Avison Young has signed a tenant for 470,000 square feet of Pure Industrial’s 1.21-million-square-foot Lakeridge Logistics Centre at 537 Kingston Rd. E. in Ajax, just east of Toronto.

The first space leased in the newly constructed class-A, zero carbon design-certified facility has been taken by an unnamed European-headquartered, multinational third-party logistics company dealing with consumer goods. The five-year deal was signed in the last week of December.

“We started the process in May with very preliminary negotiations and then, all of a sudden in November, they said: ‘We're ready to go, we’re back at the table and we need to be in as fast as possible because we need to start this lease,’” Pure senior vice-president of leasing Jonathan Rovira told RENX in an interview which also involved Avison Young sales representative and principal Ben Sykes.

The new tenant’s portion of the 40-foot clear height building includes 76 truck-level doors, two drive-in doors, 130 trailer parking stalls and 206 car parking stalls.

The tenant is in the building and work is being done on fixturing so it can be operational by May 1.

Remaining available space at Lakeridge

The remaining 740,000 square feet at Lakeridge Logistics Centre offers 131 truck-level doors, two drive-in doors, 178 trailer parking stalls, 413 car parking stalls and 38 electric vehicle parking stalls.

Space in the building has the flexibility to be demised to accommodate a range of logistics and distribution requirements for tenants that don’t want all of it. It’s ready for immediate fixturing and office areas can be built to suit. 

Rovira said there are two prospects considering leasing the space in the building, which is visible from and a minute’s drive from Highway 401 and surrounded by retail and food locations.

Other Pure availabilities

Pure has also been steadily leasing available space in some of its other properties.

A 10-year lease with a third-party logistics group commenced at 10 Whybank Dr. in Brampton, Ont. late last year. The building offers 167,909 square feet of space, 36-foot clear heights and 27 truck-level doors and two drive-in doors.

About half of a neighbouring 458,496-square-foot, 40-foot clear height building at 20 Whybank Dr. has been leased for 10 years by Metro Supply Chain. It offers 58 truck-level doors, four drive-in doors and 48 trailer parking spaces.

Pure also has three design-build opportunities in Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe region totalling approximately 1.6 million square feet.

It can construct two buildings with a combined 871,006 square feet at Upper James Landing at 2876 Upper James St. adjacent to John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport, Canada’s busiest overnight express cargo airport.

The two buildings can go up to a 40-foot clear height and together can offer approximately 144 truck-level doors, 127 trailer parking stalls and 260 car parking stalls.

Pure and Hopewell Development have a 20-acre site called New Toronto Business Park at 260 Eighth St., just west of Islington Avenue, in Etobicoke. They’re proposing the development of two 36-foot clear height buildings totalling up to 466,307 square feet with a combined 71 truck-level doors, four drive-in doors, 46 trailer parking stalls and 263 car parking stalls.

There’s also an option to build one larger facility on the site, Rovira added.

There’s also a 240,756-square-foot design-build opportunity at 2 Bramkay St., near Torbram Road and Queen Street East, in Brampton. The proposed 40-foot clear height building would offer 36 truck-level doors, one drive-in door and 110 car parking stalls.

While Pure isn’t actively marketing any sites, Rovira said there’s always a right price to sell at. It has sold a few individual non-core buildings in one-off deals where tenants wanted to become owners.

Rovira stressed that Pure’s primary goal is to keep growing its portfolio of more than 370 properties totalling 42 million square feet across Canada.

Industrial rents

“Rents for new product are still in the upper teens, though obviously there's some geographic nuancing to whether it's east or west or north,” Sykes explained. “B product is off a little bit relative to that high that we saw in 2023 and third-generation older assets are where we're starting to see some softening in rents.”

Toronto-headquartered Pure classifies industrial space under 10,000 square feet as small bay, from 10,000 to 75,000 as mid-bay and larger as large bay. 

“Small and mid-bay have remained relatively strong throughout 2025 and 2026 in a lot of our properties, and the reason is most of our properties are located in infill locations within close proximity to end-users and labour, and usually serviced well by transit,” Rovira said.

Rovira added that demand for large bay product was sluggish through the first three quarters of 2025 due to uncertainty about United States-imposed tariffs and the inability for a lot of users to obtain approvals to move forward with relocations or long-term renewals.  

Touring activity picked up in Q4 and momentum has continued. Rovira is hopeful large bay rents will stabilize and maybe start to rise in some locations late in 2026.

Industrial subletting has been gradually declining from a peak in late 2024, according to Sykes.

GTA’s industrial pipeline

A record number of Greater Toronto Area (GTA) industrial deliveries, totalling almost 21 million square feet, arrived in 2024 in reaction to the rent spikes of the previous two years. That was well above historical averages of between 10 and 12 million.

Sykes anticipates steady absorption of available industrial space in the GTA, where 13 projects with 18 buildings totalling 6.35 million square feet are forecast to be completed this year. The 2027 GTA completion pipeline has 14 projects with 21 buildings totalling 8.96 million square feet.

“There are a number of other sites that are site plan-approved that are ready to go, where owners are either waiting for rents to stabilize or, in some cases, they're trying to deal with some existing pipeline,” Sykes said.