Office building activity has been relatively sluggish since 2007, even as Toronto and other major Canadian cities have continued to build, but this all looks set to change.
Reports from the city suggest that a number of major new construction projects are now expected to begin as developers aim to capitalise on strong demand for rented office space and relatively low vacancy rates.
Among the buildings along the road to construction is a tower designed as the new headquarters of the TELUS communications company, a 24-storey development on the main Vancouver peninsula.
Raymond Louie, a local city councillor, told the Globe and Mail newspaper: “The [TELUS] application shows a strong confidence in the direction this council has been taking for business.”
Meanwhile, Oxford Properties, among other major investors, is seeking the right opportunities to capitalise on the resurgence in commercial real estate already well underway in one of Canada’s most prosperous cities.
Oxford Properties also recently agreed to a deal to work with British Land on the development of a 47-storey skyscraper in the City of London, with 610,000 sq ft of prime office space set to be made available.
Editor’s notes: The development became known as the TELUS Garden mixed-use scheme and was completed in September 2015.
TELUS’ headquarters comprises 9 floors in the 24-storey office tower within the one million-square-foot scheme that occupies a downtown city block.
The scheme created by TELUS and Westbank also includes a 53-storey residential tower at 510 West Georgia Street.
In May 2026, TELUS announced it would be spending $1 billion on new AI data centres in British Columbia, including two new facilities in Vancouver’s downtown and Mount Pleasant neighbourhoods.
The company advised that the heat generated from the data centres would be repurposed to help warm more than 150,000 homes in the Lower Mainland.