Development News

The latest addition to the city's skyline is the RBC Centre at Wellington and Simcoe. You'll recognize it by its distinctive blue stripe running the length of its 43 floors. Designed by Bregman + Hamann Architects and developed by Cadillac Fairview, the tower is remarkable for two things: it's one of three new office buildings (along with Menkes' Telus tower and Brookfield's Bay-Adelaide building) that have added the first significant amount of office space downtown (3 million square feet in total, of which 1.2 million is in RBC Centre) in 17 years. The second is that it's Canada's first office tower to be built to LEED Gold NC standard.

That NC stands for "new construction," which means that though it's measured on how well the landlord's role in the building measures up to LEED's criteria, it also involves a buy-in from future tenants to build and renovate to these same standards, "so it becomes a co-operative and joint effort between landlord and tenant," says Cadillac Fairview's senior vice-president of office development, Wayne Barwise, "to keep the standards of the building and both benefit from the reduced energy costs."

Built with a budget of about $420 million, Barwise lists several of the building's LEED-focused features, including operable windows on the first 10 floors, rain capture and grey-water recycling for the first six floors, and an automated building management system that uses shades and a "light shelf" to respond to changes in the light outside, including both the passage of the sun and glare from nearby buildings.

Though Barwise doesn't anticipate the vacancy rates in Toronto will demand much new commercial construction on this scale for several years, Cadillac Fairview itself, he says, were influenced somewhat by RBC's "very forward-thinking" and specific sustainability objectives, will now be changing the way it does business. "Our standard going forward," he says, "will be to build to a minimum standard of LEED Gold. We believe this is the way of the future."