Yahoo! Canada – Toronto Office

I had the pleasure of meeting Joanne Acri (@joanneacri) and Sarah Bradley (@sbradley) last week to tour the Yahoo! Canada Toronto office at 207 Queens Quay.  We sat down to discuss the building, the landlord and why Yahoo! decided to move their offices from Front Street down to the lake front.

It doesn’t take much to make a good impression with me when I meet clients for a first time so when I walked into reception and was offered candy and coffee it was off to a great start.  Joanne and Sarah lead me into the lunchroom where we chatted about the corporate culture at Yahoo! (conclusion awesome!).  The lounge / lunchroom we were in was outfitted with a Foosball table and arcade game and was surrounded by flat screens tuned in to the latest news from CP24.  If you are interested in hearing more about the corporate culture or Yahoo’s space you can reach out to Joanne or Sarah directly via Twitter, I’m sure they’d be happy to help you out!

From a commercial real estate / building perspective, here are some of the things you should think about before you consider 207 Queens Quay as a tenant.

The Good
The lobby show’s very well, as do the common areas.  The building is occupied by tenant’s like Bell Canada and Wind Mobile, so you’re in great company.  The building is run by Brookfield, one of the top property managers in Canada (if not the world).  What really blew me away was the views over the lake and the incredible natural light.  This was the feature that Joanne and Sarah suggested was was their favorite too.

The Tough
The most problematic thing with 207 Queens Quay was getting there.  A quick 10 minute walk from the Financial Core can feel a lot longer in winter.  On the flip side, in the summer, the area can become inundated with tourists which can drive up prices at local restaurants.  The volume of people and traffic can be hectic and get frustrating if you need to leave the office quickly to get to a meeting.  That being said, it’s located right smack in the middle of Toronto’s waterfront and the boardwalk offers incredible outdoor opportunities, particularly in the warmer months.

Overall, I was encouraged with the building and can see tenants overcoming the difficulties of the location to get an A+ landlord and into a great building with some of the coolest tenants and views a building can offer.

Thanks for the tour guys!

PS. Does your company have cool office space you would like to show off or do you have complaints / complements about your building you are in, please let me know.  Nothing like bad or good press to get a Landlord to smarten up and take notice!  Here is a quick survey to help you structure your input – Building Questionnaire

Click on the image below for a larger version of the picture.

Top 25 Commercial Real Estate Brands!

Every year the Lipsey Company comes out with the top Commercial Real Estate brands.  Colliers hit number 2!

Is this the new Blackberry Slider?

By now most people know that the BlackBerry Slider is no longer a myth and is in fact a real device. The first images were a bit blurry and hard to make out. Now you can end the squinting and look at these new higher resolution images of the first ever full QWERTY keyboard slider BlackBerry. Full Story.

Google’s Office in Chicago

I really hope to do this for Google Toronto.  Maybe if I send them this post they will let me come in and see their facilities at Yonge and Dundas.  A real estate agent can hope can’t he?

New U.S. Embassy in London

Original Article

The United States Department of State announced today that KieranTimberlake has won the design competition for the New London Embassy. In statements given at a press briefing today in London, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Louis B. Susman, and Acting Director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, Adam Namm, remarked, “KieranTimberlake’s design meets the goal of creating a modern, welcoming, timeless, safe and energy efficient embassy for the 21st century. Their concept most fully satisfied the requirements outlined in the design competition’s mission statement. The concept holds the greatest potential for developing a truly iconic embassy and is on the leading edge of sustainable design.”

View from Consular Plaza

Concept

• The concept for the New London Embassy is the result of KieranTimberlake’s efforts to resolve, in architectural terms, what an embassy aspires to be and what present realities dictate it must do.

• The expressive challenge is to give form to the core beliefs of our democracy – transparency, openness, and equality – and do so in a way that is both secure and welcoming. At the same time, the building must confront the environmental challenges all nations face with leading edge sustainable design.

• The team included OLIN as Landscape Architect; Arup for Sustainability, MEP/FP and Civil Engineering; Weidlinger Associates for Structural and Blast Engineering; Gensler for workplace design; Davis Langdon for Cost Consulting; and Sako & Associates for Technical Security.

Volunteer Your Office Space and Advertise for free on OfficeSearchToronto.com

Do you have a cool office space or work for a cool company you want to show off? I’m looking for groups that want to show off their office space like Microsoft did here… only much shorter. Don’t be shy!

Royal Bank Plaza – Leed Gold Marketing Piece

Oxford Properties has done a mailer outlining some of the great Leed Gold features of the Royal Bank building.  The only problem I have with it is it doesn’t motivate me to be there so what’s the point?

Impressions, thoughts on this market piece?

Evolution of the Call Center Cubical?

Just a thought, if you’re going to stack employees on top of one another do it in style!

Unplggd

Rainbow Cinemas to the Rescue of Carlton Theatre

Everchanging Wallnado

Original article via Yanko Design

That’s another name for this product that I just made up! I mean the name, that is, this concept was designed by the incomparable Amirko, and it’s real name is “Change It!” Ohh scoop it! It’s one big wall of turn-triangles. Each of these triangles has different colors on them – white – black – and a slightly unique rainbow shade. As you can see in the first picture here, when the color is on full blast, it makes a mural all it’s own.

What combination of madness can be made? Choose your own adventure!

For now it’s the colors as explained above. In the future it might have any number of different choices for the sides – lights, materials, typography, body parts, animal fur, whatever!

Designer: Amirko aka Amirkhan Abdurakhmanov

[Read more]

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