When a local church was rumored to be for sale and we conducted a standard development review of the property and we discovered there was an assembly opportunity: the adjacent property was a funeral home owned by one of the largest operators in the country, and when the two properties were combined the site was large enough to build a 100,000 square foot GFA building.
It was difficult to break through layers of management and bureaucracy at both the sellers companies but we were able to approach both owners with professionalism and we were well received.
We used all available resources to deal with the multinational corporation who owned and operated over 1,500 facilities; in the end, we had to compete against other Toronto developers vying for the same property. We leaned on our in-house planning capabilities and issued a high-level report that refuted inaccurate internal claims that our site was inferior to another property that was under consideration for disposition (they were mutually exclusive).
Not surprisingly, that wasn't the only challenge we had to overcome. In the middle of due diligence, the city decided the building in this picture should be designated historic, potentially killing the deal. It seemed somewhat unreasonable for the city to designate a Brutalist brick design as historic, and so we had to go about the arduous process of convincing the planning department to reverse their course.
The end result of a 12 month negotiation between multiple parties was a deal being completed for both properties, allowing each to benefit from the critical mass resulting from a multi-property assembly, maximizing the amount each owner was able to sell for. The developer client was satisfied in due diligence and went on to waive their condition, close the deal and they are currently awaiting final approval from the City before they begin construction.