With five million square feet of available space across 47 office towers, downtown Toronto is becoming a tenant’s paradise - and an investor’s potential nightmare
With five million square feet of available space across 47 office towers, downtown Toronto is becoming a tenant’s paradise - and an investor’s potential nightmare
*to profitably retrofit.
Office buildings have too much “inside space”. Regulations, and human life, requires windows for residential living areas, so this inside space is “wasted” in office to apartment refits. There are tons of great ideas on what to do with this space in terms of community space, but very few profitable ones. Once commercial rents crashe and these buildings lose most of their values you’ll be surprised what becomes profitable again lol.
It seems like the obvious answer is to put facilities and businesses in the same buildings instead of nearby. Medical, convenience/light grocery, school rooms, some community centers, civil services, storage, remote work spaces, etc.
I definitely think this is a great answer, with the only caveat being that working in a space that doesn’t have windows all day is pretty lame. I’d like to see what that would look like.
I believe the hurdle for that might be regulatory. For good reason in my opinion because mixing residential and commercial/retail on the same indoor floor has a lot of unique considerations that I’m not sure have been looked at. Letting real estate hedge funds decide based on profit only will be a nightmare lol