Building on Toronto’s architectural history
If you think style has little to do with business, then you might not have heard of Michael Emory. Emory didn’t go to design or architecture school, he trained as a lawyer. Nonetheless, the style-savvy developer, who, since 1988, has been the CEO of Allied Properties REIT, was recently named one of Canada’s Design Thinkers of 2015 by the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
In a town full of developers with little nostalgia for the city’s architectural history, Emory is different: Allied REIT’s portfolio is tightly focused on LEED-certified, heritage buildings that have been deftly restored and adapted for reuse as office space — catering to the tastes of a growing class of millennials who want to work downtown in what Emory calls a “distinctive environment.”
“The integration of old and new is really a winning format for us, “says Emory, who claims that he and his partners first stumbled on their strategy when they purchased two 19th-century buildings on Front St. E. just before the market crashed in the early 1990s.
“The best real estate companies in Canada were collapsing, there was three to five million square feet of new office space in the core and a 25-per-cent vacancy rate, but our two old buildings, with their post-and-beam construction, held up well during the downturn,” says Emory.
What Emory discovered was that there was an emerging market of “people identifying themselves and their business through real estate.”
“We call them TAMI tenants,” says Emory. “TAMI” stands for tenants who work in the sectors of Tech, Advertising, Media and Information. And just as the kind of conventional employment that identified itself with the glass skyscrapers in the downtown core started shrinking, the growth industries wrought through the dot-com boom were on the hunt for office space that was outside the box.
Allied’s portfolio of two readapted heritage buildings in Toronto has now grown to 152, including properties in Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver that fit the bill.
“We ended up learning how to serve the needs of these new tenants,” says Emory, listing them as “urban texture, informality, with a sensitivity to design and human wellness” — all best served “just a little bit off-core.”
Emory adds: “Nobody wants to work in a sick building, which is why LEED Platinum is now the minimum for air and light quality. Also the desire for distinctiveness and authenticity are huge. Nobody wants a recreation of an old building, they want the real thing.”
Emory and I are meeting in the glassed-in boardroom of Allied REIT’s new head office on the 17th floor of QRC West, the company’s newly completed and most ambitious project to date.
A brash new steel-and-glass tower that appears suspended above the rooftop of the former Weston’s bakery building, its unique supporting Delta frame graces the vast open lobby like a giant wishbone, making a huge design statement from the street. At holiday time there is already a buzz in the lobby café; spring 2016 will see the opening of an Italian restaurant called Ricarda’s on the heritage brick corner.
Emory says: “Design sensitivity has increased dramatically, and architecture matters — big time. Here in Toronto, we are in the early stages of an intensification trend that’s only going to continue with the influx of new arrivals with worldly and educated tastes.”
With players in the game as savvy as Emory, that’s a good thing.