Ottawa’s office space is becoming a more valuable and diverse resource for landlords and investors alike, with the rise of integrated specialized amenities and services.
“If you went back to the 1970s or ’80s in Ottawa, concierge service in its most basic form was someone pushing around a sandwich cart in a law office,” CBRE vice president and managing director (Ottawa) Shawn Hamilton said.
“But we’re now starting to see corporations and employees demand the full concierge experience,” Hamilton told the Ottawa Business Journal.
For instance, Constitution Square is among the buildings at the forefront of this experiment. Among the most popular services seeing their presence increase in Ottawa are parcel storage, pet care, and automotive maintenance.
Constitution Square boasts of a childcare services centre and a fitness studio, which tenant services coordinator Nancy Savard cited as the features that set the building apart from the more traditional office complexes.
“As tenants move over the course of their business, they realize what can be offered as part of their tenancy, hence, why the demand for more amenities is always in the forefront of any negotiation,” Savard stated.
She added that other services available are seasonal offerings like gift-wrapping service centres.
Sustained demand for office space in the leading markets of Toronto and Vancouver can lead to Canada’s other cities becoming more feasible options, according to a new study by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).
“These cities [are] more affordable, [and] in some cases you can make an argument that there is better quality of life,” CompTIA senior vice-president of research and market intelligence Tim Herbert told Postmedia in an interview.
Ephraim is currently a journalist at Mortgage Broker News, Real Estate Professional and Canadian Real Estate Wealth.
Ephraim is a highly accomplished news reporter whose work has been published across North America and the Asia Pacific region. Before joining Key Media, Ephraim spent eight years working as a journalist with Reuters TV. His areas of expertise include real estate, mortgage, and finance.
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