On Thursday, May 16 at 11 a.m. ET, reporters Jason Kirby, Rachelle Younglai and James Bradshaw will answer reader questions about their recent feature on Toronto’s rising office vacancies.The Globe and Mail
The Q+A is now over, click here to read the answers from our reporters.
Downtown Toronto’s largest office landlords are plagued by a growing problem: too many empty floors.
Canada’s financial capital is facing a crush of rising office vacancies – five million square feet of available space across 47 office towers, to be exact – that could threaten building valuations. Approximately one-third of the biggest office buildings in the city’s financial district are at least one-fifth empty. Some are grappling with even larger voids of up to 50 per cent.
Toronto is also one of the few Canadian cities where office vacancies are still on the rise. The percentage of space available to lease in the financial district was 17 per cent as of late April, higher than other areas in the city, as well as the rest of the country.
What’s going on behind the shimmering glass of all those skyscrapers that define the city’s skyline? On May 16 at 11 a.m. ET, Globe and Mail reporters Jason Kirby and James Bradshaw answered reader questions about their recent feature on Toronto’s rising office vacancies. They shared insight on the landlords who own these empty buildings, companies that are navigating the new world of remote work and the overall implications for Toronto’s future.
Could rising office vacancies become a threat to the economy? Can the office spaces be transformed into residential units to solve the housing crisis? What are the implications for pensions, seeing that the country’s largest pension funds are prominent landlords in the Toronto market? What does this mean for the future of remote work? Scroll to the comments section to read the answers to these questions and more.
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