Google has a 90,000 sq.ft. of space in 111 richmond and just signed a lease for 185,000 sq.ft. in Waterloo. Apple is taking 50,000 sq.ft. in the southcore, I could see an IBM taking a couple of hundred thousand sq.ft. as a lead tenant downtown. Certainly isn't going to be a law firm...

I've worked in Markham, Richmond Hill, Mississauga and in the financial core. You would have to double my salary to get me to take a job outside of the downtown at this point. My time is worth too much to sit on a train or drive for 2+ hours every day.
 
Mithras said:
Google has a 90,000 sq.ft. of space in 111 richmond and just signed a lease for 185,000 sq.ft. in Waterloo. Apple is taking 50,000 sq.ft. in the southcore, I could see an IBM taking a couple of hundred thousand sq.ft. as a lead tenant downtown. Certainly isn't going to be a law firm...

I've worked in Markham, Richmond Hill, Mississauga and in the financial core. You would have to double my salary to get me to take a job outside of the downtown at this point. My time is worth too much to sit on a train or drive for 2+ hours every day.
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I'm surprised Apple has an office here. It must be sales or marketing though right (not engineering)?

You're not alone, tons of young people are moving into condos downtown, or houses in the surrounding neighbourhoods like Queen West or the Annex. There's a lot of reverse commuting going on, say from places like Cabbagetown to Markham, or from CityPlace to Mississauga.
 
ehlow said:
I'm surprised Apple has an office here. It must be sales or marketing though right (not engineering)?

You're not alone, tons of young people are moving into condos downtown, or houses in the surrounding neighbourhoods like Queen West or the Annex. There's a lot of reverse commuting going on, say from places like Cabbagetown to Markham, or from CityPlace to Mississauga.
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Apple has a significant office complex in Markham already.
 
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Both have hundreds of thousands of square feet housing several thousand employees in multi-level basements (largely converted vaults) under the bank towers.
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I'd love to hear more about this. What do they do down there and how do they access the space? Windowless I imagine.
 
Edward Skira said:
I'd love to hear more about this. What do they do down there and how do they access the space? Windowless I imagine.
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I'm not sure if the FCP portion are converted vaults, but we have large amounts of employees on B1 and B2 (these are floors directly below the branch pavillion on the Bay St. side). We affectionately refer to our colleagues on B2 as the meat locker. It's quite depressing.
 
IBM may want to add a downtown satellite office but it likely has nothing to do with this proposal. I think this proposal is conceptual and designed to position Cadillac Fairview for the next cycle of office space absorption. They are likely just posturing in competition with Oxford which has been agressive of late in the proposal game. What this does mean however is that just as the current boom expanded the CBD core south, the next big office building boom will shift the Core Westward along front.

If there were a major lead tenant the only source I could think of is Insurance or Banking. Resource companies are kind of spinning their wheels. The Insurance business has kind of perked up over the last year so they may have some confidence moving forward.

Pure speculation wise I agree Scotia Bank is a good candidate for something to happen. As mentioned they are in the process of figuring out what to do with ING Canada. Wild speculative rumour had that Scotia was considering merging with Standard Charter of the UK, although that is neither likely nor is it likely that that would necessarily lead to more office space in Toronto, and that somehow Cadillac Fairview would have insider information on that.
 
I think this proposal is conceptual and designed to position Cadillac Fairview for the next cycle of office space absorption.
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Do you really think they'd be hiring Adrian Smith to design if this wasn't something a little more than conceptual?
 
canarob said:
I know these articles are boosterish, but this gives a sense of why companies like IBM favour York Region:


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...me-canadas-next-big-tech-hub/article16747510/
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This reinforces my perception of the difference between the downtown tech scene & the suburban one:

In Toronto, the company was finding mostly young, single people who were interested in being downtown and working on the latest mobile wizardry, rather than ‘boring’ financial services software. But people living in Markham were a different breed.

“They tend to be more mature,” says Mr. Smith, 39. “Maybe they’ve had their first child … and their focus is they don’t want to work on something that might be here today, gone tomorrow, may not have the robust funding, and may not have the disciplined team. Those developers are interested in working on big complex problems that are very sticky and very stable. So we were fascinated in our ability to find them here in this market.”
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canarob said:
I know these articles are boosterish, but this gives a sense of why companies like IBM favour York Region:


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...me-canadas-next-big-tech-hub/article16747510/
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This article is silly ... maybe that's not the right word to use ... its very much out of date ... York region has been the tech hub of Canada for years now.

Its very incorrect to word it any other way actually ... there have not been any recent big moves into York region (namely Markham) they've taken place over the last 30-10 years.

Otherwise I think the article hits it on the nail ... start ups tend to locate downtown but the large multinational (namely American) companies locate in Markham (e.g. IBM / Sun / Oracle / ... / the list really does go on and on).

I don't think we'll see this trend change very much, its like this in most of North America. Big tech companies have large labs outside of cities, some dabble with smaller labs in cities (e.g. Cisco in Toronto). Smaller to medium companies ... free for all ... some in the core some in the suburbs (e.g. Amazon is located in the core).

Some cites defy this but only with new generation companies.

You will never see the likes of IBM move its lab downtown, I'm sure more then half the employees (who tend to be older would protest). You can apply this to just about all the very large software players.
 
I liking this shapeless mass less and less. The bulges are unattractive and the roof just looks silly.
 
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