GTA office building spree to spur major tenant shuffle
May. 26, 2020
Data services provider WPP has signed on as the anchor tenant for the 400,000-square-foot-plus Waterfront Innovation Centre at 125 and 155 Queens Quay E. WPP will consolidate 19 existing downtown Toronto locations into its new 260,000-square-foot space.
The complex has been developed by Menkes, Alcion Ventures and Waterfront Toronto, while BentallGreenOak recently acquired a 50 per cent interest on behalf of Sun Life.
MaRS, in partnership with the University of Toronto, initially signed on to lease 24,000 square feet of space. It has an option to double its commitment in the future at the building, which is tentatively scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Toronto has 8.7 million square feet of office space under construction and 27.5 million more in the development pipeline. While the COVID-19 pandemic will undoubtedly create some fallout within the sector – a rethinking of office space usage, perhaps some
WPP is a holding company that owns a ton of ad agencies and consulting firms. I wouldn't really go as far as to call them a data services company. The WPP brands moving here include Blast Radius, Buchanan Group, Coretech, GCI Group, GTB, Geometry Global, Grey, GroupM (including Mindshare, MediaCom, Wavemaker, Essence, m/Six, Xaxis and Catalyst), H+K Strategies, John Street, J. Walter Thompson, Kantar, Mirum, Ogilvy, SJR, tenthavenue (including Bookmark Content and Communications and Spafax), Tank, Taxi, WPP Health & Wellness and Wunderman.
They’re not breaking any speed records with this portion of the complex but it’s probably not on the critical path. 7 months, starting level 2, no underground parking.
Nov 22