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

This doesn't really help market saturation, though. PwC is "moving" all of those employees from another location a few blocks away (one of the TD centre towers, I believe), so the space they plan to occupy in this building will be left vacant in another building -- unless they've leased more space than they need in anticipation of future expansion.

Unfortunately, it won't create additional demand for commercial space. In fact, it may increase market saturation if GWL goes ahead and builds the full 650,000 sqft of office space based on this anchor tenant. In terms of total commercial space available to the market, that adds an additional 400,000 sqft + whatever PWC is leaving behind.

Therefore commercial vacancy levels will rise and construction of office space will decrease :(

I think that tends to be the case though... we over build on office when sufficient demand builds up and then we don't see any new office buildings constructed until the demand can catch up again
 
I'm pretty ambivalent about building office space downtown. How many more people can we move in and out of downtown during rush-hour at this point? I'd focus on condo-building downtown and try to encourage office development on the periphery, like Yonge/Finch, the 427 corridor, etc.
 
Let me see if I understand you. Someone is building a new office building but because there will be vacancies elsewhere as a result this is will mean less new office buildings constructed. New buildings are bad because there will be fewer new buildings?

Exactly, but not only will there be vacancies elsewhere (PWC's vacated office space), there's an extra 400,000 square feet of unleased surplus office space at 18 York (assuming GWL hasn't secured any tenants besides PWC and is going ahead with the project anyway).

New buildings aren't universally "bad" because this situation doesn't apply to all of them. This particular (probably common) situation will lead to a lot of additional office space being built with (presumably) no new employees being added to the workforce (again, PWC probably did lease more space than they need right now).

I guess this is a microcosm of the strange commercial real estate market.
 
Rumour also has it that they will soon start building the 45 story Bay Adelaide 2 office tower.
...which is intended to saturate the market with Brookfield-brand office space as rumor also has it that they are building it based on speculation. They probably won't even mind if it's a ghost tower for a few years.
 
Great news! I've been waiting for months to hear more on PwC moving here... I believed in the rumour right from the getgo, a perfect location for them to have a branded building.
 
Too bad this and Telus are so short. This area could and should have gone taller.

Well there is the rumoured 40-50 storey office tower for the 45 Bay plot which SITQ has acquired . Dunno when that will be built, though. Still this gives us the following possible, proposed or under construction office buildings south of the rail tracks, between Yonge and Lower Simcoe:

45 Bay -- 40-50 storeys
Union Tower (25 York) -- 30 storeys
18 York -- 26 storeys
16 York -- 31 storeys (may go higher if City insists on plan compliance)
plot just west of 18 York?

This is not counting other nearby office construction / proposals just north of the tracks, such as the GO Transit Tower, 151 Front West or the RBC Tower.
 
I guess nobody told PWC that the city's planning to demolish part of the Gardiner, or else they'd be fleeing to the 905. Somebody should tell them. Toronto's declining, you know.

:p
 
Awesome news. That PwC rumour was true.

I was hesitant to open this thread in case it was one of those "any news yet?" posts, but I'm glad some actual news. I wonder how the construction will affect Telus, with their concrete pumping system in place. At the rate Telus is going these days though, they might have a significant amount built by December
Considering they still have a billboard up on the site that says January 2009 occupancy you'd think they'd be nearly done by December. Based on their current pace though I'd guess they'll just be topping out around then. It got off to a slow start but seems to be moving now - the crews are working till 11 every night and they seem to be doing a floor in a little over a week.

I also agree it would've been nice to have a 56 story tower rather than two shorter (26 and 30 story) ones, but at least the shorter buildings are better than parking lots.
 
Considering they still have a billboard up on the site that says January 2009 occupancy you'd think they'd be nearly done by December. Based on their current pace though I'd guess they'll just be topping out around then. It got off to a slow start but seems to be moving now - the crews are working till 11 every night and they seem to be doing a floor in a little over a week.

I also agree it would've been nice to have a 56 story tower rather than two shorter (26 and 30 story) ones, but at least the shorter buildings are better than parking lots.

I'd rather have a parking lot for 5-10 years, than a short tower for who knows how many years.
 

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