The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and Oxford Properties, the real estate arm of OMERS, are teaming up in a fifty-fifty joint venture to build the new national headquarters for Royal Bank in downtown Toronto.
Oxford will oversee all aspects of the development and management of the property.
The 30-storey office tower, to be called RBC WaterPark Place, will be located between Bay and York streets on the north side of Queens Quay. The development will be connected to Toronto’s underground PATH system, and an enclosed pedestrian bridge will link it to the Air Canada Centre and Union Station. RBC will occupy approximately 550,000 square feet of the 930,000-square-foot property.
The development scope will also comprise renovations at WaterPark Place I and II (10 and 20 Bay Street, respectively). On completion, the three-building WaterPark Place complex will be more than 1.7 million square feet.
“Oxford has more than 10,000,000 square feet of office space and approximately 6.5 million square feet of retail under management in the City of Toronto alone,” said Blake Hutcheson, president and CEO of Oxford Properties. “The addition of RBC WaterPark Place, on the heels of our acquisition last month of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Complex, reflects our belief in the City of Toronto and in the downtown market.”
Oxford and CPPIB co-own a portfolio of office properties across Canada valued at approximately $3 billion and are currently also developing 1021 West Hastings in Vancouver.
RBC WaterPark Place will begin construction in late 2011 and is scheduled for completion in Q3 2014.