For much of the development community, 2022 was a year of challenges. For Menkes Developments, they managed their extensive roster of active projects by sticking by their long-term vision. With plenty of progress to report, along with some exciting announcements and celebrations, here is a summary of highlights for Menkes Developments in 2022.
Menkes kicked off the year announcing that they’d be getting going on the second phase of their Sugar Wharf mixed-use condo development on Lake Shore just east of Yonge, allowing work to begin on a new elementary school for the area that will occupy over 5,000m² of space in the podium of the development. Site clearing activities continue here, while the first phase towers, located immediately to the east just celebrated their topping off in December after an active year of building.
Another milestone was celebrated by Menkes early in the year, as the developers completed their first conversion of an existing heritage office building. The timely retrofit of the Canada Permanent Trust Building at 320 Bay Street began in 2019 and was completed in March of 2022, allowing the prominent 18-storey Art Deco tower to resume its century-long mission to provide office space in the Financial Core. A few months later, Menkes’ Waterfront Innovation Centre project also reached completion, marking a successful stretch to open the first half of the year.
2022 was a busy year for construction on Menkes sites. With a wide spread of projects of different scales across the GTA, Downtown developments like Adagio and The Whitfield progressed into active construction sites while managing the delicate surrounding built form, while developments like Lake & Town in South Etobicoke demonstrated the company’s ability to work quickly on a full community scale. Venturing further into suburban GTA, Menkes was hard at work in Vaughan on a pair of multi-tower, mixed-use developments with QuadReal Property Group for their Assembly Park Community. One of the projects, Mobilio, was able to begin occupancy last year.
Along with construction progress, Menkes’ other Vaughan project also notched a significant win: the 2022 BILD Awards proved a success, with Menkes coming away with the hotly contested award for Project of the Year. The award recognized the developers’ achievement in the creation and activation of Festival Condominiums, Menkes’ other multi-tower high-rise development currently under construction on the south side of the growing Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.
The awards season also proved fruitful for one of Menkes’ existing buildings: the company’s efforts over the last years in sustainable building practices and systems were recognized at the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) conference, earning the BOMA Canada Earth Award for their Downtown Toronto commercial development, Telus House. The 30-storey structure, completed in 2010, was the first office building in Canada to earn Fitwel certification, and continues to be recognized for its accomplishments in raising the bar for sustainability and personal health of all those working in the AAA class commercial development.
The accolades didn’t end there, however. In April, Menkes’ recently completed Waterfront Innovation Centre claimed two titles at the NAIOP Real Estate Excellence Awards, heralded as the top investment deal of the year in both the office and general categories. Additionally, an annual study from Altus Group, a leading resource for real estate data, positioned Menkes in first place among builders in Canada for pre-construction high-rise sales in 2021. The same rankings also found that Menkes’ Festival Condominiums was the top-selling new condo project in Canada in 2021, claiming the title for the second consecutive year
Beyond their efforts in building and launching new projects, Menkes was able to pursue a number of philanthropic initiatives throughout 2022 as well. As part of their commitment to the wider community of Vaughan outside the Assembly Park development, Menkes donated $1,000,000 to the Mackenzie Health Foundation, benefitting healthcare in that city. More money was also raised at the developers’ charity golf tournament, which brought in a total of $160,000 at the 22nd annual event.
After another year that was as busy as ever for Menkes, we can expect more milestones to come in 2023. Stay tuned for our next coverage of Menkes’ work in the GTA coming in February, and don’t forget to check out the various database files linked below to learn more about their portfolio of projects.
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