Boyle Real Estate Listings – September 2009

Please note the attached office space is not listed with OfficeSearchToronto.com but call us first at 416-992-9869 or E-mail Me for floor plans and additional information.

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GWL – Commercial Real Estate Toronto – September 2009

OfficeSearchToronto.com tracks available office space across the GTA. Want a survey or availability report somewhere else in Toronto? Are these space too big? Call us at 416-992-9869 or E-mail Me!. To browse available office space CLICK HERE!.

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Loft Office Space for lease – Toronto – September 2009

Please note the attached office space is not listed with OfficeSearchToronto.com but call us first at 416-992-9869 or E-mail Me for floor plans and additional information.

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Orlando – Toronto Vacancy List – September 2009

Please note the attached office space is not listed with OfficeSearchToronto.com but call us first at 416-992-9869 or E-mail Me for floor plans and additional information.

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CBRE – Office space for Lease- GTA – September 2009

Please note the attached office space is not listed with OfficeSearchToronto.com but call us first at 416-992-9869 or E-mail Me for floor plans and additional information.

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How Realtors Can Help!

Great article on why you should hire a commercial real estate agent.
http://howcommercialrealtorshelp.ca

In a 2007 national survey of business professionals involved in real estate, 92 per cent of all respondents said they would describe the services of a commercial REALTOR® for a transaction as highly useful, or useful.

* 80% of all respondents said using the services of a commercial REALTOR® would save them time;
* 80% of respondents said using a commercial REALTOR® would help avoid hassles and complications;
* 86% of all respondents said using a commercial REALTOR® means market knowledge

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Midtown Toronto – Commercial Real Estate for Lease – September 2009

OfficeSearchToronto.com tracks available office space across the GTA. Want a survey or availability report somewhere else in Toronto? Are these space too big? Call us at 416-992-9869 or E-mail Me!. To browse available office space CLICK HERE!.

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Canada’s tallest office tower gets a $100-million facelift

By Kuitenbrouwer

Carrera marble is so 1975.

The Italian white marble that clads Canada’s tallest office tower, First Canadian Place, is coming down next year, all 45,000 slabs of it, the owners announced today. In its place, workers will install 7,800 panels of white glass.

All of which is good news; two years ago a slab of marble, roughly a metre square, fell off the building after a spring rainstorm. Frightened police closed down the whole financial district.

Brookfield Properties Corp. said the $100-million restoration job will also involve a rethink of the lobbies in the skyscraper, including new staircases “redesigned to be lighter in scale.’’

This is more good news for Toronto’s thriving business district. The new Bay Adelaide Centre opened last week; two new towers for Telus and the Royal Bank are nearing completion.

Brookfield Properties Corp. bought First Canadian Place on the tower’s 30th birthday in 2005 from a branch of the Reichmann family of Olympia & York fame, who were the original builders. Tom Farley, president and chief executive of Brookfield’s Canadian commercial operations, said the company knew at the time that the iconic tower was a fixer-upper. He said the original builders simply used a marble skin on the building that was too thin.

“The panels should actually have been thicker,” Mr. Farley says. “If they had been two inches thick they would have lasted 100 years.”

Since it bought the tower, Brookfield has been replacing defective marble tiles one at a time. In our minds’ eye, First Canadian Place, the 72-storey headquarters of the Bank of Montreal, is white. But today when I looked at it more closely I noticed that, over the years, the marble panels — two rows of 120 tiles per floor — have changed to a yellowy-grey colour. The 2’ X 4’ marble panels that the owners have replaced over the years look a bit like the occasional false tooth.

Brookfield is about to select a Canadian manufacturer to produce the 7,800 panels of “brilliant new white fritted glass,” each panel 8’ by 10.’ Fritted means that tiny white glass particles are baked into the glass. Starting at the top and using swing stages hung from the building’s side, workers will replace the marble on all four sides, completing the job at the end of 2011.

“It will have a fresh new look to it,” Mr. Farley promises. “It’s gonna be a massive undertaking. We have quantified all the logistics on implementing the strategy.”

Today I noticed workers have already removed four marble panels per floor on much of the tower’s west side, exposing yellow insulation. It seems somehow sad that the Romans and Greeks could build structures of marble that lasted millenia, but ours crumble after a few decades. That’s progress, I guess.

Brookfield says it plans to “recycle” the marble; Mr. Farley says perhaps they will crush the marble and sell it for “rooftop reflective ballast;” that is, white gravel that will reflect sunlight and keep office towers cool. He also suggested he will offer the marble for landscaping and community art projects.

There may be even more edifying uses for such venerable marble slabs; two of them would solve our kitchen countertop problem.

Some facts about First Canadian Place:

• When First Canadian Place opened in 1975 at the corner of King and Bay streets it was, at 72 storeys, the tallest office building in the Commonwealth. The headquarters for the Bank of Montreal, it remains the tallest office tower in Canada, and has 30 elevators, half each serving odd and even floors.

• Olympia & York, the builders, clad the tower in about 45,000 panels of Carrera marble it brought by ship from Italy. Each 2’ X 4’ panel is about 4 cm thick. Brookfield Properties, which bought the tower in 2005, has since replaced hundreds of the weather-beaten marble panels, after at least one panel fell off, endangering those below.

• Brookfield now plans to replace the marble façade with 7,800 “spandrel panels” of “fritted glass.” Each white glass panel, baked in Canada, will be the size of eight marble tiles. Workers will start at the apex and work their way down on swing stages, similar to those used by window-washers. The marble tiles in the building’s four corners will make way for brass panels.

• The company promises to redefine First Canadian Place as “Canada’s premier address for business and pleasure,” with a renovation of its 120-shop underground mall, including “new iconic national retail brands.”

• The marble in the lobby will disappear too, replaced with glazed glass and brushed steel. All the details are at redefiningfirst.com.

• On the King Street side one marble panel, at ground level, bears this engraving: “This symbolic cornerstone of First Bank Tower was unveiled by the Honourable Pauline McGibbon, Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, on Oct. 3, 1974.” The company did not say what will become of this most precious of the tiles.

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77 King Street West – 3d floor plan

New company in Toronto does 3d floor plans. Will do a post about their services shortly – very cool stuff. You can do a 3d design and rendering in a matter of hours with their software instead of days.

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Who Pays for Green? CBRE Commercial Real Estate Report

However, there were some other interesting conclusions from the report:

* Although developers will reap some rewards in terms of higher rents and enjoy higher rates of rental growth,the rates of rent additionality is about the same as the excess development costs (2 percent to 6 percent), so the additional rental value is essentially a wash.
* Improvements in energy savings can be between 10 percent to 50 percent, a major number.
* Residential customers will pay some premium for green, but not necessarily the actual cost of the green improvements.
* Extra value will need to accrue from the investment markets for the lower risks and higher valuations of green buildings.

How should this study effect decisions making at the policy and business level?

* The potential market benefits from greening buildings have not solidified — this means that incentives can still be powerful tools to motivate green projects. The incentive may be the tipping point.
* Energy savings, and measurement of the realization of energy savings, is an important factor in “pencilling out” green improvements. From a policy perspective, this puts even more value on reporting and disclosure of building performance measures.
* Policy measures need to be different for commercial and residential sectors to motivate green. There may need to be different levels of incentives applied to motivate different segments.

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