Behind the Deal: Full House at 100 Ironside Drive

There were doubters. Oh, there were doubters. The GTA hadn't seen many big industrial deals, and some wondered if 100 Ironside Dr—the largest spec build in a decade—would fill. Well, it's now fully leased, and broker Mark Sevenpifer gave us the details.

Here's Mark on site at 100 Ironside last week with fellow Avison Young listing agent Sally Fitzpatrick and Melissa Chu from Blackwood Partners, which manages the property on behalf of AIMCo. Mark, who's been working on the space for a while (“we had a lot of balls in the air but nothing was landing”), first put a deal together with lead tenant Exel, logistics provider for Keurig Canada. Exel was initially looking for 365k SF but opted to increase its footprint to 430k SF during the bidding process; it was easily accommodated within 100 Ironside's 728k SF on 32 acres.

Exel (repped by Colliers) had “extremely tight time frames” Mark points out. “They needed their operation to be fully completed and running by May.” The remaining unit at 100 Ironside was just leased to Remco, the third party logistics provider for fashion retailer H&M. (Remco was repped by JLL.) 100 Ironside is the largest LEED-certified industrial building in the GTA, something Mark says resonated with H&M. And while some questioned the logic of building a spec LEED industrial building, he says H&M "wasn’t going to consider something that wasn't (LEED).”

Completed in 2013, 100 Ironside has 32-foot clear ceiling heights, 104 dock level doors, and 193 trailer parking positions. The deals stand out in a GTA industrial market that hasn’t seen many big transactions (save for Ikea taking 400k SF at 3275 Argentia Rd in Mississauga, and FedEx signing a 15-year lease at a new distribution centre in Vaughan). “It just hasn't been as robust as we’ve seen in the past,” Mark says. “So we were pretty stoked we got this massive facility leased up in its entirety. It’s nothing to shrug off.”