When will Canada get a supertall???

[Traynor]

Everyone should not forget that the commercial-space needs for large companies has also changed dramatically in the last 35 years since Toronto's tall office building boom of the mid-70's. Since then, the computer has taken over and it has had a huge impact on the staffing requirements and therefore square footage a large company actually needs.

35 years ago there would have still been steno pools filled with banks of secretaries and typists, or order departments staffed with tens of telephone operators, huge mail rooms with messenger boys, and many more support staff. Back in the day, accounting, including payroll, was always one of a large company's biggest group of employees. Plus vast filing rooms with every piece of paper a huge company could generate.

Today a lot of that is done by computer and is managed digitally. One person on a desktop with access to a database, can execute the work that a whole payroll department once did. Or more often than not, that is all done by another company and they just send the data via computer, therefore having no payroll department at all. Add to this the growing number of telecommuters, who never require permanent office space, you have greatly reduced the number of employees any given company needs. Consequently reducing the square footage required.

All this means the developer of a Supertall has to convince more anchor tenants to make a project viable than they did before.