Ottawa’s e-commerce giant is expanding its space in Toronto with a sizeable lease at a new office tower set to come online in 2022.
Shopify will take up to 433,752 square feet at the Well Tower, a mixed-use development on Spadina Avenue in Toronto. The firm will hold the lease for 15 years starting in 2022, shortly after the project is slated for completion.
Real estate investment trusts RioCan and Allied, joint developers of the Well’s commercial space, made the announcement Tuesday morning.
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When finished, the development will have 1,800 residential units, roughly one million square feet of office space and 450,000 square feet assigned for retail use. Allied and RioCan say 71 per cent of the office component is now leased to three office tenants, with Shopify holding the largest chunk.
Shopify declined to comment on an expected employee capacity at the Well Tower space.
The Ottawa firm is also the anchor tenant at the two REITs’ other joint project in Toronto, the King-Portland Centre. Shopify is currently doing pre-move fit-ups on the 158,520-square-foot space, which will have room for roughly 1,100 employees when finished in 2019.
Shopify currently has a headcount of 400 spread across its Toronto offices on Spadina and Wellington Street. Its office at 420 Wellington St. was established as a temporary stopgap measure to accommodate the firm’s growing workforce while it awaits completion on the King-Portland Centre space.
Closer to home, the company announced last year that it would add 2,500 more employees in Ottawa with a 10-year, 325,000-square-foot lease at 234 Laurier Ave. Later that year, Shopify announced a new Waterloo office with room for 500 workers.
