rbt said:
Perhaps not on spec, but I could see them taking a non-trivial loss on the first building (on the first round of leases, under NDA of course). They have a 2 billion dollar incentive to have a structuer and customers in place very quickly after East Harbour GO station opens. If the area looks like a dud, potential customers might look at alternative locations (various Oxford proposals for example) instead of taking a risk that they can keep employees at a location which doesn't have much and is a construction zone.

Their weapon is excitement over what the area could be rather than what it is, and that only works for a little while.
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Fair, but I will say this, the purchase price paid from FG did reflect that there were ongoing, serious discussions with potential tenants at the time. This is public info. Who those tenants were, and whether
any have signed a letter of intent or a lease yet is not currently public.

***

This is the statement in the press release announcing the sale:

"Cadillac Fairview is currently in discussions with prospective tenants who have expressed interest in this unique opportunity."

At the time (2019) I was familiar with 2 names in discussions, but I don't have any current info on the state of said discussions, if there are any ongoing.

firstgulf.com

Cadillac Fairview purchases East Harbour project from First Gulf - First Gulf

Cadillac Fairview and First Gulf are pleased to announce that Cadillac Fairview has entered into an unconditional purchase agreement with First Gulf and its partners to acquire 100 per cent ownership of Toronto’s East Harbour project, a 38-acre site three … Continued
firstgulf.com
 
My impression is that there were a bunch of big office deals about to go down in 2019. Given the complete lack of announcements in the last 2 years, and COVIDs impact on the office market, I suspect many have gone a bit sideways.
 
A lot of big ones did go down...TD taking most of 160 Front, Google taking all of 65 King, Equitable taking about half of 25 Ontario, Konrad taking all of 486 Front. Some really large ones did get put on hold for the time being, but there's been remarkable confidence in the Toronto market, to be fair.
 
ProjectEnd said:
A lot of big ones did go down...TD taking most of 160 Front, Google taking all of 65 King, Equitable taking about half of 25 Ontario, Konrad taking all of 486 Front. Some really large ones did get put on hold for the time being, but there's been remarkable confidence in the Toronto market, to be fair.
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I guess I should have specified about the lack of big deals post March 2020 from COVID. TD was 2019, Google and Equitable February 2020, and I can't off hand find Konrad's date but I'm fairly certain they signed pre-COVID.

COVID has had a profound impact on the office market which is only now starting to abate.. but there is a lot of lost ground to catch up on and I don't think we've seen more than a handful of 100+k lease deals since then.

I wanna see a major lease propelling one of the major office blocks to construction as much as anyone, but the Office market has not been it's normal busy self for the last 2 years and you see it in all the big proposals from 2018-2019 which were chasing big tenants stagnating.
 
Apologise for bumping this thread at the same time, but with demo permits coming, means one step closer to the eventual start of the new district.

Have some photos from one of my old views which I always wanted to mockup with the new skyline. (the tower is technically flipped the wrong way, but to make the street angle work I just flipped the only detailed render available.)

Tower1B.jpg
 
It will appear slightly further away from that vantage I believe. Almost looks like it is on Corktown Common.

With that said, it will be nice having a backdrop of towers when walking down Front Street E and looking east.

Thanks for that emphur!!
 
WestEnd said:
Today, 10:30am
View attachment 495174View attachment 495175View attachment 495176
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Well, this is really sad. I'd thought that we, as a city, would do better than this.
To quote Ada Louise Huxtable, "What's lost forever is the real thing".
This is a building that would have made the area more interesting by being worked with and worked around. I think of Queen's Quay terminal, for example. Or The Merchandise Building. Or one of the many converted industrial buildings around the city. I suppose The Distillery District is more picturesque, and Liberty Village had more stock. Nonetheless.

This looks to me like something out of the era of speculative parking lots, the Teperman years, all over again. Pity.
 
Towered said:
Well the city is the one to issue a demo permit, so I'd place the blame squarely on them.
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Toronto Buildings doesn't have the authority to not issue a building permit for an undesignated building, because they wish it had been designated.

Normally, as @ProjectEnd notes, Buildings is a stickler for having an approved replacement building w/permits in process though.

The issue here, CF's poor judgement aside; is that the City never designated the building when it had a chance.

Ahem, Councillor Fletcher.......
 
Northern Light said:
Toronto Buildings doesn't have the authority to not issue a building permit for an undesignated building, because they wish it had been designated.

Normally, as @ProjectEnd notes, Buildings is a stickler for having an approved replacement building w/permits in process though.

The issue here, CF's poor judgement aside; is that the City never designated the building when it had a chance.

Ahem, Councillor Fletcher.......
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Yup, definitely had plenty of YEARS to designate the building, especially with these types of projects having meetings with the city prior to submissions as well as commenting on trying to keep the buildings in those meetings.
 
Northern Light said:
Toronto Buildings doesn't have the authority to not issue a building permit for an undesignated building, because they wish it had been designated.

Normally, as @ProjectEnd notes, Buildings is a stickler for having an approved replacement building w/permits in process though.

The issue here, CF's poor judgement aside; is that the City never designated the building when it had a chance.

Ahem, Councillor Fletcher.......
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You're sorta saying the saying thing as Mr. Towered...save for significant elaboration on it. But to be fair, it's rarely that simple. /sigh
 
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I'm a bit concerned with the full loss of this one, and most of the LCBO warehouse on the waterfront for a number of reasons. One, both buildings in my opinion, do have some portions of their structure worth preserving, here the brick and window lattice floor areas are worthy for consideration. Second, these warehouse factory buildings are of a robust structural nature allowing for potential future multi use. It seems a waste to me to fully demolish, and often have something put up of inferior quality for convenience...
 
The Preservationist said:
I'm a bit concerned with the full loss of this one, and most of the LCBO warehouse on the waterfront for a number of reasons. One, both buildings in my opinion, do have some portions of their structure worth preserving, here the brick and window lattice floor areas are worthy for consideration. Second, these warehouse factory buildings are of a robust structural nature allowing for potential future multi use. It seems a waste to me to fully demolish, and often have something put up of inferior quality for convenience...
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I get the concern being expressed about the demolition of this building. What it came down to was that in the years that this was a First Gulf site, they were never able to sign anyone to take this building on as a place of business, and Cadillac Fairview had no takers either. If you cannot secure a tenant for your building, eventually you no longer want to pay for its upkeep, and you want to replace it with something that you can market. The bottom line brings about a sad end for many buildings.

42
 
interchange42 said:
I get the concern being expressed about the demolition of this building. What it came down to was that in the years that this was a First Gulf site, they were never able to sign anyone to take this building on as a place of business, and Cadillac Fairview had no takers either. If you cannot secure a tenant for your building, eventually you no longer want to pay for its upkeep, and you want to replace it with something that you can market. The bottom line brings about a sad end for many buildings.

42
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This is a good point.

However, now that it is a mixed-use development, I feel like there could have been a creative solution turning it into loft apartments + retail at base. To the degree the floorplates are too large, the demolition is showing a sturdy concrete structure and I expect it could have had an atrium cut out of the centre without affecting the integrity of the building.
 
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