General

CBC renting out space at Toronto headquarters

Faced with recent budget cuts and looking for new sources of revenue wherever possible, the CBC looking to rent out half a million square feet of commercial real estate at its downtown Toronto headquarters.

After years of searching for tenants in the public sector to fill space at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre, built in 1992,  the CBC has finally applied to the City of Toronto for a rezoning permit to allow for the renting of the space to private commercial tenants.

From The Globe and Mail:

CBC’s building has about 1.5 million square feet of leasable space, meaning it’s sitting one-third empty. It was full when it opened, but a round of budget cuts in the mid-1990s saw scores of employees leave and parts of the building which were used to store sets and costumes were emptied as those services were outsourced.

And while there is a lot of space, it is spread throughout the building in small chunks. The CBC will need to move its people around so it can offer potential tenants larger spaces – an expensive and disruptive proposition.

The broadcaster has sat idle while the market boomed all around it. About 4.5 million square feet of new space has been built in Toronto’s downtown since the end of the recession, and virtually all of it has been snapped up by tenants looking for new space.

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