Awesome news for Ottawa and Downtown!!
Shopify to triple size of Ottawa headquarters
JAMES BAGNALL, OTTAWA CITIZEN
Published on: March 20, 2017 | Last Updated: March 20, 2017 4:43 PM EDT
Given its rapid sales trajectory it was only a matter of time Shopify would outgrow its state-of-the-art headquarters building at 150 Elgin St.
That 170,000-square-foot facility was outfitted just three years ago. But last week Shopify Inc. signed a lease to eventually take over an additional 325,000 square feet of nearby office space at 234 Laurier Ave. — best known as the former headquarters of the Export Development Corp., a federal crown corporation.
“Ottawa may be one of the best places in the world right now to build a multibillion-dollar business,” said Harley Finkelstein, Shopify’s chief operating officer. “In fact, we consider Ottawa to be one of Shopify’s competitive advantages.”
Shopify will begin fitting up floors two through six this July, with employees starting to move in early in 2018, according to the terms of the multi-year lease with Gillin Engineering & Construction and Slate Asset Management. Plans call for Shopify workers to fill an additional four to five floors each year until all 19 floors are occupied.
“Our problem has always been not having enough space,” said Greg Scorsone, director of internal operations at Shopify. He added he was “very confident” the company would eventually fill it.
All of this is heavily contingent on Shopify’s success in selling its software to online merchants around the globe. On current trends, Shopify’s headquarters operation would reach about 3,000 employees by year-end 2021.
This compares with 750 employees currently. Shopify also employs 1,150-plus workers outside the national capital region, with offices in Toronto (300 employees), Kitchener-Waterloo (170), Montreal (90) and San Francisco (20). The e-commerce firm also employs nearly 600 technical experts who operate from home offices, mainly in Europe and across North America.
http://ottawacitizen.com/business/lo...a-headquarters