TCC Canada has signed a 10-year lease that will see it occupy about 62,000 square feet on the first five floors at 66 Slater St. starting Dec. 1, with an option to take over the sixth floor.
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The Ottawa-based co-working company that occupies part of Shopify’s former headquarters on Elgin Street is poised to more than double its downtown footprint with a deal to take over up to 75,000 square feet of real estate on Slater Street now occupied by flexible workspace giant Spaces.
TCC Canada has signed a 10-year lease that will see it occupy about 62,000 square feet on the first five floors at 66 Slater St. starting Dec. 1, with an option to take over the sixth floor.
The new space will be TCC’s second location in downtown Ottawa. The firm made headlines in 2021 when it subleased several floors in nearby Performance Court at 150 Elgin St. from Shopify after the e-commerce firm vacated the downtown office tower following its shift to a remote-first work model during the pandemic.
The addition of Slater Street boosts TCC’s total downtown footprint to 110,000 square feet. It continues a years-long expansion spree for the Ottawa company, which recently added a 25,000-square-foot location at 1900 City Park Dr. in Gloucester to its portfolio and is set to take on an additional 15,000 square feet of space on Innovation Drive in Kanata, where it already operates a 30,000-square-foot co-working facility that opened in 2022.
When its 15,000-square-foot location on Fitzgerald Road in Bells Corners is factored in, TCC will soon manage more than 200,000 square feet of co-working space in Ottawa.
The company, which also operates three locations in Vancouver covering nearly 80,000 square feet as well as a 30,000-square-foot facility in downtown Toronto, says the Slater Street deal will make it the largest Canadian-owned co-working provider with a total portfolio in excess of 300,000 square feet.
“We’re starting to spread out a little bit, which is fun,” said TCC president Sean Cochrane.
Cochrane says occupancy rates at TCC’s sites – which feature a mix of individual office space, collaboration and event space and lounges – typically sit around 95 per cent.
The rate is as high as 97 per cent in Kanata North, where “demand’s been the highest of any of our locations in Canada,” he explained. “We’ve had wait lists of people.”
While many employers turned their backs on the office during the pandemic amid the rush to remote work – a sentiment captured by Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke in his much-talked-about 2020 tweet “office centricity is over” – Cochrane says the pendulum is now swinging the other way, and his company is reaping the rewards.
He says business is booming at most of TCC’s locations, especially in the suburbs, as more and more tech companies, professional services firms and other users seek office space that’s close to where their employees live but don’t want to get tied down to long-term leases on chunks of real estate they might never fully use.
“Right now, everybody is starting to really get serious about getting back into the office again,” Cochrane said.
Still, like many commercial real estate operators, TCC has found it tougher to fill office space downtown, where foot traffic has not recovered from the pandemic. Occupancy at the Elgin Street location has averaged about 75 per cent, well below the company’s other Ottawa properties.
But Cochrane says he’s starting to see signs of life in what’s been a moribund office leasing environment in the city’s core.
“We’ve seen a lot more action downtown, and people are starting to really think a little bit more seriously about it – especially some of the technology groups that, when the pandemic hit, really seemed to pull out of downtown,” he said. “Now we’re starting to see it pick up again, which is really nice.”
