London Construction - Development News Thread #1

[sbday]

Snark's summary of the saga of One London Place is pretty much the way that I remember it as well. I was resident in London back in those days (late 80's, 1990) and remember well the buzz that that development created amongst those of us that are skyscraper/development junkies (I am a hardcore addict!). I still have the glitzy marketing brochure produced by Sifton for the development in my files somewhere. At approx. the same time, Dufferin Corporate Centre was built and this had followed closely the Old Oak Properties twin 18 story project (can't remember the name of it now).

It was the golden era of commercial highrise construction in London and was associated with the expectation of future strong demand for downtown London office space due to expansion of the existing major corporate head offices at the time (i.e. London Life, Canada Trust) and the anticpation that firms would be "decentralizing" functions from Toronto. London was deemed to be an ideal location due to low costs, good location, educated labour force, IT infrastructure, and an existing (albeit small) financial "cluster", etc. Recall Cambridge Developments indicated the same rationale for the their ill-fated proposal for the Talbot Block.

Unfortunately this theory proved to be dead wrong and in fact the opposite has happened since then. It is a real shame IMO that head office functions of major London-founded financial institutions such as London Life and Canada Trust have migrated out of the city, leaving only regional or branch functions which are subject to the whims of decision-makers located in Toronto or Winnipeg or elsewhere. I remember once reading an explanation of London's bygone national reputation of "fat cat city" which was based on the number of well paid white collar types working at such London institutions. In those days (up until the 60s or even 70s), the city's wealth and powerful corporate citizens commanded significant "cloud" on the national stage in political and business circles and the city was widely known as such. Thats the London my parents grew up in.

So...I agree wholeheartedly with the view that we will only see residential highrise development in the city in the forseeable future. The only hope of ever seeing significant commercial development downtown again would be a reversal in the flow of head office - type employers back into the city. I would like to see the LEDC make a concerted attempt to go after those types of employers and try and re-establish a financial or insurance cluster in the city again similar to the way they have suceeded in luring manufacturers (autoparts) and are trying to snag life sciences companies. I would also love to see newer homegrown London companies such as Pacific & Western Bank of Canada grow and be retained and supported by the City.