Toronto Richmond Adelaide Centre: EY Tower | 188.05m | 40s | Oxford Properties | Kohn Pedersen Fox

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Brookfield's and Oxford's don't really care about height, they care about total square footage and floorplate size. Their goal is to lease the space and larger floor plates are easier to lease to a large tenant so by definition you are going to get shorter squater buildings as those are easier to lease. That's why you get so many large podium spaces as well. That gives them the large floor plates demanded while also allowing them to do more height.
 
maestro said:
Taller and bigger aren't necessarily related. Calgary has some very large tenants that take very good care of their employees. Unbelievable amenities and plenty of room to stretch one's legs at their workstation or office (bigger than a workstation with floor to ceiling walls and a door) The question should be why 247 metres isn't 347 metres as the 1, 000, 000 square foot lease signed by Cenovus is possibly bigger than anything Toronto has ever seen.
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I can fully back this up. The associates at BMO CM Calgary get an office! I'm an associate, I get a cubicle in Toronto... Only the Senior VP for our entire cross-border department gets an office on our team, not even the managers.

It's odd isn't it...
 
I'm quite sure that moving into the future, any large organization would adopt national - if not global - workplace standards. Often there are legacy offices where it's easier to just leave it as-is with some minor renovations vs. the expense of gutting it - especially if lease renewals are years away. However, if there's an opportunity to give up space at lease renewal time, you can bet that they will be renovating with an eye to having everyone occupy tighter quarters.
 
The point is that Calgary is a good ten years behind Toronto. The energy companies also maintain a massive reserve of space given the boom bust environment. Why not use it? I assume there is more competition for highly experienced employees and Calgrian office workers simply expect more. BMO has no option but to compete with what the energy companies offer.

I've been involved with outfitting office spaces. A particular enegry company recently installed hydraulic work surfaces that raise and lower at a touch of a button. The workstation walls are made of fritted glass panels and 7 feet high with plenty of overhead storage. In Toronto, the aforementioned company, for example, installed cheap MDF workstation with a frosted pane of glass that is barely 4 feet high. The stations are so small that some have to pull their chair out in a corridor to open a file drawer.

Taal maybe a local leasing agent but, I've actually been in hundreds of spaces nationwide.


The Bow in Calgary is a grand new building with unbelievable employee spaces that would make the thousands of basement dwellers in Toronto.
 
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I'm not a local leasing agent or involved in the industry in anyway : - ) ... so I'll definitely take your word over mind, it was just really hard for me to believe !
Maybe its the way you described, they're a couple years back (not Calgary as a city, rather the industries that dominate that market). I can see that.
Bow was purpose build for one of these said companies so I can see that.

I think in time that'll change though - which will put Calgary in a similar situation as Toronto - new builds will happen but filling up older stock will be harder and harder !
 
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