Crestpoint Real Estate Investments Ltd. has revamped its office building at 121 King St. W. in downtown Toronto and renamed it Roserock Place in an effort to give it more of an identity.
The 40-year-old, 25-storey, 540,000-square-foot building was acquired by Crestpoint and an institutional partner for just under $380 million in 2022, Crestpoint executive vice-president and head of asset management Max Rosenfeld told RENX.
Rosenfeld said his company loved the location at King and York streets and that the building is connected to the city’s underground PATH system. It had also recently undergone some major infrastructure improvements, including the replacement of windows and boilers, and modernizing the elevators.
The tower had LEED EB Gold, BOMA BEST Gold, WiredScore Platinum, Fitwel Viral Response and Rick Hansen Foundation accessibility certifications.
“Our renovation to the lobby and the deconstructed granite wall, which is really an art piece in the lobby, was designed around giving it an identity,” Rosenfeld said. “Then we leveraged that into the brand Roserock Place and the ethos around that, which is creating community and connectivity between people in the building and moving through the building.”
Building additions and improvements
Roserock Place is the result of a collaborative effort between Crestpoint, property manager JLL, B+H Architects, custom architectural fabrication company Eventscape, POI Business Interiors and the Whitman Emorson design studio.
Among the new features of Roserock Place, which Rosenfeld said cost millions of dollars to implement, are:
- a 22nd-floor tenant lounge and social club with a terrace to provide outdoor access, as well as a sports simulator, a library, focus rooms and a full-service bar, which also provides opportunities to create events and pop-ups;
- a conference centre with multiformat meeting rooms and two combinable 30-person rooms;
- five shower rooms and a bicycle storage area;
- a rooftop garden and outdoor patio with drought-resistant plants and native vegetation;
- a concierge service;
- a custom Roserock Place app that enhances the tenant experience by serving as a hub for team initiatives, property experiences and feedback to facilitate communication between tenants and management;
- and monthly activations focusing on health, wellness and cultural education programs.
“Function is really important, but feel is often overlooked,” Rosenfeld noted. “We have created a space that creates a good feeling. We want people to feel good when they step in our building and we want their last interaction to be a good one as well.”
Roserock Place is also targeting a 10 per cent reduction in energy use through the Eco-Tracker online utility monitoring system, and it has robust waste management and recycling programs.
Occupancy at Roserock Place
Roserock Place has a diverse group of tenants that includes insurance, public relations, real estate and technology companies, federal government agencies and others.
Roserock Place was 82 per cent occupied when it was acquired two years ago and that number sits at 73 per cent today. A tenant occupying 120,000 square feet was expected to leave when the building was purchased, and did subsequently move.
“To date, we’ve done about 76,000 square feet of new leasing activity and just under 100,000 square feet of renewals,” said Rosenfeld, who anticipates the improvements made at Roserock Place will increase occupancy. “It’s going to take some time, as the the office market is still a bit challenged.”
Touring activity by prospective tenants has recently increased by 3.5 times, according to Rosenfeld.
Each Crestpoint office asset is viewed individually and no make-overs similar to those at Roserock Place are planned for any if its other properties. Smaller-scale renovations are taking place, however.
“We’re doing a full window reglazing replacement in a brick-and-beam property in downtown Montreal, lobby improvements in another building in Montreal, and we’re exploring some initiatives at one of our downtown properties in Vancouver,” Rosenfeld said.
Crestpoint’s office portfolio
Crestpoint has 20 office assets in its portfolio, which has more than $10.5 billion of office, industrial, retail and multifamily assets under management.
“We’ve spent a lot of time looking at our portfolio and examining what active steps we could take to improve it, and also looking at office assets that maybe didn’t fit with our portfolio any longer,” Rosenfeld explained. “So we’ve had a few dispositions, though nothing of any real significance.
“We’ve culled the portfolio and we really like the 20 assets, so we don’t have any plans for dispositions in the immediate term beyond what we’ve already done.
“We’d like to see the occupancy increase to above 90 per cent, but the rates are generally holding, the income’s pretty steady on those assets and we’re doing okay relative to what we’re seeing in the market because of the active asset management and solid plans to change perception of the buildings and increase occupancy.”
Crestpoint continues to monitor the office market but has no imminent plans to make any acquisitions, either.
“We feel fundamentally that office is a really important part of the ecosystem,” Rosenfeld said. “We think there will be a recovery from this cycle and we will want to take advantage of that, but we haven’t seen anything overly compelling yet.”