Ottawa, Ontario-based Shopify Inc says it will lease about 23,597 square meters (253,000 square feet) of space over four podium floors, at The Well complex to be built at Front St. West and Spadina Ave.
The building project is jointly owned by Allied Properties REIT and RioCan REIT and is to be opened in 2022. Shopify’s neon-green shopping-bag beacon is destined to be atop the 38-story building as part of Shopify’s investment and its anchor-tenant logo rights.
Michael Scace, a senior vice-president with Cushman & Wakefield, who brokered the 15-year transaction said it is one of the biggest-ever completed in the King West market on the edge of Toronto’s downtown core.
Not only does Shopify like the community surrounding the location, but the company also is impressed by the vast talent pool in Toronto. Shopify’s expansion also comes at a time when historic volumes of venture capital are flowing to Canadian scale-up companies.
This latest announcement comes after Shopify announced earlier it would be expanding its King St. West office in Toronto, leasing over 16,536 square meters of space that will open in early 2019. And earlier this year, the e-commerce company announced it would be branching out in Los Angeles, with its first brick-and-mortar store that will be open to the public.
Global companies, such as Uber Technologies Inc. and LG Electronics Inc. are setting up local offices and this is driving real estate demand. Earlier this month, Microsoft Corp. announced that it would move its Canadian headquarters to a building currently under construction at 81 Bay St., occupying four floors and hiring 500 more staff.
The company reported that it had more than 600,000 merchants using its platform as of August 2017, with total gross merchandise volume exceeding $55 billion. Shopify has more than 3,000 employees, including in Montreal and Waterloo, Ontario, while its presence in Toronto has grown to 700 staff members.
