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glass-rose-paperweight · 4 years

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The Mysterious Case of Queerbaiting

BBC Sherlock

There’s one thing about BBC Sherlock that has never made sense to me. As I’m sure many of you are aware (and something I’ve talked about before), BBC Sherlock has been accused of Queerbaiting, of intentionally setting up John and Sherlock as being attracted to each other but never following through with that or even intending to do it. And it’s one of those things that has just always baffled me; I can’t make it make sense. A lot has already been said about the way things are portrayed in the show and what the subtext behind a million different things could mean (seriously, I love that I am part of a fandom with so many perceptive and intelligent people; watching the show is only half the fun) and how none of it makes sense. Today, I would like to use my powers of deduction get to the bottom of this mystery.

The way I see it, there are 3 possible explanations.

1. The Producers of the Show Queerbaited

I have to admit, this seems unlikely given that one of them is literally a gay man. Why would a gay man knowingly and intentionally engage in something like this? Why would a gay man write a script that constantly pokes at Watson’s sexuality if the only point was to make it into a joke? To say ‘oh, no, the poor straight guy is constantly mistaken as gay. Look at how defensive he is getting, hahaha, what a funny joke’. That just makes no sense. It makes no sense for Mark Gatiss to have gone to the lengths he has gone to within the show, from whatever direction he gave the actors so that they portray an obvious chemistry between Sherlock and John to having a jealousy trope at John and Mary’s wedding except it’s Sherlock getting Jealous over John’s ex commander to this interesting thing about the best man speech to Mary saying ‘neither one of us were his first’ or ‘the man we both love’ or ‘I know what the two of you could become’ to Sherlock putting John Watson face on The Ideal Man to all the gay artwork in TBB (I could not for the life of me find this meta even though I know I saved it, and I am so distressed) to a thousand other things that the fandom has discussed over and over and over again. Who puts that much effort into queerbaiting? Especially when you would have a vested interest representation? So, it just doesn’t make sense for those directly involved with the show the be the reason.

2. Higher Ups at BBC Told Them No

This seems much more plausible to me, however I still doubt it. I can’t say I know just a whole lot about BBC, but I do know they have tended to be on the more progressive side of things, and I just really can’t see any of the higher ups just flat out refusing to allow the writers to make Johnlock canon. The first season gets a pass because I’m pretty sure that openly same sex couples weren’t allowed in media at the time (I think it was allowed in 2011, but I’m honestly not sure. I’m in the US, not the UK, so if I’ve gotten this detail wrong, please correct me). But they had 3 other seasons and another 7 years to make it happen, and I just don’t think that the higher ups at BBC would have just flatly said ‘no’. So, that leaves the last explanation.

3. Someone Other Than Those Involved With The Show Stopped Them

The majority of the Sherlock Holmes stories are in public domain. Copyright expired in 1980 in Canada and in 2000 for the UK (X). This would seem to make it a pretty cut and dry case: in the UK, you can do pretty much whatever you want with the Sherlock Holmes stories. But it’s no quite so simple. The US works a little different because copywrite law isn’t the same (isn’t he US just great?). As it stands, there are still 6 stories today that the Conan Doyle Estate still has the exclusive rights to in the US. If I understand how the copywrite law works correctly, that would have been 14 stories back in 2010. But, that shouldn’t have affected anything going on in the UK, right? Theoretically, no. The Conan Doyle Estate wouldn’t have had any legal rights to coveting the characters and the stories in the UK. However, that doesn’t mean that those involved with the show wouldn’t have been extremely apprehensive of the power that the Estate wielded, especially considering the previous decade of legal battles. Only 3 cases are listed here, but the Conan Doyle Estate is very protective of its copyright of the work (as evident by the fact that they are literally trying to sue Netflix, among others, for portraying characters in a way they supposedly weren’t portrayed until later books). There were other court cases after 2010, however. A decisive court case in 2013 declared once and for all that the stories written prior to 1923 were completely in public domain and that a license wasn’t needed to create things based on any of the stories prior to those dates (something the Estate had convinced BBC of when they first created BBC Sherlock). However, an appeal by the Estate was later made, stating “Sherlock Holmes is a ‘complex’ character, that his background and attributes had been created over time, and that to deny copyright on the whole Sherlock Holmes character would be tantamount to giving the famous detective ‘multiple personalities.’” The appeal was, thankfully, thrown out. But it’s the attempt that matters.

Oh, and here’s a fun little tidbit, the 2 stories that have, perhaps, the strongest evidence of there being more than just friendship (this quote, this quote, and this quote (which was said after Holmes stated that, if he had hypothetically loved someone, he would kill the person that killed the person he loved)) come from the stories The Problem of Thor Bridge (the first quote) and The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (the last 2), which both belonged to the Estate in the US until after the final season of the show.

So, let’s get into the minds of BBC, for a moment. Someone has decided they want to reimage Sherlock in a new and unique way: modern day. The Holmes Estate has been fighting legal battles in America for the past decade and has won all of them, and has also issued the verdict that to make stories, you need a license. You say ‘okay’ and go along with it because you’re a big corporation that can afford to do such a thing. When the first season of the show airs, it isn’t legal to have openly gay characters, so everything has to be regulated to subtext. You outright state that being gay is okay because you want to let people know you are in full support of homosexuality, even if it isn’t legal yet. The writers and producers of the show are huge ACD fanboys and BIG fans of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, so, yeah, there’s some gay subtext. By the second season, hey! Homosexuality is legal! Except the 2 stories with the biggest indication of Sherlock and John’s attraction towards each other are still very much in the hands of the Estate, who has spent the past decade fighting legal battles. You may be able to pay for a license, but a lawsuit really isn’t something you’d like to go through. Whether the Estate has any legal standing to do such a thing or not, a lawsuit would be a long, messy battle. By the third season, a court case in America has decided that anything written prior to 1923 doesn’t need a license (damn, that’s 2 seasons of being successfully intimidated into a license). However, the two stories with greatest evidence still belong to the Estate, and the Estate tried to weasel their way into owning more of Sherlock than they should by arguing about his character. They probably wouldn’t take well to an openly gay Sherlock, would they? By season 4, the same problem still exists. Cut to 2020. Both of the stories with those quotes have entered public domain. But, uh oh, a month, a month before the 10th anniversary of your show, the news breaks that the Estate is filing yet another lawsuit, this time against multiple different parties, one of them being the mega corporation of Netflix (god, that’s some balls right there) that what they did broke copyright law because it portrayed characters in a way they supposedly weren’t portrayed until later stories, stories the Estate still owns (that is some balls right there). So you might feel the need to cover your ass a bit. Despite the past decade of saying that they characters you have portrayed are nothing but platonic, the fans don’t seem to buy it, and, in hindsight, there’s a lot of reasons not to. Maybe something needs to be created that subtly tells fans that they really are just looking too far into it. And, what great luck, a YouTube channel is asking you to make something for the 10th anniversary.

Is this what happened? I don’t really know. I have nothing more than circumstantial evidence and guesswork here to go off of. I’m not privy to the private thoughts of Mark Gatiss or Steven Moffat or any of the head honchos at BBC. I don’t know what kind of executive decisions are made in the best interest of the company. All I know is that the Conan Doyle Estate is hanging on to whatever copyrights they can possibly manage, that they are willing to level lawsuits on, quite frankly, ridiculous terms, and that having a lawsuit put against you is no laughing matter and that those whose work revolves around Sherlock Holmes and creating stories about him would want to tread carefully. This explanation is, admittedly, far fetched. But it’s the only one that really makes sense. It’s the only one that would explain why a gay man and a generally progressive company would have a show that has layer upon layer upon layer saying that there is more between John and Sherlock than just friendship, as well as a rabid fanbase that they know ship it, and still not deliver, even attempt to squash such mindsets.

There is, however, one final note I would like to end this on. I have talked before about how I think there will be another season, if the stars align and schedules allow such a thing. The best estimates of when another season might come out is 2022 or 2023, and I’m inclined to think the later year (god, that seems so far away). The year that the last story will become completely open to the public and the entirety of Sherlock Holmes will be public domain is 2023. So, maybe there is hope.

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alyjojo · 2 years

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What to leave behind in 2021? - Gemini

Physically: 8 Swords - The Tower

Your prison, whatever feels like a prison, whatever makes you feel trapped. The Tower is a very powerful energy, it’s a complete destruction of whatever came prior, in order to make room for what’s to come, something better and more authentic for you. This could be a living situation, a relationship, a job, some physical thing you can change, you’ve just kept your blindfold on and agreed to this feeling of captivity up until now. You have the power to change whatever the hell you want to change, and going by The Tower being the whole of your energy here, there’s a lot of changes you want or need to make to better yourself in the long run.

Emotionally: Queen of Wands - The Tower

This could be a literal person, if that applies you’d know who it is, the person that drains the hell out of you for some reason or another. Could be a fire sign, or act like one. Otherwise The Tower could just point to a time period when your confidence, ego, passion or sexuality, social status and/or ambitious drive take a hard hit due to some emotional situation. Have faith that what The Tower destroys is eventually replaced with something better for you. In astrology, the opposite of Wands is Swords, which is your Queen. Perhaps spirit is asking you to be less physically or emotionally driven, and aim for more mental, detached, logical, weighing things fairly and acting impersonally, perhaps even being a bit colder than usual, if the situation calls for it. Swords is also a communicator, make sure you’re being open and truthful about your feelings, cutting off anything that is not in your best interest, and asking for help if and when you may need it.

Mentally: The Empress - The Tower

If a painful situation with a mother figure has dominated your mind, or you find yourself repeating a lot of outdated or wrong...but deeply ingrained...mentalities of hers, spirit is saying it’s time to let go. If you find yourself obsessed with beauty standards in yourself and others, let that go too. The opposite of a mother is the child, The Fool, which points to new experiences, new beginnings, new information from all directions. Find the new, try the new, and approach everything with the wonder & innocence of a child, like everything you’re doing has never been done before. Try to find the beauty in The Tower, no matter how small, because whatever is cleared away leaves room for new & beautiful beginnings.

Advice going into 2022:

Complete a fitness challenge 💪

#gemini tarot reading #2021 #2022 #gemini #tarot #zodiac #new year #I actually know a few gems into fitness #5k runs and such #I won’t question it 🤷‍♀️#get it girl/sir

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Star Trek: Ranking the Stories Set in the Present Day

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So the new Star Trek: Picard trailer has dropped and among the big plot twists it revealed are the fact that Picard & Co are going to be travelling back to Earth, circa 2022 AD. We’re looking forward to exciting scenes of people from the 24th century being unable to drive cars (despite the pretty lengthy car chase we saw in the last episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks), Q and Picard sparring again, and wondering how Guinan fits into all this. My personal theory is that after her adventures with Picard and Mark Twain in the 19th century, Guinan decided to stick around on Earth, eventually posing as an actor called Whoopi Goldberg.

This is far from the first time Star Trek has travelled back to the present day – even if “present day” is pretty broad for the 55-year-old franchise. We have no way of knowing why the series keeps returning to this setting that doesn’t need the manufacture of any new props, sets or costumes, but it seems like a good time to look at when Star Trek has done this before and ask “Who wore it better?”

6. Assignment: Earth

This episode would prove to be a particularly tricky one for nearly every single time travel episode that has come since, in that it shows time travel for the Federation is so easy and routine that the Enterprise can just nip back to the Cold War to see why we never Great Filtered ourselves out of existence. Unfortunately, in this episode Kirk and Spock don’t get to see much of 20th century Earth, or indeed do much of anything.

‘Assignment: Earth’ was conceived as a backdoor pilot for a new series about Gary Seven, a human bred and raised by aliens to act as a secret agent on Earth and protect us from our own capacity for self-destruction. This means Kirk and Spock’s role is little more than to sit around and say “Wow, this looks like a great idea for a television show!”

Still, I can’t help but wonder about a Star Trek franchise in the parallel universe where its first spin-off was a spy show set in 1968.

5. Carpenter Street

This episode of Star Trek: Enterprise stands out because it is perhaps the only episode on this list where they decided the present day should be filmed any differently from the space future. The lighting, the camera work, the whole episode feels much more like Angel, or a cop show from the period than the Star Trek style that had been uniformly adopted since The Next Generation.

Usually when Star Trek comes back to our time it is to take us on ‘a romp’, where people point out Starfleet uniforms look like pyjamas and the crew go around misunderstanding pop culture references. This, however, feels like Star Trek invading a much grittier show.

Unfortunately, you can tell that this is a network science fiction show trying to show how adult and gritty it is, because within the first ten minutes of the episode we see a sex worker abducted. Maybe one day science fiction shows will find a way to show that they are proper grown-ups without a drive-by or disposable sex worker character appearing in the first ten minutes, but ‘Carpenter Street’ is not that show.

The other thing Star Trek’s forays into our century do is emphasise how far humanity has come, or still has to travel. This is where ‘Carpenter Street’ really falls down. Because this was Enterprise’s dark, post-9/11 Xindi storyline, we see Archer literally beat information out of someone – not for the first time in this season. It’s a scene that highlights everything that’s wrong with this version of Star Trek.

It’s also the bringer of bad news, as at one point T’Pol asks about fossil fuels to be told that “It’s not until 2061 that…”

The sentence is left incomplete, but that sounds like bad news for our 2050 emissions targets.

4. Tomorrow is Yesterday

This is Star Trek’s first trip back to the 20th century, and it sets the rules for so much that comes later. Agonising about changing the future, having modern day characters remark on how silly everything is, Star Trek characters being taken prisoner and taking the piss out of their interrogators. The formula is refined in many ways from here on, but the ingredients are established here.

It also establishes, as ‘Assignment: Earth’ later confirms, that any ordinary warp-capable ship can perform a manoeuvre to travel forward or backward in time at will, a plot device most of the Star Trek canon has heroically stuck its fingers in its ears and shut its eyes to avoid.

The main reason this entry doesn’t rank higher is that the action is almost entirely confined to US military bases, denying us the fun of seeing our favourite Starfleet officers wandering around our day-to-day world as if it’s the Planet of the Week.

Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure

By Ed Gross

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is an “Encounter at Farpoint” Sequel

By Ryan Britt

3. Future’s End

This Star Trek: Voyager two-parter, on the other hand, gives us that in spades. It knows what the fans want and it is here to give you a big steaming bowl of it. Neelix and Kes watching daytime soaps? Check. Tuvok having to ensure he wears a beanie at all times? Check. Paris getting his 20th century history and slang hilariously wrong? Check. An oddly jarring turn by a young, pre-comedy stardom Sarah Silverman? Okay, maybe you weren’t asking for that, but check!

It even throws us some subtle continuity porn to argue over. In Sarah Silverman’s office we see a model of the launch configuration of a DY-100 class ship- the ship used by Khan Noonien Singh to escape justice following the Eugenics Wars that were supposed to happen in the mid-nineties.

This is more than just an Easter egg (unlike, we’re assuming, the Talosian action figure on Sarah Silverman’s desk). Over the course of the episode we learn that the entire microprocess revolution that created the world we know and love was the result of stolen 29th century tech.

Does this mean history was changed? That all Star Trek following this episode takes place in a divergent timeline where the Eugenics Wars never happened? This has some fascinating connotations that we will touch upon later in the article, and which I will explain to you at length after precisely one and a half pints.

The episode does have its weak points however – Voyager being seen on national television never seems to go anywhere, and neither does the whole subplot where Chakotay and Torres end up prisoner in a survivalist compound for a bit.

As we’ve already mentioned, there’s also a lot of agonising about how Voyager will get to the present, when we already know that they just need to whip around the sun at warp speed and boom, the series is over.

Oh, and this is an extremely minor gripe, but Janeway tells us she has no idea what her ancestors were doing in this time period – despite subjecting us to the tedium of her story in ‘Millennium Gate’ which was set only four years after this.

2. Past Tense

This episode might be considered a cheat, since at time of broadcast it was technically set in the future. However, since it (along with Irish Reunification) is supposed to take place three years on from now, I think we can say it counts.

This Deep Space Nine story is decidedly not ‘a romp’. Yes people make fun of the characters’ clothes, and Kira and O’Brien’s jaunts through history raise a smile, but more than all but a select number of Star Trek stories, this is about just how far our reality is from the hoped-for future of Star Trek.

Bashir lands some lines that hit quite a bit heavier now than they did in the nineties, from “The 21st century is not one of my strong points – too depressing” to the plaintive “How could they have let things get so bad?” at the story’s conclusion.

And while it is set over twenty years in the future from the perspective of the broadcast date, it wasn’t far off. Stories evocative of the sanctuary districts are easy to find, and as writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe says, “We weren’t being predictive. We were just looking out our windows in the ’90s.”

Only two things really mark this episode out as an anachronism. One, the technology looks painfully 90s – our technology looks far closer to the 24th century than the bulky monitors seen everywhere in this. But then again, this episode was broadcast prior to ‘Future’s End’, so maybe Henry Starling hadn’t kickstarted the microprocessor revolution in this timeline yet.

The other, far grimmer element to have dated is the idea that one innocent black person being shot by police could be enough to cause the sea change this episode says it does.

1. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

There wasn’t ever really going to be any debate over this, was there? Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is hands down the one to beat if you’re writing Star Trek characters travelling to the present day. The film itself was something of a departure for the franchise. Rather than Robert Wise’s epic, sombre, proper science fiction in The Motion Picture, or the bombastic action of Nicholas Meyer’s Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home was helmed by a director who would be best known for the cult comedy, Three Men & a Baby.

This 20th century feels far more inhabited than other portrayals, with screen time being given over to casual conversations between bin men, and workplace arguments independent of the former Enterprise crew.

Of course, by now the crew of 1701-no-bloody-A-B-C-or-D should be old hands at Earth in the 20th century. This is their fourth trip here, not counting planets-that-mysteriously-resemble-Earth-in-the-20th-century.

But these fish are never more out of water than they are in this film, and the results are charming. Kirk explaining swearing to Spock, Kirk observing people “still use money”, Chekov standing in the middle of the street asking for directions to the “Nuclear Wessels”, Scotty’s “Hello Computer!” and Kirk Thatcher getting nerve-pinched for listening to his own music on a ghetto blaster. Plus countless more zingers, sight gags and throwaway lines that I’m still finding new ones of after many, many re-watches.

And the cast are clearly having the time of their lives. Shatner’s comic talent was always on display, but in this movie he is really allowed to cut it fully loose giving reaction shots that make you feel bad about every time you mocked his acting.

But no matter how silly it gets, this film knows, more than any other, the point of sending Star Trek characters into the modern day. It is to show us the difference between our ideal selves and where we are – and it does it no less starkly than ‘Past Tense’. With a light comic touch, Kirk and co. encounter capitalism, the spectre of nuclear war, and most of all, the devastating environmental impact we’re having. Even if we reach the ideal Star Trek future, this film says, we could still lose things we can’t replace along the way.

Star Trek: Picard is going to have to work hard if it wants to walk in its footsteps.

Honourable Mentions

While not taking place in the present day, it’d be remiss of this article not to mention ‘City on the Edge of Forever’, which refined ‘Tomorrow is Yesterday’s formula and is just one of the all-out best Star Trek series ever, and ‘Little Green Men’, which twists the usual Starfleet-in-the-20th-century formula by having the Ferengi arrive in the 20th century and find humans far more brutal, greedy and stupid than even they suspected.

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Also, I don’t want to alarm you, but by the end of this decade we’ll be closer to the events of Star Trek: First Contact than we are to the release of Star Trek: First Contact.

The post Star Trek: Ranking the Stories Set in the Present Day appeared first on Den of Geek.

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rebeccahpedersen · 6 years

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Toronto’s Downtown Office Market Is On Fire!

TorontoRealtyBlog

Let’s take a little break from residential real estate, just for a day.

Although to be fair, residential real estate in the downtown core and commercial/office space are joined at the hip.

As more and more businesses move downtown, so too will the people that they employ.

Would it surprise you to know that commercial office space vacancy is near an all-time low? It shouldn’t…

Do you remember something called…………the stump?

I do.

And perhaps you will too, with just a little reminder.

But let me flush this quiz out a little longer.

Which downtown Toronto office building would you say is the most noteable?

Is it Scotia Plaza? The iconic and unmistakeable maroon tower that sold for a well-publicized $1.27 Billion in 2012?

Is it BCE Place, now “Brookfield Place,” which gives us both the Bay Wellington Tower as well as the better-known TD Canada Trust Tower, with the “TD” logo adorning the top of the building in bright green?

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the new(er) Bay Adelaide Centre, which is probably the newest, shiniest, and brightest (both in literal and metaphorical terms) downtown Toronto office tower.

Well, if you knew where I was going with “the stump,” then you knew that my answer to the question above has already been answered.

As red as Scotia Tower is, and as tall and overbearing as TD Tower is, I have to think that the Bay Adelaide Centre is the most noteable office structure at the moment, and perhaps that’s because it’s actually two towers (like TD), and there is a third on the horizon.

Maybe it’s because “Suits” was filmed in there!

Or because of the podium-style lobby, with sleek glass, and a very large extended sidewalk on the northeast corner of Bay & Adelaide that is somewhat reminiscent of a Manhattan-style office setup. All that’s missing is a slew of one-way street, and yellow taxi cabs.

If you’re over the age of 40, I’m sure you can recall “the stump” that sat on the current site of the Bay Adelaide Centre for over a decade.

For those that don’t know, there were plans for an office tower on the current site of the Bay Adelaide Centre back in the late 80’s, and into the early 90’s, but then a massive recession hit, and having constructed underground parking already, the only above-grade structure completed was this:

(Photo from Wikipedia)

That “stump” remained intact for nearly 15 years.

I actually recall a Globe & Mail article from before construction started on the Bay Adelaide Centre…

……….wow, I found it! Read it here: “End Nears For Toronto’s Bay Adelaide ‘Stump’” – July 19th, 2006.

That was an incredible find, if I may say so. There’s nothing quite like digging through a trillion web pages on Google.

Here’s another description of the stump, this one from Wikipedia:

Construction began in 1990, but the developers soon ran into problems. The economy went into recession and office vacancy rates in Toronto rose to 20%. Construction was halted, and in 1993, with over $500 million already invested, the project was permanently put on hold. All that was completed was the underground parking garage and several storeys of the concrete service shaft that stood from 1991 onwards, as a monument to the failed project in downtown Toronto. The stump of the service shaft was known to security and the locals as “the bunker” or simply “the stump”. The parking garage was in operation, and the stump itself was used as a surface on which to mount advertisements.

–

Circle back to the Globe & Mail article from 2006, and note that the downtown office vacancy rate was 6.8%.

And what are vacancy rates today, you ask?

How about 2.4%.

Wow! 2.4%! That’s………..double the vacancy rate in the rental market!

Kidding, kidding. Let’s not go to the rental market today, we’re liable to be here all night.

One of the websites I frequent in order to keep on top of news in commercial real estate (since it’s not like the Globe & Mail and Toronto Star are doing weekly round-ups about office space) is a site called The Real Estate News Exchange, or RENX.

Today, they provided the following about the downtown Toronto office market:

Toronto CEO “All In” On Downtown Toronto Office Market By: Don Wilcox 6/14/2018

With two major office projects which will deliver more than two million square feet of space to the market, Cadillac Fairview CEO John Sullivan says his company is “all-in” for downtown Toronto.

“We’re excited,” he told RENX in an interview Wednesday. “We’ve got two very large developments going on in downtown Toronto and we’ve got 10 million square feet here already. So we’re all-in for Toronto.”

Sullivan was speaking just a few hours after announcing CF’s latest downtown development, a 46-storey office tower at 160 Front Street West in conjunction with Investment Management Corporation of Ontario. When shovels go into the ground in January, it will be Cadillac Fairview’s second major office tower to begin construction in just over a year.

CF is already building the 33-storey 16 York just a few city blocks away.

The $800-million Front St. tower includes 1.2 million square feet of office space, while 16 York contains about 878,000 square feet. It was projected to cost about $479 million.

“We’re excited about this project, we’re excited about 16 York and looking forward to a successful lease-up of both,” Sullivan said.

The most recent figures peg Toronto’s downtown office availability rate at a very tight 2.4 per cent (via Cushman & Wakefield). Any existing significant office projects which will be delivered prior to 2020 are already up to 90 per cent preleased, leading most observers to predict at least two more years of limited availability.

Sullivan said the ongoing restriction in the downtown Toronto market dictated the timing of 16 York and 160 Front St., which are both premium projects. Plans for the Front St. tower were actually filed with the city about four years ago, so CF faced a decision back in 2016 on which project to proceed with first.

“At that moment in time, we had both projects ready to go and we decided to go ahead with 16 York. If you recall, we went ahead without any preleasing,” Sullivan said. “16 York is the smaller of the two projects, so that was a conscious decision.

“We are a year into it right now and if you go by the site I think we are on the third floor right now, coming out of the ground. We’ve had an enormous amount of interest and a lot of success in preleasing there.”

First National Financial will be one of the anchors at 16 York, he said, and one other key tenant is also signed, though Sullivan said that deal remains confidential.

“We have a few other ones that are about to be signed, such that we will be well in excess of half leased in a short period of time,” he said. “(Leasing) has gone extremely well. We’re not even going to be finished this building until 2020. And the new one we’re not going to finish until 2022.”

At 160 Front, meanwhile, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan was announced as the first anchor tenant. The OTPP, which also owns CF, will take nine floors of the tower, or about 21 per cent of the total office space, Sullivan said.

Although there are no other firm commitments at this point, but Sullivan said there has been strong interest in the project during its planning stages.

“It would be safe to say we’ve had discussions with a number of larger tenants. At this stage we are not interested in renting one floor, we’re looking at a much larger space,” he explained. “There is lots of interest. To be frank a number of them were waiting to see if we were going ahead with it. Now that we are, I think those discussions will accelerate.”

He said there are several major factors driving the Toronto office boom, and none of his “top three” show any signs of slowing down.

“One I would call the flight from the suburbs back downtown. There’s a number of office tenants that either left downtown and went to the suburbs that are coming back, (or) in some instances office tenants that have always been in the suburbs that feel now they have to be located somewhere in the downtown area,” Sullivan explained.

“You also have the technology space. An enormous amount of growth. You have tenants that start out with one floor and five years later they are 10 floors. You have a massive amount of growth in that space and they all want to be downtown.

“Finally, the one which has been really a bellwether for Toronto over the years is the financial services sector. They continue to grow.

“So when you put those three together alone, I think they are responsible for a large part of the strong market which you see today.”

With the addition of 160 Front, the 72-million square foot Toronto office market will see a significant addition of new, premium space from 2020-2023.

The delivery times for these two towers are similar to another massive downtown project, the 81 Bay CIBC Square development by Ivanhoe Cambridge. That will deliver 1.5-million square feet into the downtown with the completion of the first 49-storey tower in 2020, and a second, 1.4-million square foot tower is slated for delivery in 2023.

Like those competing towers, both CF buildings are being constructed to meet LEED Platinum and WELL certification requirements. Sullivan trumpeted Cadillac Fairview’s ongoing sustainability and wellness programs and commitments throughout its portfolio, and said both projects will echo that philosophy.

Although the exterior of 160 Front might be very similar to the design presented in plans filed four years ago at city hall, the interior will be anything but.

“Technologically every year that goes by we improve that. So as we sit here today the technology that will be implemented at this project will be state of the art,” Sullivan said.

“We’re leaders in that (sustainability) space and we’ve also been a leader in our Green at Work program, which is the whole sustainability side, which kind of overlaps both WELL and LEED. This (building) will be a key part of that program.”

There’s a lot to discuss after reading the article above, but one thing really jumps out at me.

In the 2006 Globe & Mail article, it was noted that the three additional office towers being built would “push the vacancy rate up to 10.6%” from a 3.9% projected rate in 2008, but an actual 6.8% rate in 2006.

The RENX article says the following:

Any existing significant office projects which will be delivered prior to 2020 are already up to 90 per cent preleased, leading most observers to predict at least two more years of limited availability.

Well no kidding.

It’s hard to add vacant units to the marketplace when they’re already pre-leased!

When condominiums are completed, they’re quite often rented out. Investors who purchased units in pre-construction will lease the unit out during occupancy and registration, which can sometimes take up to two years. So when most new downtown condominiums are completed, we often see 20%-30% of the units come up for lease.

I never thought I’d say this, but it seems as though the lease market for downtown office space is perilously tight, as is the lease market for residential.

Now what does this say for the future of the downtown condo market?

When I was on the Toronto Life panel two weeks ago, somebody in the audience asked about the future of condo prices, “If more and more businesses are moving out of the city, and if ‘working-from-home’ becomes a go-to employment model.”

Perhaps the question should have been the exact opposite.

With big-tech on the rise in Toronto, Google Sidewalk Labs on the horizon, and ten million square feet of new office space planned for the downtown core in the next decade, won’t the employees who work for these firms need some place to live?

The post Toronto’s Downtown Office Market Is On Fire! appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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