News

Lennard Takes Home the Office Deal of the Year REX Award

Apr. 07, 2009

Background

When beginning this 3 year project, MyTravel, a billion-plus dollar travel company, was leasing 110,000 sq.ft. across 4 separate offices in various markets across the Greater Toronto Area.

Our initial assignment was to negotiate an extension and renegotiate the net rates solely for their head office, but in the midst of the project, MyTravel merged with Thomas Cook, resulting in new real estate requirements. It quickly became a key objective to amalgamate the 4 current office premises to one office, to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. None of the 4 buildings currently occupied contained enough space to house the entire operation, and therefore a search for a new viable building became our main focus.

After detailed employee postal code mapping and analysis, we confirmed that staying in the midtown area was our only option to maintain the employee pool, and in a tight market with a scarcity of big blocks of vacant space, we had our work cut out for us.

Successes
We were able to source out 75 Eglinton Avenue E as the most viable and economical solution for Thomas Cook, and began a 3 month process of negotiations with the landlord, Adgar Invesments and Development, a multi-national real estate investment firm with offices scattered throughout the world.

The building at 75 Eglinton, in the Midtown Yonge & Eglinton market, was in a higher vacancy area, that generally housed smaller tenants. When Adgar purchased the building, it was their intention to bring back larger tenants to the area, and update and revitalize the building but also the neighborhood.

We had to renegotiate and rewrite the terms of the landlord’s head lease to allow for Thomas Cook to not only occupy the office space in the building, but also the retail space on the main floor. When the lease was finally through final negotiations, the building at 75 Eglinton would be totally renovated, internally and externally, with the added idea of becoming greener and more environmentally sustainable. With the replacement of the entire heating system, which would reduce power consumption by up to 30% and reduction of water usage through various water control systems, 75 Eglinton was able to achieve BOMA BEST environmental status.

We were successful in March 2008 of executing the new lease for Thomas Cook, who are now working more economically and efficiently.

Adgar was also successful in their idea of purchasing of renovating an older building in an older market, revitalizing the building and the in turn the neighborhood by brining in a high profile tenant, and did this in the most environmentally friendly way possible, but also in a profitable way for all parties involved.