Building June July 2011

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Volume 61 Number 3

june/july 2011

Editor

Peter Sobchak Legal Editor

Jeffrey W. Lem Contributors

Stephen Carpenter, Steve Kemp, David Lasker, Alam Pirani, David G. Reiner, Sarah Simmons.

Circulation Manager

Beata Olechnowicz Tel: (416) 442-5600 ext 3543 Reader Services

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Features 10. Beware the Voluntary Disclosure Statement / Vendors disclose at their own risk, and that of their real estate agent. Recovery for victimized purchasers is limited to no more than the diminution of value…twice. By Jeffrey W. Lem and David G. Reiner 12. PR 101, pt. 2: What Do Editors Want? / By David Lasker 13. Getting Noticed / Transaction activity in the Canadian hotel investment sector has perked up since the cyclical lows of 2009, including an increase in foreign investors attracted to our enviable economic profile. By Alam Pirani

17. The Sweet Spot / Two talented real estate companies have repeatedly joined forces

and left a thoughtful, sustainable mark on the Ontario residential landscape. By Peter Sobchak

20. Rewarding Synergies / How blending affordable housing with sustainable design and corporate sponsorship led to a LEED Platinum certification. By Steve Kemp 22. A Hot Issue / A massive fire on the construction site of a new housing project has ignited a fierce debate about the safety of the National Building Code allowing wood frame buildings over four storeys. By Peter Sobchak 24. The Head Turner / Sigmund Soudack’s ‘simple, ingenious and magical’ engineering solution gets Mississauga’s twisting ‘Marilyn Monroe’ condo towers off the ground. By David Lasker

26. Digging Deep / One new condo project is making significant strides to green the high-rise building industry in a Toronto suburb not normally considered green.

27. They’re Watching / Along with an increase in interest in the Ontario FIT programme comes an increase in the provincial government’s attention to ensuring it creates local jobs. By Sarah Simmons

Departments 4 Editor’s Notes

6 Upfront

29 Infosource

30 Viewpoint

Cover: The Hilton Vancouver Metrotown has been sold twice, both times to Korean companies, in 2007 and then again in 2010. Image © 2011 Hilton Hotels & Resorts Above images courtesy of: Colliers Hotels, FRAM Building Group, Martinway Contracting, Sigmund Soudack & Associates Inc.

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editor’s notes

Richer and Greener As the old saying goes, you can’t please everyone all of the time.

And as far as the Federal election results go, I’m not sure how anyone can be pleased. The political landscape in our country changed dramatically, with an astonishing reversal of fortunes for both the Liberals and the NDP, while Conservatives made significant inroads into ridings they were never able to penetrate before, particularly in major urban centres such as Toronto.

In many respects, I am nervous. But on at least one small level, it appears something good is about to come of it. In the Budget announcement, the Federal government has committed $400 million for 2011-2012 to extend the ecoENERGY Retrofit Homes program for one year. The program was first announced in 2007 and provided homeowners with incentives to have their homes evaluated for energy efficiency, and then perform upgrades to improve their efficiency and their rating.

The program was set to expire on March 31, and when the Federal government made no indication that they were at all interested in continuing the successful program, it appeared a great idea was about to meet a premature death.

According to the Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance (CEEA), a broad-based, not-for-profit organization, to date the program has saved Canadians 11.22 Pj of energy, which is equivalent to 3,116,691,600 kWh. According to a March 2009 CEEA study of the weighted average cost of electricity in Canada, 1 kWh is valued at $0.1090764. CEEA estimates energy efficiency renovations have saved Canadians a total of $339,950,019 in electricity each year.

We need a bold commitment to bring our inefficient housing stock into the 21st century, and the ecoENERGY Retrofit Homes program was a wonderful program that did exactly what it was supposed to do and more. It helped homeowners offset the costs of renovations to make their homes more energy efficient, and was one of the government’s most impactful programs to deal with climate change. Homeowners were rewarded for making the right decisions when it came to their home’s energy useage, and hundreds of green jobs were created.

“Energy efficiency is the most effective way to create green jobs and business opportunities. Increasing energy productivity

should be the cornerstone of Ontario’s green economy,” said Clifford Maynes, executive director of Green Communities Canada, a national association of non-profit organizations founded in 1995. “Residential energy efficiency saves more than it costs. It makes us richer and greener!”

This is why I agree with the Save ecoENERGY Coalition, a national group of energy saving organizations, who say that a one-year timeline is not enough to help the energy savings industry transition to self-sustainability. “Home retrofit programs are great for the economy because they help families, businesses and trades people across the country,” says Jeff Murdock, vice president of Building Insight Technologies, a Save ecoENERGY Coalition supporter. “But the on-again, off-again nature of these programs creates unpredictable conditions that make it difficult for businesses to develop a long-term approach.”

The Save ecoENERGY Coalition has developed a three-step plan to help the energy savings industry achieve long-term selfsustainability. It includes a four-year commitment to ecoENERGY, a new national EnerGuide rating system and home energy rating at time-of-sale. This, they say, would give the industry the necessary time to achieve self-sustainability.

“It should be easy for governments to make a fouryear commitment to this program. The numbers show that ecoENERGY creates jobs, reduces the deficit, and helps the environment, all at the same time,” says Murdock. “With ecoENERGY, families spend $10 for every $1 they receive in government incentives. This generates $2 in tax revenue for every $1 paid in homeowner grants.” Yet according to Green Communities Canada, to date, less than 10 per cent of Canadian housing has benefited from the EnerGuide and ecoENERGY incentive programs.

Bringing the program back, at least for one year, is important, but we need a comprehensive home energy strategy that could include ambitious targets, smart incentives, home energy labelling, loans, standards and community-wide retrofit programs – anything and everything it takes to drag our housing stock into the 21st century. B

Peter Sobchak

Building welcomes your opinions.

E-mail your comments to editor@building.ca

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upfront

49 per cent of construction and property companies looking to hire in 2011

TORONTO — 49 per cent of construction and property companies will add to their head count in Canada this year, according to a recent survey conducted by Hays Specialist Recruitment. Across the industry, demand for roles ranging from site-based employees to Senior V.P. will increase and salaries will increase on average between three to six per cent.

Results of the survey, which were published in the 2011 Hays Compensation, Benefits, Recruitment and Retention guide, are based on information provided by over 900 respondents and cover industry sectors including construction and property, civil engineering and architecture. The guide indicates continued confidence across the construction and property industry this year as 63 per cent of respondents saw business activity increase in the last 12 months, 67 per cent feel the economy will continue to improve in 2011 and close to 80 per cent of employers will offer individual performance related bonuses. The construction and property industry in Western Canada looks especially promising in 2011 as 58 per cent of companies will look to hire and 77 per cent of new positions will be for full time roles.

In skill short areas, Western-based companies will be more likely to recruit overseas candidates as 60 per cent of survey respondents would be willing to look outside of Canada to recruit for positions which prove challenging to fill with domestic candidates.

Throughout the country, Construction Project Managers, Civil and Structural Engineers, and Estimators with high-rise residential experience will continue to be challenging to find and will see the greatest increase in salaries and offered benefits. In Montréal, bilingual candidates with high-rise mixed-use experience are in especially high demand due to a dramatic increase in development in Montréal’s downtown core.

Canadian construction projects to more than double within four years

TORONTO — From 2010 to 2015, Canadian infrastructure will grow at over two and a half times the growth rate seen over the previous five years, a new PwC-sponsored report by Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford Economics found. By 2020, Canada is expected to be the fifth largest construction market behind India and Japan — a jump from its current position in seventh place.

Canada’s hosting of the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto carries a $2.4 billion price tag as new sports venues and other facilities have to be constructed. This includes a $1 billion athlete’s village, aquatics centre, indoor gymnasium and running track, and the Canadian Sport Institute complex. A new Airport Rail Link (ARL) — a three kilometre rail line between Union Station and Toronto Pearson International Airport — will be completed prior to the Games.

Over 80 per cent of Canadians live in urban areas with an expected average growth rate of about one per cent per annum over the next 10 years, placing more pressure on transportation that, in turn, is spurring an increase in transportation infrastructure projects that typically carry high costs. For instance, there are several transport projects that are either underway or planned in Toronto

and Ottawa: a $4.6 billion Light Rail Transit (LRT) in Toronto, the largest transit investment in Canada’s history, includes a 20 kilometre tunnel in mid-town Toronto, plus a 12 kilometre tunnel to the east; an extension of the Toronto subway to York Region, costing almost $2.7 billion, will link Toronto with York Region via an 8.6 kilometre extension and six new stations; a $2.1 billion Ottawa LRT project is the first phase of a larger LRT network the City of Ottawa plans to build. The first phase includes 13 new stations as well as a 3.2 kilometre tunnel in downtown Ottawa.

Many large hydro power projects are either currently in construction or planned, including the country’s largest — a $6.5 billion hydro complex in Havre-Saint-Pierre, Que., which is expected to be completed by 2020. Other notable projects include: a $5 billion hydro project in James Bay Territory, Quebec, is under construction and is a part of Hydro Quebec’s plans to increase hydro output by 15.8TW between 2006 and 2014; a $6.2 billion 2,250MW hydro complex in central Labrador is planned, funded

by Hydro Quebec. It will supply electricity to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

In Alberta, 20 potential new oil sands projects starting over the next five years will increase non-residential construction in Alberta by 21 per cent in 2011. Indeed, spending on capital construction and machinery and equipment in the province is projected to rise by 4.3 per cent this year, to $73.5 billion.

The story is no different over the longer term. Alberta’s Capital Plan calls for a $17.6 billion spend on infrastructure to support oil sands development over the next three years, while major industry players like Suncor will spend in excess of $15 billion within the next five years and Imperial Oil and CNRL will spend $8 billion and $4 billion respectively by 2012.

Atlantic construction leaders prepare for growth as population declines

OTTAWA — Atlantic Canada’s construction industry will see moderate to record growth over the next several years. The key focus will be on Newfoundland and Labrador where the dramatic ramping up of major industrial and utility/resource projects will challenge the construction industry’s ability to meet demand for non-residential trades and occupations. Limited population and labour force growth across the Atlantic region may complicate managing the peak labour requirements for these projects.

In New Brunswick construction employment reached a record high in 2010, up by 25 per cent compared to 2008. Going forward, however, employment is estimated to decline as current projects wind down. Nova Scotia’s construction industry will experience moderate growth across the scenario. Employment in non-residential construction hit a record high in 2010 and is estimated to remain at near current levels until 2013 before activity declines as major industrial and engineering projects end. For Prince Edward Island, current levels of construction activity are high by historical standards. Job gains are strongest in industrial and engineering projects, ramping up employment by as much as 30 per cent in some trades and occupations.

Those are among the highlights in the latest nine-year forecast of labour supply and demand released by the Construction Sector Council. Construction Looking Forward: An assessment of

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upfront construction labour markets from 2011 to 2019 for Atlantic Canada says meeting peak demand for major projects will require mobility across the region and likely recruiting from outside the local labour market. In addition, the long-term demographic trends point to the need for industry to retain focus on attracting new recruits even during periods of limited employment growth.

“These workforce fluctuations require considerable effort to manage because they are unfolding in a regional economy with an older age profile and declining population trends,” says Tim Flood, president, John Flood and Sons (1961) Ltd. Over the forecast scenario an estimated 17,000 workers are expected to retire, 26 per cent of the region’s current construction labour force. “In addition to sustaining training and recruitment initiatives — particularly campaigns to attract and retain local youth — there are several options for filling these gaps, including more women, Aboriginal people, and temporary or permanent immigration,” says Flood.

“The construction cycles in the four provinces may also allow provinces to take advantage of interprovincial mobility,” adds Dave Wade, executive director, Newfoundland & Labrador Building and Construction Trades Council. “Regional collaboration will be an important part of addressing labour requirements going forward.”

TELUS to build new Data Centre in Quebec

RIMOUSKI, QUE. — TELUS is planning to construct of a new $65 million Tier III Intelligent Internet Data Centre in Rimouski. This new facility, with an expected Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15, will be the first TELUS Internet Data Centre built to LEED Gold Standards, and will significantly enhance TELUS’ IT management services to businesses in Quebec, Canada and internationally.

The new flagship facility will be a cornerstone in TELUS’ strategic shift in support of next-generation cloud computing and unified communications solutions. With this investment, TELUS expects to further provide Quebec clients with world class IT facilities and managed services, allowing them to focus on their core business and boosting their competitiveness.

By choosing to build the facility in Rimouski, TELUS will benefit from Quebec’s hydroelectric power, and the city’s highly skilled and dynamic workforce. Rimouski’s moderate climate also contributes to lower energy requirements for the building’s cooling and heating systems.

For the construction of this new facility, TELUS selected U.K.-based Skanska, which has a global track record in the construction of data centres. The new data centre will have a modular design, enabling TELUS to rapidly expand capacity while using the most advanced and efficient technologies available, and is scheduled to open in 2012.

Algonquin College unveils designs for new waterfront campus

OTTAWA — Algonquin College has unveiled the design and winning proposal for its new waterfront campus that is pegged to drive the revival of Pembroke, Ont.’s historic downtown core and ensure access to post-secondary education in Renfrew County.

Among the many features of the new campus is Renaissance Hall, a focal point in the building that will include a student commons, cafeteria, and access to student services. The Kathleen and F. Allan Huckabone Library is a two-storey learning environment that will face the Ottawa River and will be showcased near the front entrance to the building.

The campus will also include 16 classrooms and nine labs including three nursing labs, a science lab, and an automotive shop, all built to meet the expectations of students in today’s technologically-driven learning environment.

Aligning with Algonquin College’s commitment to sustainability, the new Ottawa Valley Campus will be built to achieve LEED Gold certification. The building will capitalize on natural lighting, have visible demonstrations of sustainability including daily electronic monitoring of energy usage, and a rain-catching cistern that will be used to water plants on campus. Wood is prominent in the design of the new campus as the building materials were chosen to respect the rich history of the region’s forestry sector.

The team of Giffels Corporation and NORR Architects has been chosen to design and build the new campus, a $36-million project. NORR Architects is best known in Pembroke for its work in the renovation of the historic Renfrew County Courthouse. This design earned the company an Ontario Association of Architects’ 2009 People’s Choice Award.

New minimum green building requirements released for Toronto’s waterfront redevelopment

TORONTO — Waterfront Toronto has released updated Minimum Green Building Requirements that build on the organization’s original Mandatory Green Building requirements developed in 2006, and incorporate additional categories to reflect changes in the marketplace and to address local and regional priorities. The revisions also reflect the growing market acceptance of green building strategies, and were renamed “Minimum” to encourage design and development teams to innovate and go beyond the thresholds set within the requirements. building june/july 2011

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upfront A strategic tool for achieving sustainable development goals, the requirements guide Waterfront Toronto’s developer partners and increase the potential for the design and development of high performance buildings. Among the changes are new requirements for water conservation and an increase in the energy efficiency requirement for buildings, from better than code to 50 per cent efficiency.

Also, three per cent of a building’s total energy use will now need to be supplied by on-site renewable energy.

The new minimum requirements will ensure that waterfront buildings will be able to support electric vehicles. All parking in new buildings, both residential and commercial, must be built with the electric vehicle infrastructure roughed in. Plus two per cent of the parking spaces in residential buildings must be fully built with charging stations for electric vehicles.

The new requirements will apply to all future development projects. Developers of existing projects must follow the earlier Mandatory Green Building Requirements and can elect to incorporate the new requirements as part of their design as voluntary innovations.

Perkins+Will Canada launches as unified firm

TORONTO — The merger of Ottawa and Hamilton (Dundas)-based Vermeulen Hind Architects with Shore Tilbe Perkins+Will and Vancouver-based Busby Perkins+Will marks the official launch of a unified national practice called Perkins+Will Canada.

“The addition of Vermeulen Hind supports the Perkins+Will strategy to grow by targeted mergers, creating a larger pool of expertise and talent in key practices that complement our existing strengths,” said Peter Busby, managing director, Vancouver.

“The establishment of Perkins+Will Canada translates into greater access to the Canadian and international marketplace, while maintaining our commitment to the local communities where we operate.”

“Now is the right time to solidify the Perkins+Will brand in Canada,” said D’Arcy Arthurs, managing director, Ontario.

“Not only does the Vermeulen Hind merger expand our Ontario market with highly-regarded healthcare experience, something we’ve been anticipating for some time, but it gives us a strategic foundation to build a broader presence across the country and across specialties.”

Founded in 1992, Vermeulen Hind’s portfolio ranges from smaller, adaptive re-use and restoration health care projects to larger, multi-phase institutional transformations. Vermeulen Hind, along with Perkins+Will’s current Toronto office, will comprise the Ontario practice of Perkins+Will Canada.

Recent influx of American retailers opens floodgates for U.S. brands in Canadian market

VANCOUVER — The Canadian retail landscape is set to experience a dramatic change as American retailers set their sights on the lucrative Canadian market over the next five years, according to Colliers International’s 2011 Canadian Retail Report. The strength of the Canadian dollar coupled with an increase in retail spending per capita, which is now equal to the U.S., make Canada a valuable market for U.S. retailers as economic conditions continue to level off. Major brands rumoured or confirmed to enter the Canadian market include Target, Marshall’s, J.C. Penny, Nordstrom, J. Crew, Kohl’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Compared to U.S. markets, Canada provides a wealth of untapped potential. While Americans have access to over 23 square feet of shopping centre space per capita, Canadians have only 14 square feet per capita available. Larger municipalities with high growth rates, such as Surrey, B.C., Brampton, Ont. and Calgary are attractive markets for retailers and developers looking to build new retail in growing communities. These markets are especially attractive for destination retailers that need large trade area populations.

According to Colliers, owners of existing retail properties where foreign interests are actively being explored are in an excellent competitive position provided they maintain an attractive environment for new retail players. “To maximize these potential opportunities, landlords should review their existing tenant mix to optimize clustering of complementary uses and consider potential conflicts in customer profile between proposed and existing retail anchors and sub-anchors,” says Jim Smerdon, Director Retail and Strategic Planning with Colliers International. “Landlords may also want to consider modest but high impact property upgrades designed to meet the needs of new retailers.”

Colliers also predicts a major shift in market dynamics for

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upfront property developers, creating both challenges and opportunities. As Canadian markets increasingly become the target of foreign expansion efforts, developers will face new competition from U.S. developers but will also see opportunities for joint ventures with U.S. developer partners. One recent example of collaboration is the partnership announced by Canadian-based RioCan REIT and U.S.-based developer Tanger.

Reversal of vacancy trends in the Greater Ottawa office market taking shape

OTTAWA — In its Real Estate Market Study, Newmark Knight Frank Devencore reported that over the latter half of 2010 and into the first months of 2011, the complexion of the Greater Ottawa market began to change fairly dramatically.

The decision by Public Works to vacate one million square feet in the city’s core, combined with the 450,000 square feet of downtown space that Economic Development Canada will be leaving by year-end will likely cause vacancy rates to rise dramatically.

In the first quarter of this year, downtown Ottawa’s Class “A” office vacancy rate stood at 5.6 per cent, while the Class “B” rate was at 2.1 per cent. As recently as the end of 2008, combined Class “A” and Class “B” vacancy rates were as low as 1.6 per cent.

“By mid-2012 we may see vacancy rates in the eight per cent range,” said Denis Shank, vice-president and broker at Devencore Real Estate Services. “This increase will fundamentally shift the landlord-tenant dynamic downtown, providing tenants with considerably more leverage than they have had in many years. Further, asking rental rates may begin to soften.”

The Kanata market is also about to undergo a significant transformation. The 2008-2009 recession caused vacancy rates in the region to soar into the 20 per cent range, but the federal government’s recent purchase of the Nortel campus will change that by forcing some major tenant moves. These organizations will be seeking space in Kanata, which should give the real estate market a much needed shot in the arm, as these relocations should drive the absorption of much of the available Class “A” space in the area.

“The changes taking place in both the downtown and Kanata markets will not occur overnight, and will likely unfold over the next two to three years. But the corporate

real estate market is becoming more dynamic by the minute, so tenants are best advised to evaluate their space needs and priorities well in advance or any lease renewal or possible expansion or relocation,” said Jeffrey Shave, senior advisor at Devencore Real Estate Services.

Across the rest of the country, vacancy rates have continued to decline as the economy has strengthened. The overall vacancy rate in Class “A” and Class “B” buildings in Canada’s major cities fell from 7.1 per cent to 6.8 per cent over the last six months of 2010, even as the total inventory of Class “A” and Class “B” office space increased. Should the economic recovery continue on its current path, Newmark Knight Frank Devencore expects that office vacancy rates should continue to decline across most of the country in the months ahead, and rental rates in some cities will likely begin to rise.

RAIC unveils Canada’s official entry to the Venice Biennale in Architecture

OTTAWA — The Canada Council for the Arts and Architecture Canada | RAIC have formally announced Canada’s official entry at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. The official Canadian entry will be presented by 5468796 Architecture and Jae-Sung Chon of Winnipeg.

JSC + 5468796 were selected by a national juried competition for their proposal, Migrating Landscapes, which examines how diverse cultural memories are expressed in the way we live and build and, by extension, what it means to be Canadian within our vast cultural and geographic mosaic.

Many Canadians bring unique memories and ways of living from all around the globe. Their ideas on house and homes are modified as they settle into unfamiliar landscapes and architectural contexts. As a result, they create new forms of dwelling that resonate with both local conditions and personal cultural memory.

5468796 + JSC are designing a three-dimensional landscape that invites design responses from emerging Canadian architects and designers reflecting upon their cultural heritage.

The individual designs will be selected by a national competition to be launched this summer. JSC + 5468796 will oversee the competition and curate the final exhibition in the Venice Biennale in Architecture, which runs September - November 2012. B

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legal

BY JEFFREY W. LEM AND DAVID G. REINER

Beware the Voluntary Disclosure Statement Vendors disclose at their own risk, and that of their real estate agent.

Recovery for victimized purchasers is limited to no more than the diminution of value…twice.

Although it is known by different names in different jurisdictions, most realtors in Canada now also advocate that the vendor in a re-sale market make some voluntary disclosures about the property being sold. In Ontario, the form of that voluntary disclosure is called the “Seller Property Information Statement” (the “Voluntary Disclosure Statement”). Well, the Ontario Court of Appeal in a case called Krawchuk v. Scherbak recently shed some light on the consequences of disclosing less than accurate information in a Voluntary Disclosure Statement.

The facts of the case were relatively simple. A purchaser bought a re-sale home from a vendor for a purchase price of about $100,000. The purchaser skipped the usual home inspection, ostensibly in reliance on favourable statements from the vendor regarding structural fitness contained in the Voluntary Disclosure Statement.

Alas, the statements in the Voluntary Disclosure Statement proved false. The foundation walls of the house were sinking badly into the soil necessitating extensive repairs costing nearly double the original price paid by the purchaser!

Luckily, a title insurance policy had been taken out when the house was acquired. Although not a title defect per se, the title insurance policy did indemnify the purchaser from “...loss or damage as a result of being forced to remove [the] existing structure or a portion of it as a result of any portion of the structure being built without a building permit….” In addition to shoddy workmanship, there had been no proper building permit. After a bit of negotiations, the title insurer cut the purchaser a cheque for $100,000 – effectively, the entire original purchase price of the house!

However, that was not the end of the story. The purchaser

also sued the vendor and the vendor’s real estate agent for the full repair costs of just under $200,000. While the Court of Appeal agreed that the purchaser was entitled to compensation, it refused to award the purchaser the full $200,000, affirming the trial court judge’s observation that it was not reasonable to spend that much money to try and repair a house that was purchased for just over $100,000. As and by way of an example, suppose you bought a plastic, dollar store pen that just would not work properly. You then decide to fly to Germany with the pen to have its faulty mechanics re-designed, the tip replaced with a flawless titanium nib and the ink replaced with premium fountain pen ink. The pen would then work properly, but a court would never award you the thousands you spent just to fix the defective pen – the court would award you a refund of the dollar you originally paid.

It was the same scenario in Krawchuk. According to the court, the purchaser really should have just re-sold the house in the open market at a loss, and then sued the vendor for whatever that loss in market value turned out to be. In Krawchuk, that loss of market value was assessed at $100,000 – essentially an obliteration of the house’s original value – but still well short of the amount that the purchaser actually spent to fix the foundations of the house once and for all.

The Court of Appeal based its judgement on the misleading statements in the Voluntary Disclosure Statement notwithstanding that (i) the Voluntary Disclosure Statement had language expressly denying that the infor-

Jeffrey W. Lem, B.Comm. (U of T), LL.B. (Osgoode), LL.M. (Osgoode), practises in the areas of commercial real estate and finance with the law firm of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, and has been called to the bar in Ontario, England and Wales. He is an executive member of the Real Property Section of the Ontario Bar Association and is editor-in-chief of the Real Property Reports, published

by Carswell Thomson Professional Publishing.

David G. Reiner, B.Comm. (Concordia), LL.B. (Osgoode) is an associate practising in the area of commercial real estate at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP and is called to the Bar in Ontario.

This article provides general information only and is not intended to provide specific legal advice.

Readers should not act or rely on information in this article without seeking specific legal advice on their particular fact situations. building june/july 2011

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legal

mation therein constituted warranties; (ii) the Voluntary Disclosure Statement had language absolving both the vendor and the agent from liability for any misinformation that might be in the Voluntary Disclosure Statement; and (iii) the agreement of purchase and sale for the house had language that excluded the Voluntary Disclosure Statement altogether.

The Krawchuk decision highlights lingering doubts over the wisdom of vendors using the Voluntary Disclosure Statement (and like forms being introduced in many jurisdictions throughout Canada and the United States). However, the Krawchuk case takes the law one step further — in a significant reversal of the trial court, the Court of Appeal also found the realtor to be jointly liable for the misstatements in the Voluntary Disclosure Statement. In the trial decision, the realtor had escaped liability altogether and only the vendor was held liable. Now, realtors, at least in Ontario, can also be held accountable for Voluntary Disclosure Statement errors if the realtors were aware of the true facts surrounding the property.

The Krawchuk case has also raised some eyebrows in the legal community because it sanctioned a so-called “double recovery” windfall by the purchaser. In Krawchuk, the purchaser had already been paid approximately $100,000 by its title insurer, and the court was asked why the purchaser was then allowed to continue its lawsuit against the vendor and the realtor for the very losses that the purchaser had just been reimbursed for. The Court of Appeal applied a longstanding special rule which provides that, as a matter of public policy, the court will never reduce an otherwise legitimate lawsuit award just because the victim was also prudent enough to insure for such losses (to do so would, in theory, create a moral hazard by relieving the guilty party from liability for its own misdeed).

As of the writing of this article, there was still no word as to whether Krawchuk will be going to the Supreme Court of Canada, but for the time being, the purchaser gets to keep its double recovery, and title insurers, sellers and realtors alike are all talking about the future of Voluntary Disclosure Statements. B

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ComDev Ad.indd 1

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PR 101, pt. 2:

what do editors

By David Lasker

want ?

“Ahsk not what your country can do for you, ahsk what you can do for your country,” said JFK during his 1961 inaugural address, in his trademark plummy Harvard accent.

If you want to get your project or product published, approach editors with similar humility. Welcome to a different way of looking at the world, where you let go of your ego — your wants, your desires — and see through an editor’s eyes. It’s an unnatural, counterintuitive act, like conquering the instinct to slam your eyelids shut when your index finger and contact lens perched on it approaches, but it can be learned.

And just who is this animal, the editor?

He or she is the gatekeeper, the authority figure, the central planner. The editor looks at the zillions of submissions that come over the transom and selects the lucky few to publish. If your pitch fails to appeal to the editor at this stage, you’re sunk.

Editors are always on the lookout for story fodder. They worry obsessively about “feeding the beast” with fresh, compelling, newsworthy stories that their readers and advertisers want to see.

And what kind of stories might those be? That’s easy: Read a few issues of the publication you want to break into, from cover to cover, and you will know how that editor thinks. You will know whether your project stands a chance.

Trade-journal editors are more tolerant of poorly executed pitches because they speak your language. You don’t have to explain much because they get it; they already know your industry niche intimately. For instance, if your project’s focus is a point-supported glass wall with custom spiders, you needn’t bother explaining the terminology to the editor of a journal devoted to construction or architectural hardware. But a pitch to The Globe and Mail Arts Section will be more laborious because no one there will know what you’re talking about. You’ll have to spell everything out.

Indeed, journalists are essentially lazy; they want everything served up on a silver platter. Now, I can hear your shocked, sharp intake of breath, but notice that I inserted the qualifier “essentially” before “lazy.”

A long time ago, journalists scouted their own stories, followed up their own leads and did their own research and interviews. They even had time to think in peace (picture the newspaper reporter in the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate). He toils in serene, hassle-free bliss in his own private office, its oak-paneled walls lined with linenfold

wainscoting, the sherry and port bottles reposing beside the Waterford decanter on the credenza (I exaggerate, but only slightly). The image seems ludicrously incongruous now: as we know, the rise of the Web and economic recessions have spurred massive layoffs in newsrooms and magazine staffs. The investigative journalist, who spends weeks, months or years preparing a story, is on the endangered-species list. Many of those lucky journalists who still have a job now work two beats instead of one. They’re overworked and underpaid. If you think you had a bad day, theirs was probably worse.

So, if you submit a project that strikes an editor’s fancy, they may still reject it because they won’t have time to chase down this or that factoid about your project. They may not feel like killing a day to schlep out to your project and interview you and the client to “get the story.” They will want — and expect — it to be handed to them, pre-digested, on a silver platter.

Increasingly, editors rely on PR types like me to create their stories. When they get a good press kit, they can simply cut-and-paste the text, add or subtract a comma here or there, insert their byline and run it as an exclusive story. Call it copyediting masquerading as journalism, or worse, but that’s what I’m here for.

Indeed, the public has no idea of the extent to which the PR profession pervades our media culture. Today, almost all feature stories are generated by press kits. (To explain the jargon, a feature story is one that isn’t a hard-news story, such as “Terrorists detonate bombs in Tehran market.”)

With newsrooms slimming down, investigative journalism is practically dead. This may be a worrying trend for the health of our democracies, but it presents golden opportunities for designers with good publicity campaigns to get happily published. B NEXT: Winning pitches

David Lasker is Editor of CoreNet’s Connect, Associate Editor of Canadian Interiors and Vice President at MarketLink Communications. He can be reached at dl@linktomarket.com.

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Getting Noticed

Transaction activity in the Canadian hotel investment sector has perked up since the cyclical lows of 2009, some of that the result of foreign investors attracted to our enviable economic profile.

By Alam Pirani Over the past decade the Canadian hotel real estate sector has been dominated by investment from domestic sources that totalled 92 per cent of total transaction volume. Canadian institutional capital sources acquired the majority of the country’s prized urban assets largely by way of portfolio transactions, with foreign investors selectively acquiring key single assets in major markets. Of the over 850 hotel sales that occurred between 2001 and 2010, foreign investors participated in a small portion — just eight per cent — of the decade’s $13.3 billion total deal volume. About two-thirds of the $1 billion cross-border capital flow occurred in the first half of the decade, with the appetite by foreigners tapering in the latter period.

Canada’s hotel landscape is limited in terms of both size and scope on an international scale, given the relatively scarce availability of strategic product. Cross-border investors prefer city-centre hotels that are large enough to represent a significant investment for their portfolio, and the lack of foreign inflow to

Canada to date reflects the relatively small size of the market. Of the acquisitions foreigners made in the past decade, about 60 per cent were full service hotels in Canada’s major cities, averaging over $40 million in deal size. Almost all were branded with first tier international brands. Notable acquisitions by foreign capital in the past 10 years included the Sheraton Centre Toronto by U.S.-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts (50 per cent interest) in 2001 and Hotel Georgia in Vancouver by an Indonesian development group in 2005. The largest foreign investment since 2001 was the Four Seasons Hotel Toronto, acquired by Kingdom Hotel Investments (Middle Eastern), also in 2005. Significant transactions in the last half of the decade included: the sale of the Ritz-Carlton Montréal to a consortium of international joint venture partners in 2006; the InterContinental Montréal to Pandox AB (Swedish); and the Hyatt Regency Montréal acquisition by Ashford Hospitality Trust (U.S.) in 2007, which was subsequently sold to Pandox AB in 2008. The Hilton Vancouver Metrotown also sold twice, both times to Korean companies, in 2007 and then again in 2010.

The Canadian transaction market witnessed significant portfolio sales, representing 46 per cent of the decade’s total transaction universe. Notwithstanding having placed interest in many of the largest multi-property transactions that occurred between 2005 and 2007, foreign investors were overshadowed

by Canadian institutional investors and REITs that were eager to diversify their holdings and snapped up 98 per cent of the total portfolio volume. Portfolio sales during this time included the likes of the five-property Hilton Hotels Portfolio (2006), seven-asset Fairmont Canadian Resort Portfolio (2006) and building june/july 2011

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2011 Forecast • Strong demand for hotel investment properties will intensify competition and more owners will place their properties on the market; transaction volume should increase 20 to 30 per cent from 2010 levels.

• As larger assets come to market, private investors will have to compete with capital laden REITs, private equity funds and hotel investment companies.

• Foreign interest will grow over the next 12 months, with international buyers attracted to Canada’s enviable economic profile as a suitable environment to grow capital.

• Compression on cap rates will continue with investors underwriting a robust recovery and attributing values more in line with stabilized operating results.

• Financing availability, along with historically low interest rates will facilitate growth in the average transaction size.

• Distressed property sales will taper as lenders have largely acted on bad loans. the privatization of both Legacy Hotels REIT and CHIP REIT (2007). More modest portfolios sold through the years, but for the most part these were a better fit for hands-on, domestic private investors or regional hotel investment companies that underwrote higher values to upside potential.

The rising Canadian dollar over the decade (with the exception of downward volatility during the recent recession) also had an impact on inbound capital. The Canadian dollar rose some 35 per cent between 2003 and 2010, ending near parity to the U.S. dollar. This upward shift influenced nondomestic firms from investing in Canada and in some cases was an impetus for profit-taking, resulting in the departure of foreign investors from the market. Asian hotel investors, who were notable buyers from the late 1980s through the mid1990s, became net sellers in the past 10 years. Dispositions of key strategic assets including the Pan Pacific Hotel Vancouver & World Trade Centre, Delta Bow Valley Calgary and Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe Resort & Spa, were examples where Asian investors timed the market, or in some cases sold for non-market related reasons including corporate restructuring or to concentrate their efforts in homeland markets.

The industry witnessed a sharply improved transaction environment in 2010. Several capable U.S. and international investors took a strong look at Canada and expressed notable interest, in some cases placing multiple bids on hotel assets. Part of this was driven by what occurred in the U.S. hotel market, which underwent profound changes with the formation of new lodging REITs and IPOs in 2010. With their low cost of capital and aggressive underwriting, paired with an abundance of private equity raised and now moving off the sidelines, many U.S. hotel companies are finding it difficult to compete for transactions as the investment environment has quickly accelerated, and are therefore looking outside of the country for opportunities.

Foreign ownership will likely accelerate as quality, welllocated assets, along with a re-emergence of portfolio deals,

are expected to be brought to market in Canada. Sellers, who were reluctant to put their properties up for sale 12 months ago, are motivated by increasing buy-side demand that has vastly improved the bid-ask gap. This is further supported by investors underwriting a robust recovery in 2011-2013 that will enhance both top- and bottom-line performance comparing favourably to past levels.

The country’s healthy fiscal position and solid banking sector, combined with employment hitting an all-time high and the economy outperforming other industrialized nations with amongst the highest GDP growth in 2010, all contribute to a favourable investment climate. Canada also does not put restrictions on the repatriation of capital or profit by foreign investors and corporate tax rates are amongst the lowest of industrialized nations.

As we enter a new era, Canada’s economic promise and market dynamics should attract strong interest from foreign capital sources seeking long-term growth with minimal risk.

The country’s compelling economic backbone, outlook for continued strength in the Canadian dollar and enviable fiscal position will offer security to investors.

2010 Transaction Analysis Transaction activity in the hotel sector has perked up since the cyclical lows of 2009. Positive indicators include the rise in average transaction size and the balancing of east/west asset pricing and volume, supported by improving macro-economic conditions, the return of credit and improvement in hotel operating fundamentals.

Hotel investment activity demonstrated encouraging yearover-year progress in 2010. Nationally, 86 hotels were reported sold, with transaction volume coming in at approximately $720 million, up 73 per cent from the cyclical lows of 2009. While the number of trades grew modestly (up from 74 in 2009), the average deal size increased to $8.3 million, up from $5.6 million the year before, indicating the return of liquidity to the sector. The growing transaction environment

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supported average per room pricing of $83,000, an upward move of 27 per cent from the $65,500 recorded in 2009.

Approximately 31 per cent of volume was attributed to 15 hotels selling for redevelopment or conversion to alternate uses, reflective of the evolving highest and best use of real estate in markets where assets have reached their economic life as hotels, or require significant repositioning for a more profitable use. The year started with the sale of the Clarion Hotel & Suites Centreville in Montréal ($17.1 million or $64,300 per room) and Le Meridien King Edward Hotel in Toronto ($48.0 million or $161,000 per room), the former of which has since been converted to rental apartments and the latter acquired to rehabilitate three vacant floors into residential condominiums, among other planned capital projects. This theme continued in the second quarter with the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Montréal ($12.3 million or $68,000 per room) — conversion to student residences; Hotel Gouverneur Ste-Foy ($17.4 million or $54,400 per room) — sold for redevelopment; and Pacific Palisades Hotel in Vancouver ($47.0 million or $201,600 per room) — conversion to rental apartments.

The third quarter represented about one-third of the year’s volume, with the largest transactions of 2010 occurring in September, namely the Sheraton Fallsview Hotel & Conference Centre ($70.0 million or $172,000 per room) and Marriott Niagara Falls Hotel Fallsview & Spa ($76.4 million or $176,900 per room). Also transacting that quarter was the Crowne Plaza Chateau Lacombe in Edmonton selling for $47.8 million ($155,700 per room) — the first time since 2005 that a single asset had sold in downtown Edmonton over the $10 million threshold. Significant transactions in the fourth quarter included the Hilton Vancouver Metrotown in Burnaby which sold to a Korean-based real estate company for $44.0 million ($155,500 per room) and the Four Points

by Sheraton Mississauga Meadowvale selling for $17.2 million ($83,900 per room).

Hotel industry fundamentals were supported by a rebounding economic landscape over the past 12 months. As other countries struggled to move the unemployment needle, Canadian employment reached an all-time high in 2010.

What’s more, the value of the country’s real GDP output

Images courtesy of Colliers Hotels

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reached $1.3 trillion making it the only G8 country to have regained all employment and economic activity lost during the recession. Canada’s federal government did not engage in hefty stimulus measures in comparison to other industrialized countries and increasing confidence by the international business community has distinguished the country from the likes of the United States, France and Japan.

Credit returned to the market after a deep freeze in 2009.

Historically low interest rates, supported by the five-year Government of Canada bond yield that ranged between 1.9 per cent and 2.5 per cent in the last quarter of 2010 (all-time low of 1.5 per cent in January 2009), greatly improved liquidity once lenders regained their appetite for hotel real estate in early 2010.

As a result, debt for hotel acquisitions returned with proven borrowers able to achieve attractive rates that averaged between four per cent and seven per cent. Colliers’ Canadian Hotel Investment Sentiment Survey released in January 2011 demonstrates this dichotomy in the spread in rates with 38 per cent of respondents feeling debt had become more expensive in the past 12 months while about the same amount responded the opposite; reflecting a market where pricing is driven by the quality of the borrower, level of debt and overall security.

Lenders are increasingly focusing on in-place cashflow, and a debt yield of 12 per cent to 15 per cent to determine proceeds.

In addition to debt service coverage ratios and loan-to-value metrics, many lenders are taking proactive steps in underwriting to perform proper upfront due diligence on the local market, sponsor, brand and management as well as growth potential in order to measure risk and size the loan proceeds.

While acquisition financing has returned to the hotel sector, debt for construction financing remains scarce and likely will not return for another 12 to 18 months.

Operating metrics bottomed in January 2010 and most major markets have since trended consistently positive, helping fuel the transaction market. According to PKF Consulting, occupancy and rates improved in the largest downtown markets: Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal, with RevPAR advances strongest in Vancouver (+20 per cent) with heavy lift attributed to the Olympics-related demand in the first quarter. Toronto (+17 per cent) and Montréal (+15 per cent) bounced back with support from local events including the G8/20 meetings in Toronto in June and return of the Grand Prix event to Montréal in July. On a national basis, RevPAR advances averaged 5.5 per cent across the board, with occupancy rates up 3.4 per cent and average rates up 2.1 per cent.

National supply levels are estimated to have increased by approximately 1.5 per cent in 2010. Notwithstanding the tempered level of supply, various cities exhibited above-average growth in 2010 including Richmond/Vancouver Airport and Downtown Vancouver (on the completion of hotel construction projects for the Olympics) and Montréal Airport, Calgary, and Toronto Airport. Supply is expected to remain constrained in the near-term, which should further assist in the recovery of RevPAR across Canada. B Alam leads a team of Colliers professionals responsible for hotel investment advisory services in Canada and specific markets in Latin America/Caribbean, and has been directly involved in portfolio and single asset and debt transactions with a market capitalization of over $5 billion.

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The

SweetSpot

Left: The Shipyards is Collingwood’s first master-planned residential development directly on the waterfront of Georgian Bay. Above: LivLofts, one of eight planned residential complexes for the Residences at Don Mills in Toronto, will be a retrofit of an existing office tower and designed with an urban village style of architecture to complement the overall theme of the community.

Two talented real estate companies have repeatedly joined forces and left a thoughtful, sustainable mark on the Ontario residential landscape.

By Peter Sobchak In business, it’s like finding Sangri-La — that elusive nexus where philosophies, resources and partners come together in such a smooth way that it becomes an enviable process employed over and over again on various projects. We all chase it, and even those who from the outside seem to have found it will tell you that they are still working on refining it, but we can tell: as the old saying goes, the proof is in the pudding.

Or in the case of two real estate development companies, the proof is in the project. Slokker Real Estate Group is a Netherlands-based commercial and residential real estate financier with over 75,000 homes and 2.5 million square-metres of developed space under its belt, and a pretty well-defined threefold operating philosophy: focus on niche markets; diversify both the types of projects and development markets; and partner with local companies to draw from their expertise.

Enter FRAM Building Group. Established in 1981 by John Giannone, FRAM has successfully built more than 11,000 distinct living environments, including mixed-use, single and multi-family for-sale and rental projects in the Greater Toronto Area and select cities in the U.S. In 1998 the two companies with strong European roots joined forces to develop Port Credit Village in Mississauga. A former industrial hub and home to the St. Lawrence Starch plant, which from 1889 to 1990 functioned as a heavy industrial site for the

manufacture and distribution of starch and glucose products, FRAM and Slokker spent years masterminding the development and working with the municipality and the Ontario Municipal Board on brownfield issues and questions of density and form, ultimately producing 425 residential units and more than 3,700 square-metres of retail, commercial and office space.

Their success was significant. Known as Mississauga’s “village on the lake,” Port Credit Village has revitalized the shoreline and reconnected residents with Lake Ontario. In addition to garnering a slew of awards from groups like the Urban Land Institute, profit expectations were met. Pre-sales were very strong, with virtually all units sold by completion. “The availability of transit allowed the developers to sell the units for a slight premium (about five per cent), and there were no unusual financial or liability issues and government financial assistance was not used,” says a report authored by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

A good team was forged, and in addition to now working out of the same building (the old St. Lawrence Starch building), they have taken both the lessons learned and the momentum of success and moved on to work on several new projects together, including a redevelopment of a 100-year-old former industrial site on Collingwood’s harbourfront, and new residential units being added to arguably Toronto’s most unique new retail environment. building june/july 2011

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Images courtesy of FRAM Building Group

The Shipyards Viewed as a sister project to Port Credit Village, the two residential developments almost mirror each other, and not just because they form the anchors for Highway 10, running from Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay. Situated in downtown Collingwood, Ont., The Shipyards is located on 40 acres of land with 1,400 metres of waterfront along Georgian Bay. Originally the home of the historic Collingwood Shipyards, which was founded in 1883 but closed in 1986, the site has been an unsightly chunk of fenced-off brownfield that disconnected the people of Collingwood from their waterfront for decades.

Learning from their experience with Port Credit Village, FRAM/Slokker immediately got the community involved, and the whole plan for the site was fundamentally born out of and agreed upon after a three-day design charrette with the city and residents. When completed, this European-influenced development will include 600 residential units, made up of one, two and three-story townhomes, bungalows, live/work residences and mid-rise condo buildings.

Issues related to the brownfield clean-up caused the project to take longer than normal. A “dig and dump” was not used at Shipyards, since it was too cost prohibitive, so a landform berm has been built beside the development, which the city has taken ownership of. Materials, including crushed stone, concrete, wood and steel have been recycled in the development, and a seawall has been completed on the western portion of the site to protect the shoreline and beach from erosion and forming the edge of the public waterfront park. A seven-acre green space is in the process of being landscaped to provide ample space for recreational activities, connection to walking/biking trails and the Georgian Trail and an open-air amphitheatre for community events. These efforts have resulted in the project being named ‘Best Large-Scale Project’ by the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) at their ninth annual Brownie Awards.

“The Shipyards community pays tribute to Collingwood’s proud shipbuilding heritage with street and building names that tell a story of our past,” says local historian and author, Christine Cowley. “A stroll to the end of North Maple Street will take visitors to a part of the shoreline held at bay, behind shipyard gates, for over a hundred years. Walking in the footsteps of past generations — it’s the way history should make us feel.”

Like Port Credit, the developer attributes the success of the project to not only the architectural and urban design quality, but also the mix of amenities in and around the project and to a strong residential market for this location. They see Collingwood as being in the sweet spot of the Georgian Triangle, along with Wasaga Beach and Blue Mountain. “This is a different way of living out in the country,” says Bruce Kerr, president of Slokker Canada. Being a four-season destination, offering opportunities for many popular activities including skiing, golf, hiking, biking and a host of water-related sports, make this ideal for their target market of both cottage dwellers and a growing cohort of retiring baby boomers who “won’t go down without a fight,” as Kerr puts it, and want to live in an area where they can pursue their active lifestyles while also having access to a healthy infrastructure of medical and other services.

Residences at Don Mills In 2008, Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited launched Toronto’s first open-air lifestyle centre in the affluent neighbourhood of Don Mills on the site of the Don Mills Centre, built in the 1950s. Renamed the Shops at Don Mills, it incorporates a few older buildings in the area as well as office, restaurant and a big retail component on 40 acres of land, and includes pedestrian-friendly streets, a water fountain feature and a central town square that doubles as an ice rink in winter.

From the very outset a residential component was planned for this radical retail environment (the success of which is still under debate). Cadillac Fairview has partnered with FRAM/Slokker to develop a comprehensive residential plan that includes the construction of seven building complexes, one conversion project, plus a park and community centre to be built in phases over the next seven years. For FRAM/Slokker, it was a good fit. “We fall in love not with real estate, but with the attributes already there,” says Kerr.

The inaugural building, Reflections, was launched in June 2009 and is 92 per cent sold. The 12-storey, 106-unit building will be the first of a series of LEED-certified new condo buildings in Don Mills, designed to maximize energy efficiency with heat recovery ventilation, water-saving plumbing fixtures, energyefficient lighting, rainwater recycling and a green roof.

LivLofts will be a retrofit of an existing office tower, designed with an “urban village style” of architecture to complement

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Far left: The Shipyards’ Side Launch I building will flank the historic Launch Basin and include 38 suites in a three-storey warehouse loft style condominium residence. Left: The waterfront redevelopment includes a public promenade, open-air amphitheatre, fish habitat and more than seven acres of green space connected to walking, biking and hiking trails.

the overall theme of the community. Boasting 14 storeys and 175 units, LivLofts (as the name implies) will try to replicate the loft experience with 10-foot ceilings and original exposed ductwork conveying architectural authenticity. Designed by Giannone Petricone Associates, this project was launched as a preview in October 2010, and occupancy is planned for spring 2013.

Although there is no waterfront, as with Port Credit Village or The Shipyards, the Residences at Don Mills present FRAM/ Slokker with an interesting opportunity. “Don Mills is not downtown, but it’s not the suburbs,” says Fred Serrafero, vice president of development and construction, FRAM Building Group. There is a definite market of young people that FRAM believes want to stay in the neighbourhood they grew up in and set down roots in, but also a cohort of empty nesters, singles, and affluent professionals from suburbs like Vaughan, Agincourt and Markham, who want a condo experience “in the city” but not one stuck in

the snarl of downtown traffic.

“Being such an integral part of Ontario’s first urban community is a very important achievement for our firm and we’re proud to be the developer to deliver such a comfortable lifestyle within this village,” says Serrafero. “The experience isn’t just retail; it’s really an urban environment village.”

With projects like Port Credit Village and The Shipyards under their belts, and ones like the Residences at Don Mills and the equally-intriguing East Village in Calgary (which share many similar characteristics) on the horizon, FRAM and Slokker have found that enviable sweet spot of a solid and reliable partnership.

Now, “I don’t look at a lot without thinking of FRAM, and vice versa,” says Kerr.

The two firms are heavily committed to developing highquality projects that include innovative design measures, while at the same time delivering a product that meets the demands of the sought-after market of empty nesters, singles, and affluent professionals. They also provide a significant public amenity by creating a complete urban experience and community revitalization. As they put it, they are always trying to sell a community, not real estate. Lifestyle, in their minds, is the measure of success. “The mantra in real estate used to be ‘location, location, location.’ Now it’s ‘lifestyle, lifestyle, lifestyle.’

There has to be something more than just pretty buildings.

There’s got be something around you,” says Serrafero. B

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Rewarding

Synergies

How blending affordable housing with sustainable design and corporate sponsorship led to a LEED Platinum certification.

By Steve Kemp Brampton’s Chapelview affordable housing project is making history as it becomes the first LEED Canada Platinum affordable housing building, and one of only about 15 LEED-New Construction (NC) Platinum buildings in the country. Through the initiative of the Region of Peel, Martinway Contracting, and Enermodal Engineering, Chapelview is expected to achieve 50 per cent energy savings and 46 per cent indoor water savings compared with a conventional multi-unit residential building. Chapelview, designed by Toronto-based HCA Architecture Inc., consists of six levels of underground municipal and residential parking and 15-stories (200 apartment units) of housing targeted for people with disabilities and low-income seniors and singles.

While there is an incremental cost increase for LEED buildings, this cost is offset in two to 15 years by decreased utility costs. Affordable housing developers, who pay utility bills, can certainly reap the benefits of lower electricity and water use as affordable housing projects are designed to last over 30 years.

Although planning for the $40-million project began in 2003, it was in 2006 that Martinway’s John D’Angelo became familiar with LEED and offered to the Region of Peel (Peel Living) and the City of Brampton to make Chapelview a LEED-certified building at no additional cost. In fact,

D’Angelo’s intent was not just to achieve LEED certification but to aim for the highest possible level. “The benefits are not just from a sustainability perspective but also for the thousands of individuals who will experience the highest quality of life who otherwise would not even have a place to rest their heads at night,” says D’Angelo.

Fundraising for the incremental cost of going green was undertaken as part of Martinway’s pre-existing Corporate Sponsorship Program where corporations and trades donate products, discounts, or resources to affordable housing projects. Once the project’s LEED Platinum goal was set, D’Angelo began to receive additional unsolicited calls from new corporations wanting to be involved with Chapelview.

“We hope the tenants will see the work that was put into giving them the highest standard of living and, as a result, will encourage them to have respect for the building and take care of it,” he says.

While not exactly new, D’Angelo’s Corporate Sponsorship Program is certainly a brave and noble thing to try to apply to the affordable housing sector. “On every project that we take on, we always look at it from the point of view of who is going to live in this building and we always put ourselves in their shoes knowing that we all need a place to rest our heads

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at the end of the day. And I think very few people look at it that way,” said D’Angelo. “We tend to be a money-oriented society and where profit is the biggest thing. [But] we tend to take a bit of a different approach in affordable housing. That’s why we specialize and we only do affordable housing.”

His first project that employed this methodology was at Millbrook Place in 2002, Peel Region’s newest social housing development at the time and one of the first of its kind in Ontario since 1995. At that time, Martinway Contracting proposed a turn-key development to Peel, including the sale of land to the Region at a reasonable cost. D’Angelo then garnered the support of his sub-contractors and suppliers such as Maytag, Benjamin Moore and Fantastic Kitchens Ltd., to donate or reduce their costs for high-quality goods. Both approaches effectively reduced Peel’s capital and ongoing operating costs of the building.

Since then, similar solutions were applied to three other affordable housing projects, Chapelview being the newest and now the greenest. Every suite has an independent ventilation system, which, combined with an airtight building envelope, proper levels of insulation, and weather stripped suite doors ensure the very best air quality for residents. The transfer of air and odours between units is minimized by this ventilation system, which evacuates stale air and replaces it with fresh air.

The suite ventilation system’s fan runs continuously, ensuring fresh air is brought into the suite and distributed to each space through duct work. Stale air is exhausted from the kitchen and bathroom. By turning on the bathroom light, or turning on the kitchen range hood, the speed at which fresh air is brought in and stale air is removed is increased. When residents require higher levels of ventilation, each suite has operable windows.

The windows are double-glazed, low-e, and argon-filled with insulated spacers. The aluminum frames incorporate very large thermal breaks that reduce both heat loss and the potential for condensation. Although the window selection resulted in higher costs, it is offset by decreased utility costs as a result of minimal heat loss through windows.

All wood in the building is Forest Stewardship Council certified, doors are made from a wheat-based product, spray-foam insulation is made from soya and recycled plastic bottles. Further materials include 100 per cent recycled drywall, and recycled carpet was specified. Only native plant species were used for landscaping, and this includes the green roof on the 12th floor.

The green roof reduces the stress on the city’s stormwater system by absorbing rainwater, and also increases green space that helps reduce the urban heat island effect.

All paints, coatings, and glues used inside the building contain very low levels of VOCs compared with conventional materials.

In addition, green housecleaning products are included with each resident’s move-in package. Low-flow fixtures for faucets, toilets, and aerated showerheads, as well as front-load laundry washers were implemented in order to reduce water use. Hallway lighting is controlled by occupancy sensors to save energy. A tri-sorter waste disposal chute is provided on every floor, which can change the path of materials to waste, recycling, or organics, reducing the amount of recyclable or compostable material sent to the landfill.

There are many rewarding synergies between green building design and the affordable housing sector, especially when developers of affordable housing are committed to maximizing occupant comfort, indoor air quality, and building durability, while minimizing utility costs, as these interests coincide with good green building design. B

Build affordable housing on surplus government land, says Home Ownership Alternatives Home Ownership Alternatives (HOA) has released a policy proposal that calls on the Province of Ontario to sell surplus government land on a priority basis and set up a process that would result in affordable housing redevelopment on this under-utilized government land. “The Province has control of some great sites for redevelopment and they can get affordable housing built without a major cost to government,” said Joe Deschênes Smith from HOA, a non-profit financial corporation dedicated to financing affordable ownership housing developments and assisting low- and moderate-income families to purchase a new home. “We’ve been successful in redeveloping government sites and in each case the government received market value for the land.”

“A process to make surplus government land available in support of affordable housing has several advantages for the Province. Many surplus sites are located in urban areas where infill developments will not require new infrastructure and transit and where housing that is affordable can be blended into existing, stable neighbourhoods,” says Barb Millsap, president, Ontario Council, Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada

The proposal includes three case studies that describe the HOA-financed redevelopment of government-owned sites in Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto. The proposal has been submitted to Ontario Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rick Bartolucci and Minister of Infrastructure Bob Chiarelli.

The concept of turning surplus sites, former offices, closed schools and other sites into vibrant new communities has received support from across the housing sector. “Tridel is supportive of the HOA proposal that sets out a process that identifies surplus publicly-owned land and sells it on a priority basis to support the provision of affordable housing,” says Dino Carmel, president of Tridel.

“Government owned land holdings are valuable assets that can be utilized to leverage private sector investment for affordable housing. OHBA is generally supportive of the proposal by HOA for an RFP process that would identify surplus publicly-owned land and sell it on a priority basis to support the provision of affordable housing,” says Bob Finnigan, president, Ontario Home Builders’ Association building june/july 2011

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Hot

A

Issue

A massive fire on the construction site of a new housing project has ignited a fierce debate about the safety of the National Building Code allowing wood frame buildings over four storeys.

By Peter Sobchak

The night skies above Richmond, British Columbia were lit up on May 3rd, when a fire at the construction site of The Remy housing project destroyed a $60-million wood-frame condominium and social housing project, bringing the fact that wood burns into sharp focus among both the public and housing industry critics. The fire ruined one of the first six-storey woodframe buildings constructed under B.C.’s revised building codes for mid-rise residential construction, undertaken after the province amended its building code in 2009 to allow the construction of wood frame residential buildings higher than four storeys, the current height limit permitted for such projects by the National Building Code of Canada and all other provincial jurisdictions.

The changes are under review for future possible inclusion in the National Building Code.

Thankfully there was no loss of life to the public or emergency responders, and an investigation has been launched by the City of Richmond Fire-Rescue Department and the Office of the Fire Commissioner of B.C. to determine the cause of the fire, which is still a mystery.

This fire delays a development that the Canadian Wood Council is hoping, beyond its functional purpose, would also place wood construction at the forefront of safe, innovative and cost-effective mid-rise building in Canada. “The fire on the Remy project construction site, although devastating, should not take away from this innovative B.C. initiative, which has already

set the stage for a pan-Canadian approach to mid-rise wood construction,” said Michael Giroux, president of the Canadian Wood Council in a press release issued by the Council.

Yet not surprisingly, the blaze has provoked comments from various building industry organizations across the country. For example, in another press release, the Cement Association of Canada (CAC) highlighted the need for more study of the fire safety implications of residential mid-rise wood building construction, and is urging civil servants and politicians to not favour one building material over another due to economic circumstances, but to put safety first.

The only way this can be properly done, they claim, is through extensive consultation with fire safety officials, the insurance industry, consumers and manufacturers of building products.

While the building was not yet complete, the CAC believes this incident serves to underline how fragile and susceptible to fire these structures are. Since sprinklers, one of the key safety features, are mechanical systems that can fail, the CAC has long been advocating for further evaluation of the fire safety and structural risks associated with taller wood frame buildings before changes are made to the National Building Code and provincial Building Codes, and believes this type of review would be of value to British Columbia as well.

“Safe, structurally sound, fire-resistant homes and communities is something that we all want and should be able to count on,” said CAC president and CEO Michael McSweeney. “A

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concrete building is one of the safest options since concrete doesn’t burn and it stops fire from spreading. But first and foremost, the issue at hand here is ensuring that an adequate level of safety be maintained for our buildings regardless of their height.”

“Human life and the safety of our neighbourhoods are at question here,” said Bill McEwen, Executive Director of the Masonry Institute of B.C. “Engineered wood products, which are used extensively in these types of buildings, are fabricated with glue, and can burn faster than regular wood products. The firewalls in the Richmond project were made of wood and drywall.

Normal concrete block firewalls were not used, apparently due to concerns about the large amount of wood shrinkage expected in six-storey wood construction. Concrete block walls could have protected these buildings, both during construction and more importantly during occupancy.”

Paul Hargest, president of Canadian Concrete Masonry Producers Association, noted in a press release that wood composite elements, such as oriented strand board (OSB) give off fumes when they burn, increasing risk to firefighters on the scene and to occupants in the building, who may choke on the chemical fumes before they even realize there is a fire on the premises.

Composite wood I-joists, now common in wood frame construction, are known to collapse under fire conditions far sooner than traditional dimension lumber joists.

MasonryWorx, an industry association of professionals working in brick, block and stone masonry, has issued a concern about the proposed changes to the Ontario Building Codes to allow six storey wood frame housing. In a letter to Ontario MPPs, MasonryWorx president Dante Di Giovanni writes, “By the very nature of this change, it is unquestionable that the fundamental objectives of the Ontario Building Code (OBC) and the needed levels of structural and fire safety and performance will be compromised.”

Other concerns have been raised at various points of the project’s development. For example, even before construction started last year, Richmond’s fire department warned its ladders weren’t high enough to reach the top of the structure, according to the Vancouver Sun. And according to the Richmond News, Richmond’s chief fire prevention officer, Dave Clou, told city council two years ago that he didn’t know anywhere else in North America that has allowed the construction of six-storey wooden apartment buildings. “This hasn’t happened anywhere else that I know of, and there’s a reason for that,” Clou told the News after a council meeting. “We have lots of buildings in Richmond higher than six storeys. But they’re made of concrete, and if there’s a fire, it’s generally contained to that floor. If, however, there’s a fire near the top floor of a six storey combustible construction building, we have no way to get that high and tackle it and stop it from spreading.”

MasonryWorx reports that the deputy fire marshal for Ontario, Doug Crawford, has expressed concern in the past about fighting fires from within a six storey all-wood structure, as they incorporate engineered wood products that provide little fire resistance when exposed to high temperatures.

Opinions such as these have ignited a protective stance from the Canadian Wood Council, who strongly promotes wood as a safe, durable building material. “To suggest that the outcome of

Fires during the construction phase: • This is a major concern of the Fire Marshall’s office and the Fire Fighters Association.

• Studies report that up to 70 per cent of fires during construction are the result of arson.

• Additional security and fire protection during construction was requested by the fire services sector in B.C. when these changes were adopted there, but the B.C. government rejected these requests.

• Ontario makes no mention of additional protection during the construction phase, simply suggesting that the sprinkler system be installed in parallel with construction of the building. the fire at the Remy project in Richmond would have been the same if the building had been fully completed, is not plausible,” said Giroux in a statement.

“The Remy fire occurred while the building was under construction. This meant that fire safety features such as sprinklers and gypsum board protection, as well as fire doors in firewalls, all required in the completed building had not yet been installed. The firewalls in the Remy project were made of steel and two layers of one-inch-thick gypsum liner panels, with woodframe walls to protect them from day-to-day wear, as required by the British Columbia Building Code. The use of other types of non-combustible firewalls likely would not have stopped the fire under these same circumstances.”

A significant number of experts have chimed in on the debate in support of wood construction, such as Dr. George Hadjisophocleous, Industrial Research Chair in Fire-Safety Engineering at Carleton University. “The safety level of buildings such as The Remy project, once completed and equipped with the required protection systems under the building code would be equivalent to that of any similar building constructed with other materials,” he says.

Further in his statement, Giroux asserts that the fire safety of a completed building involves a lot more than its structural composition. “The whole system must be taken into consideration, including the building’s contents and its use,” he says.

“Research shows that the size and severity of the majority of fires are related to the contents of a building and the living and working habits of its occupants. Canada’s National Building Code and the Provincial and Territorial regulations based upon it require that, regardless of what materials they are made of, buildings be designed to minimize risk of unacceptable loss by including fire protection features to contain a fire, limit its effect on the supporting structure, and control the spread of smoke and gases.”

What can’t be argued is that no structure can ever be completely fireproof, and all construction materials can be affected by fire. Industry biases aside, The Remy fire could serve everyone by furthering the discussion on fire safety both on completed projects and those under construction by adding protection to wood buildings during the construction phase, when it is most vulnerable. B building june/july 2011

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The

By David Lasker

Images courtesy of Sigmund Soudack & Associates Inc.

Head TURNER

Sigmund Soudack’s ‘simple, ingenious and magical’ engineering solution gets Mississauga’s sensuous, twisting ‘Marilyn Monroe’ condo towers off the ground.

No architecture-competition winner in recent memory has generated as much buzz as the “Marilyn Monroe” towers, now rising at the Absolute World development in Mississauga, the Toronto suburb that is also Canada’s sixth-largest city. The winning entry in the international design competition for the site’s fourth tower, by Yansong Ma of Beijing-based MAD Architecture Studio, depicts a 56-storey elliptical tower with the floors rotating as they rise. The resulting curvaceous façade evokes the hourglass figure of the Fifties movie icon.

But, drawing a cool, hip-looking design was easy compared to figuring out how to build the thing. No one had ever put up such a radical, cutting-edge tower in North America. Moreover, it had to be done within the time and budget constraints of a traditional building if the developer, Fernbrook Homes and Cityzen Development Group, was to market it successfully.

Enter Sigmund Soudack & Associates Inc., Consulting Structural Engineers. “They came up with a very simple, magical, ingenious solution that enabled us to treat the twisting tower like a regular building,” recalls Attila Burka of Toronto-based Burka building june/july 2011

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Images courtesy of Sigmund Soudack & Associates Inc.

Architects Inc. Burka was architect of the And what of that something new, that three earlier towers at Absolute World, advi“simple, ingenious and magical” engineering sor to the competition and architect of record solution? for the fourth tower, responsible for fleshing The inherent problem with a concrete floor out Ma’s proposal and creating detailed workslab extending from the interior to form the ing drawings for the builder. balcony, as it does here, is that it acts like a “Ma had handed us a concept that was heat-sink or fin that absorbs the outside heat (or an empty vase with nothing inside. We cold). It transmits this temperature drop to the were asked to produce a structure quickly, interior, along with the attendant condensation to prove that it could be built. We were in a problems and discomfort for the inhabitants. panic for a few days,” Burka says, laughing.

And a balcony that wraps the building continuFortunately, though, “Siggy worked out a ously exacerbates the problem. structural system to support this building As Soudack recalls, “We created a new that, at first glance, didn’t seem rational kind of thermal break that, to the best of our from any point of view.” knowledge, hasn’t been used before.” His team Sigmund Soudack, president and founder devised a balcony that appears to wrap the of his eponymous firm, had never faced a exterior wall continuously. Actually, it meets challenge like this before. However, his firm the wall in two-foot segments alternating with has worked extensively as structural engineerfour-foot gaps. The cold (or heat) only travels ing consultant on high-rise towers for Tridel through the two-foot segments, which affects and other major condominium developers. the interior temperature minimally.

He was invited to join the building team “We could have specified a proprietary,

by Fernbrook’s project manager because, he German-made stainless-steel thermal isolation says, “they wanted someone with a practical joint that’s very expensive,” Soudack says. “But sense.” He also welcomed the project for the I figured we could come up with a low-tech positive effect it would have on his personnel. solution that works almost as well at a much “It would stimulate our creative juices.” lower cost. We pride ourselves on creating costWhy? “Structurally, every floorplate is effective solutions. You can always throw money at a problem, but that’s not good engineering.” different,” says Yury Gelman, senior strucBurka adds, “This detail, which balances tural engineer on Soudack’s team. “Whenever strength and temperature-isolation requirewe design usual buildings, we have so-called ments, seems very innocent. But I would credit typical floors. The first, second, third storeys the construction of the entire building on that differ from one another, then the floors are Previous page: Rendering of the 56-storey detail. Without it, we would have had to find a the same up to, say, the 35th floor, which absoluteworld 4 (“Marilyn Monroe condo”) different and very complex set of geometries to is easy for us, the architect, and the builder, and 50-storey absoluteworld 5 towers seen hold the building up.” and easy to market. But this wasn’t the case from the west along Absolute Avenue in The tower is being erected with the use of here. And the walls are different, too. When Mississauga, Ont. Designer: Yansong Ma, MAD flying forms, a system for high-rise concrete the ellipse turns, the walls have to get longer Architecture Studio, Beijing, China (design construction that Soudack helped develop. It or shorter, or else they’d stick out.” architect), and Burka Architects, Toronto uses large, truss-mounted assemblies that a crane And why does Ma’s concept for the tower (architect of record). Developer: Fernbrook hoists upward from floor to floor. look so voluptuous? The second floor turns Homes and Cityzen Development Group. one degree with respect to the first floor. Top: Sigmund Soudack, founder and principal, On November 28, 2006, Mississauga Mayor The third floor turns three degrees with Sigmund Soudack & Associates Inc., Consulting Hazel McCallion announced an international respect to the second. Subsequent floors turn Structural Engineers. Above: Construction design competition, drawing 92 submissions five degrees and then eight, whereupon the photo reveals absoluteworld 5’s spiralling from architects in 70 countries, to design the sequence reverses. “This is what makes the interior structure. fourth tower of Absolute World. She intended shape attractive,” Soudack says. it to be a landmark worthy of its prominent However, the constant rotation of floors complicated the location, opposite city hall at the northeast corner of engineering. Normally, columns rise above columns in a straight Burnhamthorpe Road and Hurontario Street. vertical line, and they are only subject to the force of gravity.

The fourth tower sold so quickly that Fernbrook announced a Shifting columns, however, add another kind of load called second, similar, 50-storey tower to be built as the fifth and final shear, a deformation that makes the columns want to bend like component of the development. Unlike the fourth tower, which an archer’s bow. “We had to calculate all these combinations and gets thinner in the middle as it rises, the fifth one gets larger. In permutations to arrive at the maximum load on every element,” this condo couple, the new tower will supply the masculine Yang Soudack says. “This was difficult to keep track of. Thank God to “Marilyn’s” feminine Yin. The pair is known officially as absofor computers!”

B luteworld 4 and 5, and popularly as the Twisted Sisters. building june/july 2011

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Digging Deep A new condominium project in Burlington is taking the lead on sustainable building in Ontario, as one of the first residential high rise buildings in the GTA to be equipped with geothermal technology. With the “big dig”’ beginning in July of this year, Ironstone Condominiums by Davies Smith Developments will not only help transform uptown Burlington’s emerging core but this project will also be a huge step towards zero footprint residential building in Ontario.

Aside from inspiring amenities, the most groundbreaking feature of the 16 storey condo is the geothermal technology that will be used to heat and cool the building. This natural energy system eliminates the need for natural gas heating, thus eliminating the release of harmful emissions that pollute the air. “Just by moving in, purchasers reduce their carbon footprint,” says architect Roland Rom Colthoff of Toronto-based RAW. Not only does the geothermal heating and cooling system cut a building’s energy use by 60 to 70 per cent, a geothermal building also lowers monthly energy costs for residents by at least 10 per cent.

The geothermal system consists of a network of pipes planted 15 metres deep into the ground where the earth’s temperature remains at a constant 10 degrees Celsius all year round. No matter what season, water circulates through the pipes to heat or cool the building as needed. To help maximize energy efficiency, each suite is equipped with individual thermostats and geothermal heat pumps to provide personalized climate control.

Geothermal systems (also known as GeoExchange, Earth Energy systems, or ground source heat pumps) make use of the renewable solar energy that is stored in the ground by drawing heat from an ethanol-based fluid solution circulating through a network of highdensity horizontal and vertical pipes or tubing buried underground.

Heat is transferred to the earth if the fluid is warmer than the earth and removed from the earth if the fluid is colder than the earth.

A heat pump manages the balance by switching between heating and cooling depending on the outside or desired temperature. Since energy efficiency is of utmost importance, each suite has its own

Image courtesy of RAW

One new condo project is making significant strides to green the high-rise building industry in a Toronto suburb not normally considered green.

Designed to service all of Ironstone’s heating and cooling load requirements, the geothermal system will be installed and maintained by clean technology developer and operator GeoXperts Energy.

thermostat as well as geothermal heat pump to provide personalized and energy efficient climate control.

Heat pumps, like all electrical equipment, require some electricity to operate. In some cases residents or corporations are considering solar, wind or other integrated green technologies to make energy systems as green as possible. Ironstone’s geothermal technology will be complemented by a solar panel system, green roof areas, and lowflow faucets and toilets for water conservation. Additionally, secure bike parking around the building will also be provided, in order to facilitate a greener lifestyle for residents.

Raising the bar for sustainable condo living not only in and around Burlington but also for the GTA, the Ironstone Condominium green policy will start as soon as the digging begins this summer. Construction will prioritize materials that contain recycled content and an environmentally conscious waste management procedure will be implemented.

“Ironstone is a beacon for the future,” says Graham Chalmers, V.P. of Construction and partner at Davies Smith Developments.

“In years to come we hope that more buildings in Ontario will generate as much energy as they consume. Geothermal is a huge leap towards that goal of zero energy footprint.” B

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Along with an increase in interest in the Ontario FIT programme comes an increase in the provincial government’s attention to ensuring it creates local jobs.

By Sarah Simmons Ontario’s Feed-in Tariff (FIT) programme continues to pay premium rates for solar photovoltaic electricity generating facilities and represents an intriguing opportunity for commercial and industrial building owners and land developers who would like to pursue solar generated power on their rooftops and property.

Unsurprisingly, the FIT programme has generated significant interest in the Ontario solar market. As recently as February 2011, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) announced that it had awarded 1,570 contracts under the FIT programme, ultimately representing 3,565 MW of clean, renewable energy for Ontario.

To stimulate job creation in the province’s solar manufacturing sector, Ontario FIT programme rules require that solar companies wishing to participate in the programme must prove they are meeting 60 per cent domestic content requirements for solar PV modules, inverters, mounting systems, wiring and electrical hardware and construction, and on-site labour for solar PV projects.

As Ontario solar developers, building owners and property owners begin to deliver on their solar rooftop and groundmount projects, it is important to be aware of the rules surrounding the domestic content requirements. To help building june/july 2011

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guarantee your Ontario solar programme’s success, remember to take into consideration the following criteria before choosing your solar panel installer.

First, ensure that your project’s suppliers and vendors can commit to the domestic content requirements, since the FIT contract holder is ultimately responsible for meeting the domestic content requirements. If the OPA determines that the project does not meet the requirement, you could be in breach of contract. Be sure to ask: Will your product comply with the domestic content requirements? How will you or your vendors prove that your product complies with the requirements? In other words, how transparent is the process?

Submit detailed content plans to the OPA The more information you provide to the OPA, the stronger their commitment will be with respect to your project’s ability to meet the domestic content requirements. These details will also give your financiers/lenders comfort. Choose a turnkey solar installer that has experience managing the OPA’s domestic content processes and who can help you prepare your domestic content plans and reports.

The OPA may choose to audit your solar project, therefore you will need to make sure you are able to provide evidence that your solar project meets the domestic content requirements. As

such, your equipment suppliers will need to provide detailed documentation for the domestic content report, so make sure your supplier maintains complete records of the manufacturing process. Examples include product shipping reports, construction logs, and employee records.

In addition to meeting domestic content requirements, the equipment supplier should deliver high-quality equipment and services. Which means you should be asking how will the product perform for the long-term, what are the warranties on the product, what will be the ongoing O&M requirements, and who is certified to maintain the components of the solar system?

In addition to meeting the domestic content requirements, the modules and other equipment you procure need to be bankable.

Although the OPA’s domestic content requirements create additional regulatory hurdles for project developers, these rules are in place to create clean jobs and clean power that will ultimately maintain a long-term and sustainable solar market in Ontario. B Sarah Simmons joined SunEdison as the Government Affairs Manager for Canada in September 2010. In this role she is responsible for regulatory affairs, government relations, market protection and market expansion. Prior to joining SunEdison, she worked at the Ontario Power Authority where she contributed to the development of both the Feed-in Tariff and microFIT Programs.

New study finds professional architects face obstacles in employing solar strategies Solar energy can be harnessed to both heat and power buildings — so why isn’t it specified more often in building design? The International Energy Agency’s Solar Heating and Cooling (IEA-SHC) Programme’s Task 41: Solar Energy and Architecture, a research project that involves 70 researchers, academics, professionals and graduate students from 15 countries, is seeking to answer this question.

IEA-SHC Task 41’s Team Canada is led by Professor Miljana Horvat of the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University and Professor Marie-Claude Dubois of the École d’Architecture at Université Laval. The research team is made up of faculty and students from the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University, École d’Architecture at Université Laval and the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering at Concordia University. This research revealed that while architects believe solar energy to be an increasingly viable option, many face significant obstacles that hinder them from incorporating this renewable energy resource into building designs. “While barriers exist, we’re still finding that architects are interested in making a difference by integrating solar strategies into their designs,” Horvat says.

The ultimate goals of the three-year IEA-SHC Task 41 are to achieve high quality architecture that utilizes active and passive solar strategies, and to improve the qualifications of architects in implementing solar strategies, including their interactions with engineers, manufacturers and clients.

International researchers are working to develop criteria for architectural integration of solar energy systems; identify methods and tools for solar design; and establish concepts, guidelines and case studies.

Team Canada’s research included a survey of architects from 14 different countries that has yielded important insights into how to improve digital tools for solar design to make it easier for architects to integrate both passive and active solar energy strategies during the early design stage. They also found that better training, for example, would help many architects improve their skills in working with solar and energy simulation tools and address the perception that these tools are too complex, expensive and time-consuming.

To date the IEA-SHC Task 41 teams have completed a total of five reports and conference papers that identify existing barriers to implementing solar energy and the knowledge required for architects, engineers, manufacturers and developers to integrate solar strategies into building design.

“It’s important to conduct research like this, because we know that up to 80 per cent of design decisions that can influence buildings’ energy performance are made at the early design stage,” Horvat says. “Now, the question is, do architects have the right tools to make those decisions?” The work of Team Canada will continue to develop guidelines to overcome these barriers and facilitate the implementation of solar technologies and strategies in buildings from the early design stage.

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viewpoint

BY STEPHEN CARPENTER, PEng

Net Zero is the latest buzzword around the green building industry.

The implication is that we should strive for buildings that consume no energy. The Living Building Challenge has set this target and the 2030 Challenge aims for zero carbon emissions from buildings by 2030. But is this the right end goal? While achieving Net Zero is laudable, it may be unrealistic for most individual Canadian buildings without significant capital investment in on-site renewable energy generation. Furthermore, it assumes the building is an island, ignoring its interaction with the rest of the city. Does a net zero building in suburbia, where everyone has to drive to work, truly have a net zero impact?

Perhaps a more practical goal is to get all buildings to be Net Zero Ready. Net Zero Ready buildings have energy demands so low that all of their remaining energy use can be feasibly supplied by renewable energy either at the building or community level or through waste energy from adjacent buildings.

What is the energy target for these buildings and how do we get this performance?

Currently the average Canadian commercial/institutional building uses close to 400 ekWh/m2 on an annual basis. Schools, offices and MURBs are on the low side of this number while hospitals, sports facilities and retail centres are on the high side.

Enermodal recently certified its 100th LEED project. Looking back, we discovered that the monitored (actual) energy use of our LEED projects is 45 per cent less than the Canadian average, or just over 200 ekWh/m2. For the most part, these savings were achieved by focusing on a few critical areas: airtight envelope, efficient lighting, and high performance mechanical equipment including ventilation heat recovery.

But 200 ekWh/m2 is just the average. What about the best of the best performing buildings from an energy perspective?

The top 10 Enermodal LEED buildings were modelled to achieve (and did achieve) around 100 ekWh/m2, half of the average of the LEED buildings and a quarter of the ‘norm.’ To toot our horn for a moment, eight of the top 10 buildings were designed

by Enermodal’s mechanical/electrical design group (but that’s not really the point of this article).

How to get under 100

What set these buildings up to be great energy performers? Three words: elegantly simple design. The old ‘keep it simple’ adage holds true. The problem is that it is extremely hard to do simple designs. Engineers are prone to over-sizing equipment, adding unnecessary control complexity, and using old rules of thumb that were developed when energy use was not a priority.

To achieve designs below 100 kWh/m2 requires a complete re-think about how we design buildings. And not just M/E design but architectural as well: proper orientation, narrow floor-plates,

Image courtesy of Enermodal Engineering

Should Net Zero be today’s goal?

The Drake Landing Solar Community in Okotoks, Alberta employs district solar energy storage for 52 homes. This type of community-level solution is vital to achieving Net Zero. Until this is the norm, Net Zero Ready buildings are the next step.

optimum window-to-wall ratio are all important. We did this in our new headquarters, A Grander View, which is running at 69 kWh/m2. For the record, it cost us around $250 per square foot to build and fit-up.

It is interesting to note that in the fine print of the 2030 Challenge, that program allows for 20 per cent of energy to be from green energy purchases. In other words, the actual building energy consumption needs to be 20 per cent of current values or 80 ekWh/m2 — pretty close to the 100 noted above.

While zero may be the ultimate goal, we believe that the technical and economically feasible target for buildings today should be 100 ekWh/m2. This is attainable. This helps renewable energy make economic sense. This affords opportunities to look at the interaction of building energy use on a community scale, instead of as energy islands.

100 ekWh/m2 is no less an accomplishment than zero: only a handful of buildings in Canada have achieved this level of performance. At Enermodal we call this Net Zero Ready and all of our groups are working together to deliver projects at this level. We encourage the entire building design and construction industry to strive for this target, as well. B Stephen Carpenter is president of Enermodal Engineering and was Canada’s first LEED Accredited Professional as well as serving as the current chair of the Technical Advisory Group for the Canada Green Building Council. Enermodal has been Canada’s largest firm exclusively dedicated to creating energy and resource efficient buildings since 1980, certifying more LEED buildings than any other firm.

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