Is the property too convoluted for any developer to put time/money into? Like is the whole site owned by one company?
The Hudson's Bay Centre complex is owned by two corporations, Brookfield and Larco; with a portion of the site (roughly where the Royal Bank is, being City-owned land, but Brookfield-owned building on a long-term lease.
There are also significant easements for TTC
The block, not the existing complex, also contains the condo going up to the north and the Bell Building which houses significant operations.
Are there too many stakeholders?
One less would be helpful.
Does transit (present & future) preclude anything?
Not really. I mean it certainly impacts how you would build something, but not whether something can be built.
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The challenges on the site, other than Brookfield being cheap, lazy and dull.........
Would be that the entire organization of existing buildings, condo/apartment, hotel, retail box and office tower is clunky and awkward.
The site was built out with no vision that it might ever be something more.
As a result, you have the office tower, in particular, which is reasonably profitable, and could not be economically replaced, unless there were a tight market for office (not the case) and the City were willing to green light and a leading tenant
willing to take a 70-storey tower.
The money might be there to justify removing the hotel and condo portion if you could go much, much taller but you still really need at least one extra tower in the footprint which would be challenging.
But since the hotel/apartments are not Brookfield's portion of the site...........
Yeah....
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That said, you could absolutely build something far more worthy on the store box site (just not much bigger), and get rid of that bloody bank.....that's just about Brookfield having integrity and vision.........so....
