Market Statistics – Office Space at Yonge and Bloor Toronto – May 2013

Colliers International 2012 Year End Stats #Video

1 Yonge Street – new look tower

 

Article

Pinnacle International’s mixed-use 1 Yonge St proposal is still in front of the city for consideration, but that didn’t stop the architects from releasing a new set of renderings. Hariri Pontarini’s David Pontarini says this is a more detailed exploration of its six towers (good thing we stole those 3D glasses after watching Iron Man 3). This includes a clearer look at what the top of the buildings will look like, especially the one that stretches up 89 storeys. “It’s all part of the ongoing design work,” says David about the potentially landmark development, which’ll total 6.4M SF.

In there among the mix of towers is the old Toronto Star building. If this gets city approval, the folks in the newsroom better get used to an army of construction people in their midst. The Star HQ, built in 1970, will be re-clad, and another 10 storeys will be built on top.

4050 Yonge St – New Building, New Website

Website – floor plans and additional information

Designed by award-winning KPMB Architects, this exceptional office property has been created for organizations where performance and success go hand-in-hand with sustainability and quality of life.

The physical footprint of 4050 Yonge Street will occupy two acres at the intersection of Yonge Street and York Mills Road, efficiently and effectively merging and mingling with an urban streetscape on one side and a natural ravine on the other.

For Toronto office tenants, bidding wars increasingly common

TARA PERKINS – REAL ESTATE REPORTER
The Globe and Mail

The bidding wars that came to characterize Toronto’s housing market in recent years are now playing a role in its office space market, according to real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield.

The amount of available space in the city’s “B Class” office properties (office properties are ranked on a scale where “A Class” buildings are the top quality ones in the most sought-after locations) has been very low for nearly two years now.

“For the first time in many years we’ve seen tenants bidding against tenants for space – highlighting the strength of the landlord’s market,” said Michael Caplice, senior managing director of office leasing at Cushman & Wakefield. “This is highly unusual in downtown Toronto.”

At the end of March the vacancy rate for B Class space was 3.7 per cent, marking the seventh quarter in a row that it had come in under 4 per cent. In a balanced market it would be closer to 7 to 9 per cent, according to Mr. Caplice. With people feeling better about the economy, many tenants are looking to expand but their options are limited and prices remain high downtown.

“In this cycle we only expect things to get more difficult for tenants as there will be upward pressure on rental rates with no new supply projected to open up in the brick and beam market,” he said.

The expected construction of new office towers in the coming years will likely attract some tenants who are currently in B Class space, freeing up some space.

Listing Your Space for Sublease – 4 tips

Two of our landlord’s gave us some great feedback on our listing services.  If you have a space for lease or want to sublease your premises, give us a call at 416-643-3713 to discuss!

Check what rights you have in your lease. If you don’t own your building, your landlord may not allow subleasing, may limit the types of businesses to which you can sublease or may stipulate the rent at which you can sublease, because the building doesn’t want to compete with its own tenants for new occupants, he says. Those conditions may also change depending on the occupancy levels of the building.

Make sure the space is suitable. We suggests checking that the space, once divided, meets fire and exiting codes. If the space does not, you may not be able to sublease it.

Check with your neighbors. If your lease and space allow you to sublease, check whether tenants in your building need more space. They’re often more motivated to choose adjoining or nearby space and may be able to move in sooner, especially if they’re in too-tight quarters.

Look for suitable tenants. Cast a wider net if no neighbors can take your space. The best way to do this is to hire a broker, like us. You can expect them to make calls and canvass the market looking for a suitable tenant. Fees for this service are typically paid from the deposit provided by the new subtenant!

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/218127#ixzz2QipX6FPE

 

What the eastern waterfront might look like in 2020

Original Post – Blog TO - Chris Bateman

Toronto could be about to get a new city beach and giant public fountain if plans for the 3C waterfront development continue as planned. New designs for the project led by Foster + Partners (of London’s “Gherkin”) released earlier this week by the development’s landscaping team envision a new neighborhood on the vacant patch of land north of the Keating Channel, just east of the protected Victory Soya Mills Silos.

Whisky Beach, a nod to the Distillery District to the north, will perch on the corner of an existing inlet to the west of the construction site, commanding sweeping views along the harbour to the Toronto Islands. Though the designs are preliminary, the public space appears to draw inspiration from Sugar Beach and HTO Park.

Just behind the beach the landscape architects have designed a public space – dubbed Trinity Plaza – dominated by a 14-metre amber-coloured fountain. “Whisky Fountain,” which, sadly, sprays water, is the centrepiece of the Trinity Street pedestrian extension under the Union rail corridor and Gardiner to the water. A public waterfront promenade is shown parallel to the Keating Channel, passing under Cherry Street toward the mouth of the Don.

While Waterfront Toronto has a plan to transform much of the city’s Port Lands area, this development is on private land and is being organized separately from the mass revitalization work planned directly to the south. That said, the designs will eventually be raked over by Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel in due course.

It’s also worth noting the designs optimistically show the East Bayfront LRT reaching the neighbourhood by the time construction is scheduled to wrap in 2020. It remains to be seen whether the unfunded separated streetcar route from Union to Cherry Street will get built. New transit taxes will likely need to play a role in order to get it built.

Construction is still some way from getting started. The proposal is still awaiting the necessary bylaw appeals, which are scheduled to be heard in the fall. Details on the cluster of buildings, together comprising 2.4 million square feet of residential, office, and retail space, are not yet available.

What do you think about the new look for the empty patch of land? Are you pleased the concrete silos will be kept? What about Whisky Beach and Fountain – does Toronto lack public water features?

Colliers Q1 2013 Office Market Report #cre #Toronto

First quarter 2013 office market reports on the Colliers website. Some highlights of the quarter include:

• The downtown market has seen an increase in demand for office space as shown in the steady decline in the vacancy rate from 4.6 percent to 4.2 percent since last quarter.

• Heightened leasing activity, especially with the more significant deals done at Commerce Court West, has resulted in fewer large block opportunities. In the past six months, the several large block spaces that have been vacant in the building have been leased to sizeable tenants, including Chubb Insurance, Inmet Mining and Laurentian Bank, resulting in this building being almost fully leased.

• Quick absorption of new product in the downtown core has boosted developer confidence, resulting in the escalation in the number of developments moving into the construction phase before pre-leasing commitments reach the standard 60 percent. With roughly 5 million square feet of office space currently under construction in the downtown core and 17 projects in the planned/proposed phase, new supply could add a potential 14 million square feet to the downtown office inventory from 2015 to 2018.

• After 2 consecutive quarters of relatively high absorption, the GTA West market posted low levels of absorption this quarter at a total of 4,806 square feet. Despite the low overall absorption number, there was a heightened amount of activity this quarter. Several new tenants entered the market as well as several companies either vacated their space or downsized this quarter, including RIM and Odyssey Financial, both leaving space at 2425 Matheson Boulevard East.

 

Lipsey Brand Survey – Top Brokerages 2013

Proud to be tied for number two!

Toronto’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Story

As one of the world’s leading ICT and media hubs, Toronto has a rich technology ecosystem with remarkable breadth and depth. Located in a major urban centre, Toronto’s ICT sector thrives on the rapid innovation and introduction of new technologies that stem from collaboration with a diverse range of sectors – for example, healthcare, education, social, cleantech, media and entertainment. The City’s ICT sector is constantly evolving with impressive growth being driven by a wide array of segments such as cloud computing, mobile platforms and applications, gaming, social networking, 3D and consumer privacy and security.

These new ICT segments have tapped into Toronto’s established ICT subsectors of communications, robotics, enterprise software, film, manufacturing and broadcasting which combine to create an urban High-Tech Hub. This combination of mature and emerging players make Toronto the largest most dynamic, vibrant and innovative hub of ICT focused businesses in Canada with over 11,500 firms (40,000 ICT firms in Canada). With 6% of Toronto’s overall employment in the high tech sector, the industry employs over 161,000 workers (not including the thousands employed in ICT-related sectors, such as financial services). The unemployment rate for ICT professionals is 4% (much lower than the general economy) and the need for new talent is increasing. The diversity of Toronto’s economy means that ICT as an enabling industry complements and fuels the other sectors in the region.

Similar to the experience globally, Toronto’s ICT sector has undergone major changes in the last five years. Its traditional sectors of communications, manufacturing and enterprise software are in gradual recovery after the global economic downturn, and competing against the dominance of China and India as low cost centres for manufacturing and software development. These global challenges, combined with the rapid decline of traditional, wired communication carriers and communication equipment providers, have resulted in significant job losses in Toronto over the last 10 years primarily in the manufacturing sub-sector, shedding more than 15,000 jobs since 2000 while the ICT services sector employment has remained stable and is now showing signs of moderate increases. Entrepreneurship is thriving with the number of ICT service firms increasing by 2,000 companies (mostly smaller-sized firms) since 2002.

Toronto’s ICT cluster has been able to weather this global pressure, maintaining a negligible drop in overall ICT employment since 2005 through an adaptive shift away from traditional large enterprise to high-value, knowledge-based, small business jobs. Not included in these employment figures are the ICT jobs that are being created in the emerging ICT area of interactive digital media nor the thousands of jobs that are embedded in other sectors that have a high reliance on ICT, like financial services and healthcare. These changes have been so rapid that much of today’s ICT job growth is hard to capture in traditional statistical measures.