Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a national Crown Corporation, needed to right size (modernize) its ‘A’ class office premises and obtain a flexible lease to allow for termination upon the event their funding was not renewed.
Sustainable Development Technology Canada (“SDTC”) is a national Crown Corporation whose main objective is to bring economically viable, clean technologies to market. Although Headquartered in Ottawa SDTC does business across the country and has satellite offices in a number of large Canadian Cities.
SDTC’s Ottawa office is situated in an ‘A’ class office tower in Ottawa’s core business and financial district. SDTC engaged Proveras to assist with a lease renewal and right-sizing. The objective was to take advantage of the soft market conditions, right size (modernize) the premises, and still allow to flexibility in the lease agreement that would allow for termination in the event that SDTC’s funding was not renewed past its horizon.
Proveras’ team knew that there was a preference for SDTC to remain in the same building provided it could be demonstrated that the financial implications of doing so were in line with a relocation to other competing properties in the downtown core.
Proveras’ team leveraged the competing options in the renewal discussion and they were able to extract a payment from an adjacent tenant who wanted to expand into a small portion of the SDTC premises. In addition, they were able to secure rights to terminate the lease at a specific time in the event that the funding for SDTC was not renewed.
SDTC negotiated a long term lease agreement with extremely favorable terms. They were also able to downsize their premises and secure a right of termination that lines up with their funding tranche from the federal government.