From Grungy Hostel to Hot King West Tech Hub
Konrad Group's taken over the former backpackers hostel at King and Spadina (460 King St W) that owner Allied Properties REIT has transformed into a brick-and-beam tech hub. Geordie Konrad took Bisnow on a tour.
We snapped Geordie in Quantum Coffee, which occupies the King-facing front of the heritage building. “It’s coffee culture meets tech,” he tells us, noting Konrad Group—a digital tech services firm he launched seven years ago with his brother and a pal at University of Toronto, and now employs 150—is using Quantum, which it helped launch, as a testing ground for a new-to-Toronto robotic pour-over coffee machine, made by a Brooklyn-based startup. “This is a retail-of-the-future type environment,” says Geordie. “For us, it's about building proof of concept in our own front yard (Quantum also takes online orders for pick-up).
Konrad Group's HQ is across the road at 445 King St W, another Allied property. Last year the firm—with offices in Vancouver, Chicago and New York—acquired Brain Station, a digital tech education business that's had “massive growth," says Geordie. “We needed a new home to do events, workshops and seminars.” When Allied acquired the dilapidated hostel in 2014 and set about revamping the historic structure, his team spotted a golden opportunity. “It was very important to get a lease for the entire building,” he explains. “We wanted to build it out as one integrated concept, with different zones and programming.”
The restored 20k SF building is occupied by Brain Station classrooms, collaborative work zones, social spaces and lounges (seen above in what used to be a closed-off hostel corridor). There's also a 3,500 SF main floor public space behind Quantum Coffee that opens onto a patio. “It’s one of the best spots in the city to take a meeting, mingle, or just work on a laptop,” says Geordie, noting the entire 460 King tech hub is powered by four 4 GB up/down fiber-optic Internet lines. “We’ve taken the best of the heritage world and merged it with the best of the new world.”
A new glass stairwell at 460 King. Konrad Group and Allied were on the same page regarding how the circa 1870 building should be repurposed. “They’ve been spectacular to work with,” says Geordie. Dealing with heritage is never easy (“every wall you open up you find something new”), but he stresses his firm’s top priority was to embrace the building’s historical architecture, then "figure out how to build new in a way that will complement it.” Fortunately, adaptive reuse of old brick-and-beam beauties is Allied’s stock in trade. “We share a mutual ambition to give this corner and this building a new lease on life and make it awesome again.”
