ener¤y than a conventional building.
And tapped into the waste heat from the
Telus server farm across the alley, it will
actually draw 97 per cent less ener¤y
from the grid. It, too, has nine-foot win-
dows and, with pressurized, raised 'oors
that contain both the 100-per-cent fresh
air ventilation system and all services
(from wiring and plumbing to computer
cabling), the 10-foot-six ceiling height is
clear and unobstructed, underfoot and
overhead. It's even got 23,000 square
feet of exterior deck space, equal to an
additional 'oor, given that its 'oorplate
is a little more than 22,000 square feet.
Then again, not everyone has the bud-
get to outbid Amazon, Capstone Mining
or law ‡rm Bull Housser for the most
prestigious new space in town, nor the
appetite to relocate in this kind of splashy
new building. Consider
HCMA, an archi-
tecture ‡rm that recently moved from
what was—when they designed and built
it themselves in 1986—a boldly avant-
garde concrete and glass space under the
Granville Street Bridge. With that history,
you might imagine
HCMA's new home to
be some experimental structure in the
latest trendy neighbourhood. Instead,
they now occupy the fourth 'oor of 16
in the 84-year-old art deco Royal Bank
building at Granville and Hastings.
The former bank—at 685 West Hast-
ings—was designed as the ‡rst of two mir-
rored parts, but when it was completed
in 1931, the Depression left it an orphaned
twin. The main-'oor Florentine bank-
ing hall is still fantastic, with towering
ceilings and 900-kilogram brass chan-
deliers. But when Uptown Properties
bought the building four years ago, it
was dowdy and distressed, with a 40 per
cent vacancy rate. When you think of the
rating system for commercial space,
MNP
and Telus Garden certainly earned their
AAA status, while the run-down Royal
Bank building richly deserved its bottom-
drawer C-class designation.
(The building class system is about
what you'd expect: A is state of the art;
it's the top class in Toronto. But the
strivers in Alberta (AA) and Vancouver
(
AAA) have added extra letters to indi-
cate which are the most up-to-date and
prestigious addresses. According to a
primer shared by
CBRE, B-class buildings
are "adequate (but not state of the art)"
in their mechanical, electrical and life
safety systems, with a mid-quality level of
interior ‡nish. And C-class buildings "are
generally dated and the quality of ‡nish
is often below average." This is where you
get the good deals on space.)
But Uptown vice-president Bart Slot-
man bristles if you call his building
C-class today. "It's C-class by age," he
admits, grudgingly. "But we're getting
rental rates comparable to rates in A or
even triple-A buildings."
The reason is the renovation. Over the
last 18 months, Uptown has been going
NOT JUST FORM
Details from inside
the new CBRE office
