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Place de Ville complex in downtown Ottawa (Courtesy Crown Realty)
Crown Realty Partners, on behalf of Vestcor Inc., has acquired Ottawa’s Place de Ville in a 50-50 partnership with Crestpoint Real Estate Management Ltd. The office complex spans two city blocks in downtown Ottawa.
Crown will also act as a property manager on behalf of the building’s co-owners.
At $350 million, according to a report in the Ottawa Business Journal, this deal is the second-largest commercial real estate transaction in the city’s history. The largest was the 2017 sale of Constitution Square for $480 million.
Place de Ville, an office complex spanning two city blocks including 320 Queen St., 112 Kent St., 300 and 330 Sparks St. was previously owned by the Alberta Investment Management Corp., Brookfield Properties and CPP Investments.
Ottawa’s tallest office building
It is Ottawa’s tallest office building at 29 storeys with 1.2 million square feet of space and over 7,000 federal employees occupy around 90 per cent of the property.
It is also connected to an underground concourse which has undergone a $5-million renovation, with access to shopping, dining, hotels and transit. The complex carries an Energy Star Score of 85 and has earned a BOMA 360 Performance Building designation in 2020.
Scott Watson, Crown’s partner of acquisitions and leasing said in a statement about the purchase, “We see an amazing future in this market with access to a highly diverse labour market including one of the highest technology-focused talent pools in North America, amazing cultural offering, growing transit and access to affordable living. These are all keys to successful office investments.”
About the purchasers
Founded in 2001, Crown is an integrated commercial real estate investment and management firm with over three billion in assets under management.
Fredericton-based Vestcor was formed in 2016 to provide investment management, pension and employee benefits administration services. It is jointly owned by the province’s public service and teacher’s pension plans.
Crestpoint manages approximately $5.8 billion of commercial real estate investments on behalf of institutional clients as well as high net worth clients of the Connor, Clark and Lunn Financial Group, itself one of Canada’s largest privately owned asset management firms dating back to 1982.
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