NEW – Bay Adelaide Sublease – 333 Bay Street Downtown Toronto

I posted this sublease on various website.  Lets see what gets the most traction.

OfficeZilla.ca – my personal favorite but I’m biased
Kijiji – a close second
Craigslist – meh, it’s losing its hutzpa
Bizcaf – nice that it posts to twitter for you but it’s more spam than anything else

Do you have any other sites to recommend?

Sid Lee Toronto Offices

Solutia SDO Head Office, Toronto – Video Testimonial

Another great deal done with http://solutia.ca/ – Get more out of your agent and your space!

Solutia SDO is an independent management consulting firm, owned and operated by seasoned professionals. We provide our clients with the skills, expertise and services offered by large consulting firms, but with one major difference — you can expect a better return on your investment.

What’s your commercial real estate agent ever done for you?

Apple To Open flagship store in Toronto at 1 Bloor West?

Stollery’s at the southwest corner of Yonge and Bloor streets

If this is true it would really shake up the market.  How much would Apple pay for such an amazing flagship store?

Could it end up looking like the store in New York below?

Digital Nomads in Toronto find a new home

One of the pillars of coworking is collaboration, and the Coworking Toronto collective is tossing away notions of competition and working together.

The first tool to facilitate this is the Coworking Toronto Passport Program which helps freelancers and digital nomads to try out many spaces and through their discovery they just might find somewhere they want to call home.

The passport gets the buyer into seven spaces for one trial day each. Trial days at participating spaces usually range from $20 to $40, with an average of $25. The purchase price is $75 and is valid from Mar 1 to Nov 30, 2012. Passports can be purchased at participating spaces or online at http://coworkingtoronto.ca/passport.

Rachel Young, Co-founder of Camaraderie Coworking Inc said, “This is an incredible way to discover some of the coworking spaces in Toronto and see how different each one can be. We want to offer visitors a way to explore without worrying about commitment, and we’re confident that through this discovery process some will be able to find a space they want to take up a resident membership, grow their business, and interact with some great existing members.”

The spaces participating in this inaugural program are:
• Camaraderie (Adelaide and Church)
• Centre for Social Innovation – Annex (Bloor and Bathurst)
• Centre for Social Innovation – Spadina (Queen and Spadina)
• Coworkative (Stoufville and Yonge)
• Foundery (Dundas and Bathurst)
• Hackernest (Bloor and Lansdowne)
• Park & Co (King and Dufferin)

The number of coworking spaces has been doubling worldwide since 2003, according to Deskmag’s Global Coworking Survey, reaching 1,300 last month. Toronto had just four spaces that self-identified as coworking at the beginning of 2011 and now has 13 just a year later.

Funds from this program go directly to the marketing budget for Coworking Toronto. Participating spaces are not receiving any compensation from the program. Future marketing efforts may include community outreach, participation in key tradeshows, sponsoring events, and other initiatives.

This is the first program of its kind for the coworking industry, and Coworking Toronto will be monitoring the program closely throughout the year to be able to provide metrics for future projects and other regional collectives.

PASSPORT

Live Work Space – $2 million – 4,500 sf – 686 Richmond Street West

ADDRESS: 686 Richmond Street West

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Niagara

AGENT: Lee Taylor and Donald Mulholland, Bosley Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage

PRICE: $2,095,000

THE PLACE: Unlike many of the boldly emblazoned buildings scattered throughout the city, this off-the-beaten-track freehold would go unnoticed were it not for the large countryside mural adorning the north wall. Divided into three storeys, the “Sunflower Building” consists of a lower-level workshop with a large storage area, his-and-hers bathrooms and a kitchen, while a 1,500-square-foot main floor office includes a reception area, a boardroom and workstations for eight. Upstairs is a lofty three-bedroom, two-bath apartment with a rooftop deck.

THE STORY: Mystery seems to surround the namesake mural on this otherwise ordinary building. Originally a mannequin warehouse, the building has also served as an art gallery and most recently a woodwork shop, where the construction of a 17-foot mahogany boat forced renovations that included installing a trap door in the main floor boardroom and widening the doorway on the side of the building to get the bloody thing out. Though the mural is signed, not much else is known about the idyllic scene (perhaps it’s an ode to the sunflower woman).

THE IDEAL TENANT: The combined workshop and workspace would be ideal for architects, designers, craftsmen or artists in need of a sizable studio.

THE DETAILS:
• $2,095,000
• $15,640 in combined commercial and residential taxes (2011)
• 4,500 square feet
• 1,500-square-foot lower level (with workshop, two bathrooms, storage and kitchen)
• 1,500-square-foot commercial space (with reception, boardroom, two offices and five built-in workstations)
• 1,500-square-foot three-bedroom, two-bath apartment
• 4-car tandem parking
• 3 storeys
• 1 rooftop patio
• 1 original hand-painted mural

Lee’s Palace artist does mural in BizMedia’s office space

If you haven’t seen The BizMedia’s office space at 119 Spadina Avenue you should check it out.  They’ve been doing some really creative things.  Check out this video of how they decided to decorate their office space.

Market Street revitalization pushes forward

Full article – Robyn Urback – Blog TO

Plans to update and improve Market Street — the thoroughfare that connects Front and The Esplanade on the south side of the St. Lawrence Market — continue to trudge on, though it sounds like a year-round pedestrian-only space isn’t in the cards.

When plans were first announced in 2010, it seemed as though private developer Woodcliffe Properties was working towards creating a space that would be free from vehicular traffic. Paul Oberman was the president of Woodcliffe at the time, a man well-known for his revitalization projects throughout Toronto, including the old North Toronto CPR Station / LCBO flagship store. Oberman died tragically in a plane crash in March 2011, and a movement later spawned to rename Market Street in his honour.

Commercial Office Leasing Guide Toronto 2012

Negotiating the Tenant Improvement Allowance

Found this great post by Coy Davidson – Original Post

A key component of any lease negotiation is the tenant improvement allowance provided by the landlord to build-out or retrofit an office space for the tenant’s specific use. The amount of the tenant improvement allowance, as well as the length of the lease term has a significant impact on the negotiated rental rate.

In addition to negotiating a favorable amount for tenant improvements provided by the Landlord, the ability to maintain control of the process is also important.

Tenant Improvement allowances provided by the building owner to build-out or retrofit office space are typically structured in one of two ways:

1. Turn Key Build-out: in this structure the Landlord covers all of the cost of the tenant build-out as part of the agreed upon rent and space plan generally outlining the scope of construction.
2. Stated Dollar Amount: in this structure the Landlord provides a stated dollar amount for the tenant to use toward building out the space, often to include architectural and engineering fees.

When negotiating a lease, tenants would prefer not to come out of pocket for expenses related to building out the space. Many tenant rep brokers will often state their client wants a “turn-key” buildout, but what they technically should strive for is to eliminate or minimize “out of pocket” costs for the tenant, as well as maximize the value of the improvement allowance, based on the rental rate that is negotiated.

The Problem with the Turn-Key Approach

The inherent issue with the turn-key build-out approach is that the Landlord is going to incorporate a significant amount of contingency cost into the construction cost estimates to prevent actual costs from exceeding the estimate. This could be a contingency as much as 25-30 percent, in effect creating the potential for another profit center for the Landlord, if they efficiently manage the build-out costs. In some cases “efficiently manage” could be construed as “cut corners”.

For example, if the Landlord estimates the cost of the build-out at $35.00 per square foot, and that is the allowance the negotiated rental rate is based upon, and ultimately the Landlord is able to build-out the space for $29.00 per square foot, then the tenant has in effect given up $6.00 per square foot that could have gone towards improvements to their premises.

Another issue with the turn-key approach is that the tenant is relinquishing control of the tenant improvement dollars being spent on their space. Unless the tenant negotiates an extensively detailed work letter based on a detailed set of full construction plans, it is not uncommon to have surprises in the build-out that do not favor the tenant.

Maintaining Control of the Construction Process

In most cases, I prefer negotiating a state dollar amount for the tenant improvement allowance and maintaining as much control as possible over the build-out process for the tenant. In addition, I request that the Landlord either waive or reduce their construction management fee, and allow the tenant to retain their own project manager to oversee the design and construction process.

The objective is to shift control of the build-out from the Landlord to the Tenant which provides the ability to:

• Maintain quality control of the process and to insure the construction is completed on time to prevent any holdover rent fees in the case of relocation
• “Value engineer” as well as let the tenant reap the benefit of competitively bidding the construction contract to insure you get the most value out of your tenant improvement allowance.

If possible, it is also prudent to negotiate the right to amortize additional tenant improvement dollars into the rent should you decide to add additional improvements, upgrades or incur unexpected cost over-runs before you space is completed. You may elect to just to pay any costs over the allowance yourself, but its its nice to have that option.

In cases, where the scope of work only involves new carpet, paint and moving a wall or two, having more control of the process is not as critical. However, in any significant interior construction job, I highly recommend retaining your own project manager, who will typically capture savings that benefit the tenant rather than the landlord that far exceed the fee charged by the project manager.

Choosing the stated improvement allowance approach requires more up-front work by your real estate team to insure the proper allowance is negotiated, but maintaining control of the construction process allows the tenant to realize the benefits of potential cost savings and maximize the value of their improvement allowance.

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