78 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
| COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE |
the commercial real estate group at Blake,
Cassels & Graydon LLP in Toronto. e
focus has shied to "urban design" says
Piurko, who works directly with urban
planners in both the public and private
sectors on behalf of her developer cli-
ents, helping them negotiate approvals to
things like official plan amendments and
zoning bylaw amendments.
Urban design is not so much about the
way the building looks as how it interfac-
es with the community. It encompasses
elements like existing and planned infra-
structure, whether the new development
includes community services or facilities,
how it deals with transit and transporta-
tion and even plans for things like the
disposal of sanitary and storm waters.
Planners want to know as much about
those kinds of details as they do about a
building's outer shell. With undeveloped
downtown land scarce, she says, planners
"are encouraging developers to push the
envelope. We're seeing innovation and
some amazing things happening in the
development world."
is innovation is happening in places
you wouldn't normally expect: so-called
"tight sites" that might have been thought
of as too small to house a multi-use tow-
er, sites adjacent to rail tracks or even
designed and built over rail or subway
tracks below. Piurko says that, in pushing
that envelope, development is effecting
positive change, decreasing our reliance
on cars. "In a nutshell, I'd say, increasing
density is breeding innovation within the
industry. e shi away from the focus
on height I see as very positive."
things like who will be managing the de-
velopment process, and who will manage
the stabilized income-producing compo-
nent of the project. So they have to know
how to handle joint ventures, negotiate
limited partnerships and co-ownership
agreements, dra development-manage-
ment and property-management agree-
ments — all sorts of things not contem-
plated in the past, a combination of con-
tract law, civil law and real-estate law.
Jim Hilton, practice group leader of
the real estate group at Blakes, says the
more elements you add to a develop-
ment, the more complicated the work be-
comes. "Cost-sharing agreements, various
reciprocal-rights agreements, easement
agreements all make for a much more
complex development. at's where the
sort of work commercial real estate law-
yers do branches out — then we're doing
agreements in that sphere that maybe we
wouldn't be touching in normal residen-
tial condominiums."
All this scarcity-driven innovation has
important implications for commercial
real estate lawyers — how they dra con-
tracts, how they advise in negotiations
with urban planners, how they ensure
compliance with new regulations, even
in how they define their residential/com-
mercial practice.
In the past, to a commercial real
estate lawyer, working on a downtown
transaction usually meant helping a client
acquire an income-producing property
through a purchase-and-sale agreement,
which may or may not have required
balance-sheet or a third-party financing.
What's happening today — and it's the
same whether it's a small or large real es-
tate company, a public or private entity,
a R EIT or pension fund — is that devel-
opers are tearing down single-purpose
buildings or building them up to turn
them into mixed-use towers.
"Not only are they developing existing
properties into new mixed-use properties,
but a lot of them don't want to shoulder
all the risks themselves, so they're part-
nering with other real estate entities who
may have experience in a different area,"
says Bram Green, a commercial real-estate
practitioner at Goodmans LLP. "So your
client's not just going to buy a property
and development anymore, they're going
to partner with developers that bring in
complementary expertise."
For the lawyers, that means their prac-
tice now involves not only helping the
client buy a property but also negotiat-
ing joint ventures to set out terms about
TARA PIURKO
>
BLAKE, CASSELS & GRAYDON LLP
"Increasing density is breeding innovation
within the industry. The shift away from
the focus on height I see as very positive.
[Planners] are encouraging developers to
push the envelope. We're seeing innovation
and some amazing things happening
in the development world."
