Office tower envy

[caltrane74]

Awesome Photo!!!

kinda old, but still awesome.

[yyzer]

Toronto is in the midst of an office building boom unlike anything seen since the 1980s.

Some 16 new office towers are currently under development

16?

http://www.thestar.com/business/arti...-the-go-go-80s

[rbt]

This is interesting:

"That could top five million square feet if Queen’s Park moves ahead with plans to reduce its real estate footprint by downsizing each civil servants’ work area from 250 square feet to 200, says a new report from TD Economics."

http://www.thestar.com/business/arti...-the-go-go-80s

That's sounds really tight to me.

That 200sqft isn't just their cubical, it includes the per-employee portions of the hallways, kitchen, bathrooms, meeting spaces, space in walls/dividers, photo copy room, shelves, storage, janitors closet, and even the building lobby.

There are a lot of components of an employees space you simply cannot shrink due to building/fire code.


Quickest way I can think of is to go to shared desks/cubes for entry-level positions.

I wonder if you can cheat the number by having people work from home one or two days a week. Space per employee in the building doesn't change but space per employee working does.


Doing software development for SBC in downtown Toronto, we had a design capacity of about 400 sqft per employee but we didn't grow the employee count to that number so we actually had closer to 1200sqft per employee.

[caltrane74]

Originally Posted by yyzer

16?

http://www.thestar.com/business/arti...-the-go-go-80s

They may be talking proposed and under construction.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by rbt

This is interesting:




That's sounds really tight to me.

That 200sqft isn't just their cubical, it includes the per-employee portions of the hallways, kitchen, bathrooms, meeting spaces, space in walls/dividers, photo copy room, shelves, storage, janitors closet, and even the building lobby.

There are a lot of components of an employees space you simply cannot shrink due to building/fire code.


Quickest way I can think of is to go to shared desks/cubes for entry-level positions.

I wonder if you can cheat the number by having people work from home one or two days a week. Space per employee in the building doesn't change but space per employee working does.


Doing software development for SBC in downtown Toronto, we had a design capacity of about 400 sqft per employee but we didn't grow the employee count to that number so we actually had closer to 1200sqft per employee.

200 square feet isn't that tight. I've seen new office floor plates with that. I know who you are and who you work for however, in my experience, bathrooms, elevator lobbies, are the domain of the property manager and wouldn't be counted towards employee space.

[rbt]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

200 square feet isn't that tight. I've seen new office floor plates with that. I know who you are and who you work for however, in my experience, bathrooms, elevator lobbies, are the domain of the property manager and wouldn't be counted towards employee space.

Yeah, I guess it depends on which calculation you use. The functional floorspace or the leased space which is used to calculate your companies proportion of taxes, insurance, etc. for the building.

If you say it's the new normal then I guess it should be something the province targets.

I know they planned on building a new office building on Bay Street. Is this a result of the building being cancelled (continued growth of staff) or will the province be freeing up floorspace?