Real estate trailblazer invested big in Toronto
Self-made man risked it all on the city’s waterfront, built retail empire in U.S.
Canadian real estate tycoon Robert Campeau, whose contributions to Toronto development include the Westin Harbour Castle hotel, has died at 93.
Described as an exuberant visionary who was willing to invest in Toronto’s waterfront when it was little more than an industrial park, Campeau died peacefully in his home in Ottawa last Monday.
Born on Aug. 3, 1923, in Chelmsford, Ont., Campeau was one of seven children, according to an obituary in the Ottawa Citizen.
His formal education ended in Grade 8, when Campeau took a job earning $3 a day in a factory to help provide for his family, according to the CBC. He later became a machinist before entering the construction and real estate industries.
The Campeau Corp. was founded in 1953. He would go on to build more than 25,000 houses and multiple apartment buildings, before expanding to commercial developments and shopping centres in Gatineau and Ottawa.
His many properties include the Place de Ville office tower complex in Ottawa and WaterPark Place offices on Queens Quay W. in Toronto.
He was given the green light by the city to build on the waterfront in 1972, when the area was industrial land.
Campeau started with the Westin Harbour Castle (formerly the Harbour Castle Hilton Hotel) in the early 1970s and went on to build 33 Harbour Square, which would become condos in the mid-1970s.
Luxury condos on empty land cut off from the city by the Gardiner Expressway weren’t exactly an easy sell. “Condominiums were new,” and lawyers would discourage their clients from buying, Micheline Bertrand Hobbs, a former member of Campeau’s sales team, told the Star in 2005. “Those first couple of years we would have very large ads in the Globe and the Star, full-page ads, weekend after weekend. Nothing worked.”
It was during the heady, highspending times of the late 1980s that Campeau poured more than $11.2 billion (U.S.) largely into U.S. retail operations, becoming the toast of New York City. At home in Canada, he and his family resided in a French chateau-style mansion on a four-acre parcel on the Bridle Path.
But by the early 1990s, his company was saddled with debt and would report a $2-billion loss. He was then fired.
Campeau sold his Canadian cha- teau, moved to Europe and eventually into an Austrian chateau complete with, as expected for a man who built his fortune on lavish properties, a view of the Swiss Alps.
In a rare interview with the CBC in 1998, which revealed the details of his new life, the man who broke totally new ground on Toronto’s waterfront and built a glittering retail empire in the U.S. reflected on his many successes and didn’t dwell on loss.
“I’ve never really had to worry about making money . . . The whole course of my career in real estate . . . I never really made any mistakes,” he told the interviewer.
He did concede, in reference to the collapse of his retail empire in the U.S., that “we probably didn’t plan enough that there could be a serious recession.”
Campeau was an avid skier and golfer. He loved fishing and hunting and credited exercise for his long life. According to his obituary, he gave generously to a range of causes through his Canadian and U.S. foundations.
He leaves his wife, six children, eight grandchildren and seven greatgrandchildren.
His funeral will take place Thursday at 10 a.m. at Notre-Dame Cathedral on Sussex Dr. in Ottawa. Donations in his memory can be made to Royal Ottawa Hospital Foundation or the Ottawa Hospital Foundation.