those people to come to, a place where you could congregate that was no longer a BlackBerry facility out of the suburbs, but an urban facility."
The intrinsic qualities of old inner-city industrial spaces — which Colthoff says are characterized by openness, robustness and ample natural light — are often what the cohort of people in the industry are looking for. RAW Design knows what it's like to work within a classic brick-and-beam building. They occupy an old garment factory in Downtown Toronto, which he described as a "casual and comfortable" space. "If you want to feel like you are part of the culture of the city, you want to be close to the downtown core, and that's where these warehouse buildings are."
Colthoff said the location of tech-oriented spaces are a key factor in attracting young talent, who generally tend to favour the cycling-friendly neighbourhoods and conveniences of the city, as opposed to the isolation of the fringe areas. But the large corporate warehouses dotting the suburban landscape are going through transformations of their own. The former BlackBerry property at 451 Phillip Street, not far from the University of Waterloo, is becoming part of a mixed-use, high-density community served by an LRT connection. Dubbed Factory Square, the building features 200,000 square feet of loft-style offices and a 16,000-square-foot open-air courtyard cut into the middle of the structure. The intervention turns a nondescript warehouse building into a workplace that fuels creative thinking.
Colthoff sees these three projects as integral drivers in the exchange of information between Kitchener and Waterloo, where growth in each city will create a bifurcated landscape for talent to easily move between. RAW is trying to replicate their experience with 14 Erb at another site in Kingston, Ontario, where they've taken over an old heritage building slated for demolition with plans to create an incubator space and satellite office for the firm.
