City Building : Innovation + Job News

As recently reported by Yonge Street, work has now begun on the Athletes Village for the Pan Parapan American Games on the waterfront. The project is as much an employment story as it it a develoopment story. The construction, handled by EllisDon, will create 700 direct jobs, according to Infrastructure Ontario's Mandy Downes.

"Currently there are already 50 workers onsite," Downes says, "carpenters, engineers, supervisors and security. At the peak of construction, the project will employ 700 in construction." Those are just some of the 5,200 jobs the Ministry of Finance estimates the project will "create and support" directly and indirectly.

The Athletes Village will transform part of the waterfront, adding more than a thousand new residential units as well as a streetcar line and a residence for George Brown College after the games in 2015.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Mandy Downes, Infrastructure Ontario

For property owners, a key selling point of energy efficiency improvements has long been that more than just saving the environment, they'll also save money.

Now, an innovative new insurance policy offered by Jones Brown—developed with the Toronto Atmospheric Fund (TAF)—insures against the possibility that retrofits to building do not deliver on expected savings, allowing building owners to be confident they will be able to pay off financing secured to complete the renovations.

The Toronto Atmospheric Fund has long been a pioneer in self-financing energy retrofits, and saw a need for what they're calling the Energy Savings Warranty. Fund VP Tim Stoate says his experience has taught him that there are "lots of barriers" to going ahead with energy efficiency projects for building owners. Programs that take the financial risk away from building owners help fuel the process, allowing a win-win-win situation.

"There's no cost for the capital improvements [since they pay for themselves through energy savings], there's free cash flow from the savings over and above the cost, and there's no risk to the lender [such as a bank] because the savings are insured." says Stoate. All of that is in addition to the environmental benefit of lower carbon emissions in buildings. 

Stoate says this new policy is targeted at smaller owners of large buildings. Large institutions such as hospitals and universities already have access to similar policies because their credit is assumed to be rock solid. But condo boards, malls and owners of buildings such as Harbourfront Centre can now enjoy the same advantage—lowering their energy cost and actually earning a profit without putting up capital in advance.

In making the announcement, Jen Aitchison of Jones Brown estimated that the market for such a product extended to "tens of thousands" of building owners across the country. She said that building owners would not be the only ones whose fears are eased by the insurance, as it could provide banks and other lenders the confidence needed to finance large-scale building sustainability improvements.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Tim Stoate, VP Impact Investing, Toronto Atmospheric Fund

PowerStream, an electricity distribution utility jointly owned by the cities of Markham, Barrie and Vaughan, has become the first company in the 905 and the first electricity company in Ontario to have two different buildings certified LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold.

In announcing the new green credential at the company's south operations centre in Markham, president and CEO Brian Betz said the recognition was a tribute the company's commitment to "innovation and forward thinking."

The facility is home to more than 150 staff, about a third of the company's workforce. Among the sustainability innovations that earned the facility recognition were 16.5 kilowatts of solar energy generation capacity, along with a host of conservation features including a white roof to keep the building cool, drought-resistant landscaping to lower water usage, and heating and air-conditioning systems the company says are "free of harmful gases."

Markham mayor Frank Scarpitti, chair of PowerStream's board, says that the efforts put into the building show the company's dedication to innovative social and environmental consciousness. "This building's achievement of LEED Gold certification is consistent with PowerStream's corporate vision," he said in a statement, "committed to the environment and sustainable growth."

PowerStream's head office in Vaughan was certified LEED Gold three years ago.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Eric Fagen, PowerStream Inc.

The ClimateSpark Social Venture Challenge launched late last month, offering people with innovative green business ideas access to as much as $50,000 in startup funding. The challenge, run by the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, the Centre for Social Innovation and the Toronto Community Foundation, draws on a fund of $500,000 that can be awarded through grants and loans to the most promising business ideas.

Jason Wagar, manager of donor services and marketing for Toronto Community Foundation, calls it a method of "crowdsourcing green innovation." Within two weeks of the phase one launch, 26 business ideas were submitted.

"What`s interesting is that some of the ideas are fully developed business plans, and others are just the beginning of an idea, but a community of more than 200 people are sharing thoughts and suggestions," says Wagar. "So these ideas can be shaped by the city--by experts, potential clients, potential suppliers.... At the end of the process the community has done some of the due diligence for the investors."

The first phase, gathering ideas online, will last nine weeks. Then 10 finalists will present their proposals to expert advisors. Finally, the finalists will make their pitch to investors, who will decide on awards, grants, loans and investments.

"Ultimately," Wagar says, "we're hoping to see a cleaner environment."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jason Wagar, Manager of Donor Services and Marketing, Toronto Community Foundation

The MaRS Discovery District, opened in 2005, has rapidly fulfilled its intended function as a hub of research and an accelerator of innovation—an incubator of dozens of start-up companies and a link between researchers, hospitals, universities, entrepreneurs, financiers and venture capitalists. Today, more than 2,300 people are directly employed by the various tenants housed at its College Street MaRS centre, and it recently announced an expansion that will see it almost double in square footage and make it, according to the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, "the largest urban innovation hub in the world."

The phase two construction—which was always part of the long-term strategy—was halted when the global economic crisis struck in 2008. Now it's back on, with committed tenants and provincial government financing, according to MaRS Discovery District CEO Ilse Treurnicht.

The construction, now underway and scheduled for completion in September 2013, will employ 4,000 workers. Information supplied by the office of the minister of innovation suggests the job gains will not all be temporary, either: after completion, 5,000 people are expected to work at the facility, including employees of anchor tenants Public Health Ontario and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

"Today, start-ups are blooming and growing across the GTA," Treurnicht writes. "These young, high-growth companies create the majority of new jobs in modern economies.... The expanded MaRS Centre will catalyze more startups and help grow companies that will generate thousands more knowledge-based jobs in the years ahead."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Ilse Treurnicht, CEO, MaRS Discovery District; Office of the Minister of Research and Innovation; Chris Stevenson
Communications Director, MaRS

Job one for the City of Mississauga is to "establish a Mississauga Innovation Leadership Alliance comprising leaders from the private sector, post-secondary institutions, and the city that can provide strategic direction, support and commitment to overseeing initiatives designed to strengthen the innovation economy in Mississauga," according to a report commissioned by the city and its Research, Innovation and Commercialization Centre (RIC).

The report, entitled "A 10-point Action Plan for Innovation in Mississauga," was unveiled late last month. Pam Banks of the RIC said in announcing the strategy that it will "get more of the Mississauga business community, in particular, involved in fast-tracking innovation" in Canada's sixth-largest city.

Thought of by some in downtown Toronto as a primarily suburban municipality, Mississauga has recently become a hub for the pharmaceuticals industry, among others. Despite this blossoming innovation culture, according to the report, the city still lacks "a meeting place to promote connectivity and a coherent approach to better capitalize on the post-secondary assets for training, education and R&D purposes."

The plans focuses on building a hub organization to connect business and academia, fostering research and development clusters, nurturing a talent stream to develop entrepreneurs and create jobs, and marketing the city as an innovation hotspot.

According to the RIC, meetings this month will examine how to begin implementing the strategy.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jana Schilder for the Mississauga RIC Centre

Earlier this year, Clive Hobson of Innovative Composites International told Yonge Street that the local manufacturer of innovative building materials expected to soon land a contract that would be a "home run in terms of growth and revenue." A $68 million deal to supply housing in Haiti and Ghana announced last week appears to fit the bill.

Innovative Composites will supply 2 million square feet of its patented EcoScape housing under the deal, and will construct and operate a new manufacturing facility in North Carolina to serve the contract.

"This is a game changer for ICI. One we have been working on for the last two years," said Innovative Composites President and CEO Terry Ball in a release. "We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but I believe we haven't even scratched the surface in terms of market penetration and will be able to accelerate project roll out once the SC facility is up and running,"

The company was founded in Toronto in 2007 by former Magna International employees who have developed new thermoplastic building materials used to construct bridges, shipping containers and housing, among other things. Company spokesperson Hobson says it is hurricane-proof, fire-proof and virtually indestructable, and can be used to make almost anything.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Clive Hobson, Director of Communications, Innovative Composites International

The new Pickering Learning Centre, announced this week by Dave Ryan, the Mayor of Pickering will be the first-ever post-secondary educational institution in the suburban GTA municipality. The facility will be run by Centennial College in partnership with Durham College, and will be located downtown, and is scheduled to be open in time to offer graduate certificate and continuing education programs in time for the fall 2012 semester.

In an email, the mayor's office said that the two-storey centre's location near the under-construction landmark pedestrian bridge will connect it to GO Rail, making it the only Ontario post-secondary educational facility with a direct link to rail transit (although Ryerson and the University of Toronto's proximity to the Toronto subway is effectively similar, and the under-construction subway link to York University will provide that school a similar distinction).

The school is part of an office tower complex directly north of the highway 401 in downtown Pickering that is the centrepiece of the city's downtown revitalization plan.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Mark Guinto, Public Affairs Coordinator, City of Pickering

Eclipsall Energy Corporation is scheduled to hold an opening celebration on June 23 for its new $10 million, 120,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in northeast Scarborough to build solar panels to serve the booming local market in sustainable energy.

Company CEO Les Lyster said last month that the facility was expected to create 100 new jobs in Toronto--a job fair was held in late May to find applicants. Eclipsall was founded in 2009, its launch coinciding with the introduction of the provincial government's Feed-in-Tarrif program that provides significant market incentives for green energy production, especially solar energy, and requires percentages of local production. Fittingly, provincial ENergy Minister Brad Duguid is scheduled to appear at the opening of the new factory and headquarters.

Eclipsall will produce " high performance monocrystalline PV modules in both 60 and 72 cell configurations," and has previously announced a financing program for potential solar energy clients as well as a supply contract with Honeybee Solar. "With the manufacturing space in hand, our vision to become a leader in providing efficient, accessible and sustainable solar solutions is becoming a reality," Lyster said in a statement.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Shaun Markey, Eclipsall Energy Corporation

The two-year-old start-up My City Lives, based at the Centre for Social Innovation at the Annex, is dedicated to local storytelling. As founder Adil Dhalla explains, after a grassroots recession-beating brainstorming initiative he and his business partner set up in 2009, "we realized our city required innovative ways to support local business people, artists and creative people, and to find ways to help people better appreciate Toronto." After meeting with various community leaders and thinkers--including the office of David Miller--they founded their project: an interactive online map that allows people to post stories about places in the city.

Since beginning in earnest in 2009, My City Lives has shown impressive growth, attracting more than 150,000 views of videos of Toronto stories, and growing from the two founders to six staff. Now, armed with more than $500,000 in funding from the Canada Media Fund, the company is "a couple months away from relaunching the website and mobile platforms that will position us for global growth." Dhalla sees the coming expansion growing the staff to 12-15 people over the next 12 months.

But in addition to business success, Dhalla sees the project as contributing to the cultural life of the city. "What's important for us to articulate is that the site is not simply a collection of videos, it's a collection of stories of individuals that collectively tell the story of the city." Dhalla, who has a history background, sees the eventual global network as offering a new perspective on local history, once the archive of location-based stories is five or 10 years old. "It could have a dramatic impact on how people can learn about not just where they live, but where other people live--places they'd like to visit or possibly move to."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Adil Dhalla, Founder, My City Lives

Waterfront Toronto announced last week that the residential condos it is building will feature ultra-high-speed fibre-optic internet service. The project will be the first residential connection by Toronto-based internet service provider Beanfield Metroconnect. "It's our first foray into residential service," says Beanfield president Dan Armstrong. "We've built quite a fibre optic network around the downtown core near the waterfront, but we've never had the critical mass to get into condominium buildings."

The service Beanfield offers will see download speeds about double what are possible through conventional providers such as Rogers and Bell, and upload speeds 50 times as fast. "What we're going to see is a significant shift in the way residents in this community use the internet," Armstrong says. While it may seem that such features would be attractive to many condo developers, Armstrong explains that typically service providers pay developers a "doorway fee" to be allowed to install their service into buildings at the construction phase. He says that while many condo boards might prefer the faster service Beanfield offers, the retroactive installation of fibre-optic cabling to every unit post-construction and occupancy is a significant hurdle. And since it is very expensive for Beanfield to install the service, it would be impractical for them to pay doorway fees.

So Waterfront Toronto exercised unique foresight in awarding the contract that will see this project offer premium service to residents. Armstrong says that his company plans to offer a support centre located in the waterfront community, staffed with people who will be available for onsite service. Armstrong says that while specific numbers are difficult to project, he expects to hire "dozens" of staff to fill new jobs on the project.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dan Armstrong, President and CEO, Beanfield Metroconnect

Since its opening as a sustainability showcase in 2009, the the 12-acre Evergreen Brickworks has gone from being an abandoned industrial area to becoming one of Toronto's most treasured sites and, according to National Geographic magazine, one of the world's top 10 ecotourism attractions (drawing about 400,000 visitors a year). Last week the facility embarked on the next step in its progress when it drew a $4.75 million investment from the provincial government to embark on a new Sustainable Cities Network initiative.

Evergreen Executive Director Geoff Cape says that the project, which will draw private funding for a total budget of about $15 million, will tie together the parallel agendas of the Brickworks. "We've always thought we needed to be a critical venue for Toronto to explore big ideas for the future of our city and also to be an international venue for showcasing best practices and innovations for green cities around the globe," he says.

The new project will work to further those two missions by being a testing and demonstration ground for a host of new green technologies over the next five years, while also hosting "thought leaders" for conferences and workshops, and will host the 2010 Transportation Expo.

Cape says the project will create a good number of jobs directly, but will have an even bigger impact for the region. "For the regional economy, the development of the sustainable green economy will create tens of thousands of jobs, at least."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Geoff Cape, Executive Director, Evergreen Brickworks

Late last month, Ontario Minister of Energy Brad Duguid appeared in Vaughan to announce a $50 million investment in a new Smart Grid Fund that the provincial government says will create jobs and build Ontario's capacity for sustainable energy.

The fund will invest in local projects that either build the capacity of the network or demonstrate a new smart grid technology. "Smart grid" is a term used for a set of technologies that use monitoring and communications to allow the electrical system to run more efficiently and sustainably.

A spokesperson for the minister's office dis provide a specific estimate for how many jobs this investment would create, but noted it is part of a green energy plan that has already created 13,000 jobs and is expected to create 50,000 in total. But the jobs will likely be mainly in the field of engineering and technology, supporting the development and commercialization of new technologies that monitor and manage electrical generation and could include electric car charging stations.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Gloria Bacci, Media and Issues Officer, Ministry of Energy

The California-based company Better Place, who promote the use of electric vehicles, officially opened their Toronto operations earlier this month.  As of March 4, the company is operating a electric vehicle demonstration centre at Toronto's Evergreen Brick Works in the Don Valley just east of Rosedale, where members of the general public can learn more about electric vehicles and see a sample of a charging station.

The project, which received $1 million in funding form the provincial government, also includes eight GTA charging stations that will mostly serve participating corporate partners for now, located in Barrie, Toronto, Bowmanville, Markham, Vaughan and Ajax.

Better Place's North American VP, Jason Wolf, says in a statement that this type of project is part of setting the stage for "mass adoption" as the first-generation of electric vehicles rolls off the assembly lines. "This project highlights some of the key building blocks to get there: government leadership; public education; and a smart network system that scales and delivers benefits to the grid, rather than strains it." In addition to the provincial government, Better Places is working with the City of Toronto and regional utilities in the suburbs.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: John Proctor, Better Place; Leigh-Ann Popek, office of the Minister of Economic Development

The GTA region of Durham--including Ajax, Whitby, Pickering and Oshawa--has traditionally had its employment anchored by the Oshawa GM plant. As the economy around car manufacturing undergoes a massive global transition, so is the regional economy.

To help that transition along, the provincial government recently announced an $83,000 grant aimed at job-creation projects in the region that will focus on driving the local economy into new sectors around innovation and cleantech. The funding will go to four specific projects: developing a strategy to attract clean technology investment; hosting a manufacturing expo aimed at attracting and showcasing innovation; launching a local business development website; and strengthening the "supply chain" in the local energy sector.

Roger Anderson, the regional chair, said that this investment will give companies a better look at why local municipalities are good places to invest, by promoting "economic development opportunities," letting employers "see what Durham Region has to offer."

Sandra Pupatello, Minister of Economic Development and Trade, said in announcing the grant that "Helping Durham region evolve its economy" will ensure the region's municipalities remain "globally competitive."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Melissa Bies, Region of Durham; Tim Weber, Office of the Minister of Economic Development and Trade