Southcore Financial Ctr: PricewaterhouseCoopers Tower (18 York St, bcIMC, 26s, KPMB)

This is going to be an intensely urban and dense intersection. The streets are decently narrow, and the towers are massive and have some presence.

and I am happy that there is going to be LOTS of retail at the base of all three buildings at this intersection. It will encourage people to come down their and cross the rail wasy tracks!
 
bump this old thread...from today's Globe & Mail (my highlights)...

Property Report: OUTLOOK: OFFICE SPACE

Inflated values, but without the bubble

Office sector's fundamentals are so stable that it's considered an attractive investment vehicle, observers say
TERRENCE BELFORD

Special to The Globe and Mail

January 8, 2008

Ask Tom Farley, president of Brookfield Properties Corp.'s Canadian operations, what he thinks 2008 holds for the office market and his words resound with confidence: "In my 30 years' experience, I have never seen the fundamentals as strong as they are now."

It is an opinion shared with almost every mover and shaker in the industry.

"I think 2008 is going to bring us great new opportunities," says Paul Finkbeiner, president of GWL Realty Advisers Inc., with a 30-million-square-foot office portfolio.

Yes, the U.S. credit crunch has spread to Canada, but those being affected are land- lords who have overleveraged their borrowing, or buyers that have counted on mortgage financing well above a 75-per-cent debt-to-equity ratio.

"Earlier this year, we were outbid for many deals. But now those groups that bought with greater than 75 per cent financing are finding that they can't afford them," Mr. Finkbeiner says. Things turned around in the fall and "we have started getting those deals again."

Wayne Barwise, senior vice-president of office development for Cadillac Fairview Corp., says that if you need a sign of the times, just look at the office construction under way or in the planning stages. That happy combination of low vacancy rates and high demand means that landlords can now get enough in rent to justify building once more.

"The exciting part is the new projects are all 21st century technology. They are almost all LEED-certified, green buildings," he says, referring to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. "They may cost 5 to 7 per cent more to build, but they deliver 30 to 50 per cent savings on things like energy use."

In fact, Cadillac Fairview has about 3.5 million square feet in office developments going up across Canada with projects in both Toronto and Calgary, and GWL is sitting on a 600,000-square-foot project at 18 York St. in Toronto that is ready to go once it inks a deal with a major tenant.

"Like everyone else, we won't proceed these days until we are substantially preleased," Mr. Finkbeiner says.


Perhaps most important for landlords, brokers, agents and investors is that there is rock solid confidence in Canada's commercial real estate markets, says Paul Morse, head of Cushman Wakefield LePage's national office leasing practice.

"That is a really important factor," he says. "There is very little wheeling and dealing and no feeling of 'let's just wait until the bubble breaks.' There is no bubble. This has become a stable, professionally managed industry and, as a result, there is great confidence in it as an asset class among capital markets and investors."
 
Any word on this project. I was by the site the other day and : surprise, surprise I saw some heavy equipment. I don't know if they were doing core samples or shoring. But ...hey, it's something.
 
Any word on this project. I was by the site the other day and : surprise, surprise I saw some heavy equipment. I don't know if they were doing core samples or shoring. But ...hey, it's something.

The site is being used for prep for Telus tower. Apparently they are mixing and pumping the concrete at this site and then moving it to Telus.

The west end of the site is used for prep and storage for the Lower Simcoe dig. I spent some time observing all of this on the weekend as part of my tour. You can see a good photo of this site in either my April 5 photo update post (photos section) of the Residence of Maple Leaf Square thread.

As for the project itself, I'm not sure if any news has come out since they put up the rendering.
 
Apparently they are mixing and pumping the concrete at this site and then moving it to Telus.

In fact they put a pipe under York Street which they are using to move the concrete from the 18 York to the construction site.
 
Ya, I didn't see anything either. Can they even do anything with the site being used by the Telus Tower construction? I don't think they would stop the cement trucks from using the site as part of that new pipe system they built under York St.
 
18 York St (KPMB)

to day i have passed through the proposal site of 18 york. I saw trucks were unloading heavy equipment as well metal foundations. I think this is a sign that they are going to start Excavation
 
The Telus tower may be using that property as some kind of staging area. Or possibly the Simcoe underpass construction site. I'm pretty sure if construction was about to commence there'd be plenty of media writing about it.
 
Ya, I didn't see anything either. Can they even do anything with the site being used by the Telus Tower construction? I don't think they would stop the cement trucks from using the site as part of that new pipe system they built under York St.

yeh, i think they have jurisdiction over the land and can tell the telus people to leave if need be. or else they can obviously sue them for trespassing.
 

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