The Original Creative Office
If you want to talk creative office, look no further than the Toronto Carpet Factory in Liberty Village, the flagship of York Heritage Properties. (Though you have to go elsewhere for quality carpets at affordable prices.) York partner Robert Eisenberg is one of the panelists at Bisnow’s Creative Office Summit this Tuesday at the Shangri-La Hotel (register), and we're excited to have him since Bob’s company was in this domain before it became a trend in the office market: open, collaborative, brick-and-beam, technology-driven, and a home to a creative, entrepreneurial culture. “We have been retrofitting properties and acquiring development sites in Liberty Village for 20 years,” Bob tells us.
Above, the Carpet Factory. The Liberty Village portfolio includes direct ownership or partnership interests and/or management responsibility for more than 800k SF of buildings and 235k SF of development land. “Let the tenants dictate what the area becomes, not us,” Bob's York business partner Michael Cruickshank told him once. “It’s not just about brick-and-beam; it’s about an area allowing companies to create environments that reflect their corporate cultures.” There's room for tremendous creativity, in terms of your own space, he says. “And Liberty Village is one of the most wired communities in all of North America.”
But it’s Bob’s outside interests that tell another story. There’s development and growth, but there’s also responsible development and growth. (With great land development comes great responsibility... that's a line from Spider Man.) Bob is director of Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition, Environmental Defence and is president of Municipal Campaign Fairness Ontario. The mission statement of these organizations encourages a more rational, even-handed approach to the challenges of accommodating population growth in Ontario.
Snapped is Lake Simcoe. The mindless failure to distinguish between optimum growth and maximum growth, intelligently planned growth, and mindless sprawl threatens Southern Ontario’s environmental heritage,” he says. At our event, Bob joins Konrad Group co-founder Geordie Konrad, Ashlar Urban Realty partner Michael Scace, IQ Office co-founder Kane Wilmott, Colliers executive managing director John Arnoldi, BrightLane president George Horhota, Hullmark Development VP Aly Damji, Google Canada facilities manager Andrea Janus, Allied Properties EVP Tom Burns, Gillam Group prez Marcus Gillam, and Oxford Properties VP John Peets, with expert moderation from Avison Young SVP Rodney McDonald. Sign up today!
