FACILITY DESIGN BY REBECCA MELNYK
INNOVATE AND THEY WILL COME
Walking out of Union Station onto Front Street, the Royal Bank Plaza is hard to miss. Clad in 24-carat gold reflective glass, its two towers illuminate the downtown Toronto skyline, attracting the attention of financial companies and law firms for more than 40 years. Now, the complex is looking to entice a new generation of tenants: small- to medium-sized tech companies that could one day become the next Shopify.
“
B
anks do a considerable amount of leasing in downtown Toronto, but it’s the tech companies that are explosive,” says John Peets, vice-president of leasing for Oxford Properties, which manages Royal Bank Plaza. More than one third of downtown Toronto office demand is coming from this sector. As research from the 2019 Toronto Employment Survey indicates, tech jobs are way up. They
jumped 85 per cent since 2014. More recently, Toronto was ranked as the fourth top market in North America for tech talent, according to CBRE’s 2020 Scoring Tech Talent Report. The pandemic is further pushing this industry to new heights, with various tech sectors rising in importance. In turn, traditional landlords are considering new types of offices with a variety of flexible settings. Earlier this year, pre-pandemic, Oxford approached Toronto-based designers
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Connect Resource Managers and Planners Inc., designed District One as part of Oxford Properties’ Workplace Innovation Challenge. Photo courtesy of Oxford Properties.
and contractors and asked them to team up for an “Iron Chef meets Homes on Homes” competition. The goal was to create individual workplaces on the 10th floor of the North Tower. In what seems to be a Toronto first, each of the four teams were given a random space with mechanical and electrical infrastructure and a budget of $120 per square foot for an eight to ten-week build-out. Tasked with manifesting a design and furniture solution that would meet the criteria of flexibility, efficiency, aesthetics, sustainability and wellness, the offices had to be innovative yet leasable.
