Regional Group has made its biggest single-building acquisition, a 477,448-square-foot class-A office structure at 150 Slater St., in its hometown of Ottawa.

The 19-storey building in the city’s central business district was acquired from Manulife Investment Management for an undisclosed price in a deal brokered by CBRE’s national investment team.

The 16-year-old building’s office space is 100 per cent occupied by Export Development Canada, which uses it as its global headquarters, in a lease with significant remaining term.

“As others may have shied away from the office sector, we've been running towards it,” Regional Group president and chief executive officer Sender Gordon told RENX in an interview that also included vice-president of acquisitions Sachin Anand.

“We're looking for class-A office buildings that will remain office buildings for long into the future, with strong tenancies that are committed to the building,” Gordon said.

What 150 Slater St. offers

The building was constructed to LEED Gold standards and offers abundant natural light, flexible layouts, a rooftop lounge, a private fitness facility, 215 underground parking spaces and direct access to Ottawa’s light rail transit system.

The building also includes about 8,000 square feet of fully leased retail space at grade. Tenants include Toro Eats & Treats and Laurier Computers.

“We’ve never been downtown but this transaction is part of our downtown strategy in terms of buying a high-quality asset with large scale where we could put tenants who want to be downtown and be a Regional Group tenant,” Anand said. 

“It's been years in planning and obviously took a little bit of tiptoeing and dancing on how to pull it off . . . But we firmly and strongly believe in the quality of this asset and the reputation of the previous owner so we can carry forward. 

“We have some time on the lease to figure it out and don’t have to make immediate decisions, and we believe it will be the right place at the right time. Some of the competition has been sidelined that would have normally been competitors for us and might have outbid us in the process.”

Regional Group will be the property manager

Regional Group will be the property manager for 150 Slater St. and there are no major capital expenditures planned for it.

“The building was institutionally owned and managed since its humble beginnings and it has been very well cared for,” Gordon said. 

“This is truly one of the best office buildings in the city. It's one of the newest office buildings in the city and it's going to remain an office building for years to come.”

Interest in more National Capital Region office acquisitions

Regional Group has more than 65 years of experience in Ottawa real estate. The transaction for 150 Slater St. is its third major class-A office complex acquisition in the past four years.

The company acquired the three-building, 224,151-square-foot Qualicum Centre office campus at 2932-2936 Baseline Rd. in the former city of Nepean from Manulife Investment Management in November 2022. About one-third of the eight-acre property is comprised of commercially zoned land that’s occupied by a surface parking lot, but it could be developed in the future.

Regional Group purchased the 183,000-square-foot Churchill Office Park at 1600 Carling Ave., just west of Ottawa’s downtown core, from Manulife Investment Management in April 2024. The property comprises three distinctive octagonal interlinked buildings and sits on a 4.3-acre plot of land.

While Gordon said there’s nothing in Regional Group’s acquisition pipeline that he can talk about at this point, the company is still in the market for more.

“We believe we're going to see changes in our city. Ottawa has been slow to return to office, but we think this is a time when office is at its greatest opportunity to purchase.”

Future office development

Regional Group is a locally owned and vertically integrated real estate firm that oversees more than four million square feet of commercial and residential space and manages a $5-billion development pipeline across Canada’s National Capital Region.

Though nothing is anticipated for a few years due to economics and the state of the current market, more office development is in the company’s future.

“Now's the time to plan and dream, but there will be a time to pull the trigger,” Gordon said.

“With 150 Slater, there's no additional land, but if you take a look at some of the other acquisitions we've made over the last number of years, there is land available and we have plans to construct more office when the demand is definitely there to support it.”