66 BCBusiness october 2015
It is also an overdue burst of breathing
room, most of which is already booked
by eager new tenants. They're choosing
from boutique-style tiny 'oorplates to
sprawling football ‡elds, from stylish—
and sustainable—heritage retro‡ts to the
most prestigious (and ostentatious) new
address in the city. Even their leftovers
will be tempting enough to trigger an
excited round of musical ofices—one
where the last player standing still ‡nds
someplace amiable to sit.
O
ne of those companies on
the move is commercial
real estate brokerage
CBRE.
Two years ago, company
management came to the
realization that their Vancouver o ce,
with its 125 employees, had long out-
grown its space in the Fortis Building
at West Georgia and Thurlow. Know-
ing that a move would strain its sta–,
the leadership team was determined to
make the hassle worthwhile. With the
foresight that comes when it's your busi-
ness to track every centimetre of o ce
space in the city,
CBRE looked into the
hottest construction project on the
horizon and chose the
MNP Tower—a
slender, sweeping black form that now
'atters the Marine Building at Burrard
and West Pender.
The
MNP space is open and airy, both
austere in design and surprisingly natu-
ral, with real trees growing just o– the
centre core of every 'oor. At 35 storeys—
and with nine-foot windows wrapping
the building—the Tower o–ers breath-
taking vistas in every direction, perhaps
most spectacularly to the north, where
you look out between the Shaw Tower
and the Fairmont Paci‡c Rim to Burrard
Inlet and the North Shore mountains.
"I've yet to see a single person sit down
on the furniture in our waiting room,"
says Norm Taylor, managing director
of
CBRE's vertiginous Vancouver o ce.
"Everyone just stands right up to the
window and stares at the view."
One of the challenges with the tower
is its surprisingly tiny 'oorplate. Accord-
ing to Ashley O'Neill,
CBRE's vice presi-
dent of corporate strate¤y, who helped
manage
CBRE's move, the average Van-
couver o ce building has a 'oorplate of
between 12,000 and 15,000 square feet;
the
MNP Tower, by contrast, is just 8,000
square feet—with only 6,500 square feet
of it actually rentable (once you subtract
room taken up by elevators, etc.). This is a
great space for a small ‡rm that still wants
to give you that we-own-the-'oor feeling
when you step o– the elevator. But it's a
potential nightmare for a big organization
that wants an open o ce with huge teams
of people, all within shouting distance.
Think of Microsoft and Sony, which have
taken the top three 'oors of 725 Granville
VertICAL
INteGrAtIoN
CBRE's new offices make
the most of small floors
with innovative design
