General Business Updates and News

[Markster]

Easier conversion:

indeed, I only looked at Panamaniac's post, and not the actual post with the actual news in it. I didn't realize it was given in hectares. I don't think that affects the rest of my post though.

Anyway … it sounds like this would be light industrial space for tech companies, with multiple buildings and roads in between. Not sure how many floors, how many roads, how much office but the range of floor space is probably within range but not high density.

I think we're going to see expansive single-floor buildings. Much like the industrial conversion projects of late.

[ijmorlan]

Hmm.

38 acres is 1,655,280 square feet, or 153,781 square metres

Easier conversion:

15 hectares is 150,000 square metres.   A hectare is 100m x 100m: converting from hectares to square metres or square kilometres is super easy, unlike acres to square feet or square miles. (A hectare is technically not an SI unit, but an older metric one, consisting of 100 ares, which in turn are 10m x 10m.)

Anyway … it sounds like this would be light industrial space for tech companies, with multiple buildings and roads in between. Not sure how many floors, how many roads, how much office but the range of floor space is probably within range but not high density.

It would be way better to build one enormous building and combine together all the space that would have been wasted on utterly useless bits of grass into one nice park in the middle, something like this:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/apple...k-3489704/

Apparently this has the same density as the usual suburban dreck it replaced, but it’s mostly parkland.

[Markster]

Apparently this has the same density as the usual suburban dreck it replaced, but it’s mostly parkland.

That is mostly thanks to the gargantuan parking garage.

[tomh009]

It would be way better to build one enormous building and combine together all the space that would have been wasted on utterly useless bits of grass into one nice park in the middle, something like this:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/apple...k-3489704/

Apparently this has the same density as the usual suburban dreck it replaced, but it’s mostly parkland.

Parkland accessible (and visible) only to company employees.

[ijmorlan]

It would be way better to build one enormous building and combine together all the space that would have been wasted on utterly useless bits of grass into one nice park in the middle, something like this:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/apple...k-3489704/

Apparently this has the same density as the usual suburban dreck it replaced, but it’s mostly parkland.

Parkland accessible (and visible) only to company employees.

Good point, but that is a policy of Apple, not inherent in the design. It’s still better than a typical suburban office park, which just wastes the space that isn’t devoted to buildings or pavement.

[ijmorlan]

Apparently this has the same density as the usual suburban dreck it replaced, but it’s mostly parkland.

That is mostly thanks to the gargantuan parking garage.

That is part of it, but a lot of it is that they’ve taken all the useless spaces between buildings and between parking lots and roads and gathered them up into a small number of useful spaces. A typical suburban office park has lots of space that is totally wasted.

[jgsz]

Bloomberg reported that last year Toronto created more tech jobs than the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle and Washington combined.   Toronto saw almost 29,000 tech jobs created in 2017.  Plus, CBRE ranks Toronto over NYC in broad tech allure.  I can't help but think that Waterloo Region is benefiting from this boom in Toronto.   I also find it interesting that Duke Tower Kitchener is promoting Kitchener over Toronto in their video by saying that TO is overpriced and overcrowded.   

[Chicopee]

Bloomberg reported that last year Toronto created more tech jobs than the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle and Washington combined.   Toronto saw almost 29,000 tech jobs created in 2017.  Plus, CBRE ranks Toronto over NYC in broad tech allure.  I can't help but think that Waterloo Region is benefiting from this boom in Toronto.   I also find it interesting that Duke Tower Kitchener is promoting Kitchener over Toronto in their video by saying that TO is overpriced and overcrowded.   

The article certainly reads as it's the city of Toronto experiencing all the growth, but I question if what they're really referring to is the 'Toronto-Waterloo Tech Corridor', and just calling it Toronto?


Any word on how sales are progressing at DTK Condos?

[tomh009]

Toronto is the only Canadian city still in the running for Amazon HQ2.

Made the short list of 20, maybe even the top 10. But the oddsmakers don't see Toronto as a favourite, it's somewhere between 10:1 and 15:1.

As probably everyone knows by now, HQ2 will be split between NYC, Richmond VA and Nashville TN (so not really an "HQ2" then …).

The fact that Toronto-Waterloo did not win is not surprising (the incentives offered by the winners add up to US$2.4B, and that's only about a third of what NJ had offered), but it's maybe not such a bad thing anyway. Luisa D'Amato is of the same opinion:
https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/...oo-region/

[ijmorlan]

As probably everyone knows by now, HQ2 will be split between NYC, Richmond VA and Nashville TN (so not really an "HQ2" then …).

The fact that Toronto-Waterloo did not win is not surprising (the incentives offered by the winners add up to US$2.4B, and that's only about a third of what NJ had offered), but it's maybe not such a bad thing anyway. Luisa D'Amato is of the same opinion:
https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/...oo-region/

Funny that nobody noticed before the final award that locations around 6km from each of the Bezos’ houses were included, and predicted those locations. It was pretty much a fake competition from the beginning.

[tomh009]

As probably everyone knows by now, HQ2 will be split between NYC, Richmond VA and Nashville TN (so not really an "HQ2" then …).

The fact that Toronto-Waterloo did not win is not surprising (the incentives offered by the winners add up to US$2.4B, and that's only about a third of what NJ had offered), but it's maybe not such a bad thing anyway. Luisa D'Amato is of the same opinion:
https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/...oo-region/

Funny that nobody noticed before the final award that locations around 6km from each of the Bezos’ houses were included, and predicted those locations. It was pretty much a fake competition from the beginning.

I had seen that somewhere, but most people never noticed. But Bezos leveraged the competition to get $2.4B of government funding for his struggling dominant company.

[Pheidippides]

And a huge swath of data shared by all the competing cities.

[Spokes]

Three Waterloo Region firms are on Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 list of the country's fastest growing technology companies.

Vidyard is the top local company on this year's list, released Thursday. It comes in at No. 17 with average revenue growth of 1,198 per cent in the previous three years. Sortable is 45th with growth of 483 per cent while Axonify is 50th with growth of 390 per cent.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/903...t-50-list/

The full list can be found here

[rangersfan]

TD is opening the Sustainable Future Lab in Evolve1. Very cool initiative.

http://www.coragroup.com/2018/11/evolv1-...uture-lab/

[tomh009]

TD is opening the Sustainable Future Lab in Evolve1. Very cool initiative.

http://www.coragroup.com/2018/11/evolv1-...uture-lab/

They also have a lab at Communitech.