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Property Report: URBAN RENEWAL
Backroom player is ready for its close-up
Filmport project the latest example of TEDCO's evolution
into a mover and shaker in commercial real estate
It could have been yet another condominium on Toronto's waterfront.
Instead, a former brownfield site is the home for what observers hope will
rejuvenate the city's film industry and restore its claim as "Hollywood
North."
A project known as Filmport has its premiere tomorrow, with the official
launch of the first phase of what ultimately will become a $700-million
venue for film production.
Already, a cavernous, hangar-shaped soundstage - at 49,500 square feet,
it is said to be the largest of its kind in North America - has become a
landmark in an otherwise dreary stretch of former industrial and port
property on Toronto's eastern waterfront.
Filmport was created to provide a centralized facility for movie makers,
sparing them the need to conduct shoots in abandoned warehouses.
But it's also another feather in the cap for Toronto Economic
Development Corp. (TEDCO), which is leasing the 20 acres to the
development's principals, Rose Corp. (owner of Toronto Film Studios)
producer Comweb Group Inc., and Ken Ferguson, president of Filmport
Inc.
The 550,000 square feet of film and television production space planned
for the site can be traced to a study TEDCO conducted in 2002, examining why
Toronto was losing big productions to other Canadian cities, such as
Vancouver and Montreal, Mr. Ferguson says.
"Studios are very expensive to build and a lot of other cities built
their soundstages with government assistance. Ontario for years had taken
the position that they were not going to throw public money at a private
business, and without help it's very difficult for anybody to pull
off," he says.
So, like the cavalry charging in to save the day, TEDCO acquired
waterfront property from Imperial Oil Ltd. with an eye to remediation, and
to designate it for the construction of the facilities.
"We knew the film industry was hitting a glass ceiling," says
Jeff Steiner, TEDCO's chief executive officer. "And, while it would
have been much more profitable, and more fun in some ways, to turn it into a
condo village - because it's on the water - we put on our economic
development hat and decided that the higher priority for the city was to
make land available for the growth in infrastructure for the film
industry."
TEDCO's role also reflects an odd hybrid of purposes: Pursuing public
policy while dabbling in the private world of commercial real estate. From
its inception in 1986, TEDCO's mandate has been to "pursue industrial
and economic development, and to attract and retain jobs in the City of
Toronto." To this end, it can buy, sell, lease and otherwise deal in
real property, also the main source of its revenue.
TEDCO, which acts at arm's length from its sole shareholder, the City of
Toronto, has become a significant player in the city's real estate
development - indeed, in the case of the port lands, it has ventured where
other developers may have been reluctant to tread, one observer suggests.
After the Toronto Harbour Commission transferred more than 400 acres of
mostly contaminated port land to TEDCO in the early nineties, real estate
development became its core function.
"After we received all that land, [TEDCO] did some projects in the
late nineties in and around brownfields that, while they weren't enormous,
were in a way ground breaking because they were examples of brownfields
actually [being] cleaned up," Mr. Steiner says.
Today, TEDCO owns more than 500 acres of land across the Greater Toronto
Area, has more than one million square feet of proposed developments and is
involved in at least 14 projects. Since 1992, it has restored more than 120
acres of brownfield land to productive use, Filmport being the latest
example.
It is also an example of how a city's former economic development
commission has used more aggressive tactics - expanding its role from mainly
landowner to strategic investor and development partner - in pursuing new
economies.
Professor Pierrre Filion, co-author of Canadian Cities in Transition:
The Twenty-first Century, who teaches at the University of Waterloo's
School of Planning, says this is most evident in the port lands.
"Before the city of Toronto amalgamated into the Greater Toronto
Area, the inner city was losing manufacturing jobs, and TEDCO wanted them
back," Prof. Filion says, "But now it's very hard to attract
industry to those areas. The port's essential functions are few, and Toronto
is not a major port city.
"There's not much incentive for [companies] to locate close to the
harbour - industry goes to the suburbs. The vision for the waterfront has
changed and TEDCO's tactics in developing those lands have had to adjust
accordingly."
Besides Filmport, another major TEDCO development in the port lands
includes the Toronto headquarters and broadcast centre for Corus
Entertainment Inc., a $147-million investment that is expected to bring
1,300 workers to Toronto's waterfront area by 2009. Elsewhere in the city,
TEDCO is in predevelopment for a 14-acre office complex to be known as
Downsview Corporate Centre near the Downsview airport.
"What they're doing is a little bit of city building, which is not
necessarily a bad thing," says Michael Brooks, chief executive officer
of the Real Property Association of Canada. "Sometimes, [TEDCO] can
accomplish things that a private developer can't, particularly when it comes
to land assembly, brownfields and dealing with a larger area ... helping to
revitalize an area that may otherwise have been pretty stagnant."
In the case of Filmport, Mr. Steiner certainly makes a case for TEDCO's
hand in city building. Filmport's website refers to the development as a
"convergence district" for the film and media community and the
company is planning its own foray into commercial real estate with plans for
office and industrial space there.
"Filmport will be a hub of employment and dynamism that will make
the area interesting. Yes, some people at city council thought the land
would be better used as condos, but there are other lands in the surrounding
area that will be available for residential development, and of course we
want mixed use," he says.
Thanks to TEDCO's initiative, Mr. Steiner suggests, the transformation
around Toronto's downtown core has already begun. "The port lands were
off-off-core, now they're just off-core." -
2008 August 19 GLOBE
& MAIL
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