Well-designed business centres build economy
The development industry is playing an important role in the economic growth of the GTA by building smart, flexible and well-situated places for people to work.
Our economy in the GTA continues to shift from one largely driven by traditional manufacturing to one based on knowledge-based industries. The development industry is being innovative and is meeting the space demands of the emerging economy by designing and building unique environments and workplaces that are connected to nearby amenities.
Commercial and retail developers not only design and build spaces for existing businesses, they also create workplaces that help businesses grow and help attract new businesses — all of which contribute to job growth in the GTA. One example is BILD member Orlando Corporation and the 267,000-squarefoot building it recently developed near the airport to house the aerospace engineering firm MHI Canada Aerospace, a division of Mitsubishi.
Orlando is Canada’s largest industrial real estate developer and landlord. It owns and manages more than 40 million square feet of industrial, office and retail property in the GTA and is well versed in working with its clients to create the right space for their workforces.
MHI Canada Aerospace employs technicians and engineers, but it didn’t need traditional office space with lots of offices, meeting rooms or desks. Instead, its space had to be designed to accommodate the assembly of massive airplane wings. Orlando designed and constructed bays that are almost three times as wide as compared with a typical industrial building.
In addition to interior building design, developers are thinking differently about exteriors and how buildings fit into their locations. Especially in city centres and along major corridors where land is more expensive, it is difficult to construct buildings with a large foot- print. In such areas, buildings with a mixture of uses such as office, retail and residential can integrate well into an existing neighbourhood and allow people to live, work and shop in one spot. BILD member SmartREIT is working to answer to the GTA’s need for more products, services and jobs in urban centres through its new initiative, SmartUrban.
As the nation’s largest developer and operator of unenclosed shopping centres, the company is evolving from building blocks of commercial retail space to incorporating them into community building projects.
GTA developers are meeting demands of the economy by building unique spaces connected to nearby amenities
SmartREIT is one of the major developers working to bring businesses to the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.
Planned as the city’s new downtown, where Hwy. 400 meets Hwy. 7, the new mixed-use community will feature residential, office, retail and amenity spaces conveniently located adjacent to a new TTC subway station, York Region bus terminal and dedicated bus lanes on Hwy. 7 connecting Vaughan to Markham.
As part of the planned 4 million square feet of office there, SmartREIT’s first office building, the 15-storey KPMG tower, with direct connection to the new subway, is nearing completion. A second office building is planned as well and, over time, 10 million square feet of residential space together with 2 million square feet of retail space will be built to serve the needs of this new community.
New jobs and the unique buildings that house them will continue to evolve as the GTA grows and they will provide a catalyst for community building at its best. Bryan Tuckey is president and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association and a land-use planner who has worked for municipal, regional and provincial governments. Follow him on Twitter @bildgta, facebook.com/bildgta and bildblogs.ca.