city building : Innovation + Job News

York Region's so-far-successful bus network, Viva, launched the next innovative faze of its development with the opening of Warden Station in downtown Markham on March 6, the first of 11 stops on its planned 35.8 kilometer Bus Rapid Transit Network. Branded VivaNext, the network features buses running on dedicated, separated lanes that could at some future time be converted to light rail if York Region decides it would be advantageous.

The entire network is expected to cost $1.4 billion, and the construction process is expected to create more than 11,000 jobs. Viva's bus service has consistently featured innovation since the launch of its conventional bus service in 2004 -- it was launched as the province's first transportation public-private partnership and from the start featured GPS navigation and real-time scheduling information for riders as well as the province's Presto card fare system, features the larger Toronto Transit Commission is only now implementing.

The entire network is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dale Albers, York Region Rapid Transit Corporation

In a move that provincial Minister of Tourism and Culture says will help the province's "diverse cultural communities" and contribute to the economic development of the province, his government has given grants totalling slightly more than $2.76 million to eight Greater Toronto Area cultural organizations.

The grants are part of the province's Community Capital Fund, administered by the Trilium Foundation, which is a $50 million pool of grants specifically designed to help non-profit organizations who serve "diverse cultural communities." According to a spokesperson, the funding is explicitly designed to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

This round of grants go to the following GTA groups:

Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention: $49,600 to renovate its Financial District office

Catholic Family Services Peel Dufferin: $310,400 to retrofit its Brampton location to begin offering services to abused families in 12 languages as well as specialized services for South Asians

Dejinta Beesha Somali Multi Service Centre: $409,100 for a designated office and programming space in Rexdale

J.H. Chinese Professionals Association of Canada: $342,200 for classroom and counselling space for its programs serving skilled foreign-trained professionals

Parya Trillium Foundation: $439,200 to transform its Markham office building into a community service centre for the region's Farsi-speaking community

Sampradaya Dance Creations: $233,800 for the South Asian dance company to expand its performance and training space in Mississauga

Sanatan Mandir Cultural Centre: $500,000 to build an addition onto its Markham community centre serving the Hindu and Indian communities (read more details in our Development News section here)

The Church of the Virgin Mary and Saint Athanasius: $500,000 to build a recreation and wellness centre for Arabic speaking seniors in Dufferin County


Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Alexis Mantell, Ontario Trillium Foundation

When the Ritz-Carlton empire opened its first Toronto hotel and condominium a few weeks ago, it didn't just become the latest addition to the city's growing luxury hotel/condominium hybrid scene.

The $500 million, 53-storey tower in the financial district also became a significant employer in Toronto. In addition to the hundreds of construction jobs created in the four-plus years the building was being erected, human resources director Danielle Saint-Louis says the enterprise also created 450 new jobs for hotel employees, ranging from service staff to management. 350 of those jobs have already been filled, and recruitment is ongoing. Saint-Louis notes that the jobs were in high demand, as almost 16,000 applicants have submitted their resumes for positions so far. Saint-Louis says that the number of applicants and the company's fine-tuned recruitment process has resulted in an elite brigade of startup employees. "Even the trainer was amazed by the calibre of our ladies and gentlemen."

In addition to its direct hiring, the hotel also made a point of supporting the local arts and culture scene with the purchase of 450 pieces of original art by "up-and-coming" Canadian artists, paintings and sculptures that Saint-Louis says are now "all over the hotel." "It's really quite amazing," she says. "It's not what you see in most hotels, which have the same old reproductions everywhere. It's quite unique and beautiful. But then it's the Ritz-Carlton, so you would expect something unique." She notes that each piece of art contains a plaque promoting the Canadian artist who created it.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Danielle Saint-Louis, Director of Human Resources, Ritz-Carlton Toronto

As we reported in June 2010, BuzzBuzzHome was launched in 2009 with the aim of revolutionizing the new homes business by providing an online resource that shows all new developments in the GTA. Since then, the company has continued to grow by leaps and bounds.

BuzzBuzzHome is adding two more staff -- one just starting now and one joining the team in April--bringing their total number of employees to 14, which founder Matt Slutsky points out is 700 per cent growth in the past 18 months.

Slutsky says that among the most successful initiatives on the site was the recent addition of forums where users can post conversations. "We realized that we'd grown into more than just a listings resource, that we'd become more of a social network. So we added a spot for people to have discussions." Topics posted often draw dozens of comments from real estate agents and other industry watchers in a matter of hours, which tends to underscore Slutsky's point about the desire for information about real estate in the city.


Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Matthew Slutsky, President, BuzzBuzzHome

At an event at MaRS last week, the provincial Minister of Research and Innovation, Glen Murray, announced that MaRS would become part of the Ontario Network of Excellence. At an event that showcased the innovative power of the GTA displaying companies launched at MaRS and by incubators such as Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone and OCAD, Murray touted the importance of Toronto.

"There are things that can only happen in this country's financial and cultural capital, things that cannot happen anywhere else. In a knowledge economy... if you do not have a large city, you are North Dakota, or Montana," he said. He added that Toronto has taken up the challenge of leading the country. "We are not a place of small ideas, we are a place of big ideas that go to big places and change our world in real time."

To continue to foster that environment, Murray announced a $2.25 million commitment over the next three years for MaRS so that it may continue its mandate to foster innovation in Toronto by harnessing expertise from across academic and business sectors to aid in launching and developing companies. MaRS will become on of 14 centres in the province-wide "Network of Excellence" being built to foster innovation.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Glen Murray, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation

At an event in downtown Toronto last week, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation Glen Murray suggested that investing in knowledge should be the provincial government's re-election issue -- a position he compared favourably to the Conservative party's plan to offer cheaper beer prices. He said there's a reason such an investment is important.

"The economy is changing at a pace unheard of in human history. This is bigger than the industrial revolution, which took 200 years. This is bigger than the agricultural revolution which took 2,000 years. These revolutions are happening in months. It took less than two years for Facebook to get 58 million participants, it took television 20 years to get that many people. The pace of change is monthly for what used to take place in decades. The pace of change in society has become a social challenge in itself."

In what he said he thought was one of the "most important things I'll ever be involved in in my life," Murray announced the launch of a "multi-year, fully funded project" to share data. While details were not made available, Murray said the "core strategic research centre" would be set up at MaRS and rolled out over the next four months. The plan, he said, is to "try to create a collaborative open-source platform where companies, government and not-for-profits will provide data" and knowledge that would be available to other researchers of all stripes across the province. "My goal is, in the next decade, to drive this collaborative centre to make us the first true wiki-mobile-digital economy."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Glen Murray, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation

Toronto's Innovative Composites International was born in 2007 when some former Magna engineers struck out to find applications for a new type of thermoplastic material they had developed. The composite compound they developed, suitable for building things (shipping containers, houses) is lightweight, fireproof, hurricane-proof. As company spokesperson Clive Hobson says, the composite can be used to build "virtually anything" and is "virtually indestructible."

Now up to 22 staff members at the Front Street office and the Michigan manufacturing facility, the company brought its product out to market last year. Since then, it's started to see tremendous growth -- their materials have been used to construct a 125-foot pedestrian bridge in Chicago, and they just signed another contract for storage containers last month. All the while they've continued to innovate with their product line, as evidenced by their late-January announcement of three new patent applications.

But Hobson says the potential for growth an order of magnitude larger is on the horizon: the company is on the list of six finalists for contracts to rebuild the shattered country of Haiti in cooperation with the Clinton Foundation. While Hobson says there are a lot of "ifs and buts" remaining in the tendering process there, but the firm is optimistic that they and their partners may soon be constructing 5,000 or more homes using ICI's materials. "I'm trying not to use hyperbole, but that would be represent a 'home run' in terms of growth in revenue." Hobson says ICI would need to construct a new manufacturing facility to accommodate such an order -- and hire approximately 100 more staff (representing a sixfold increase in employees). A decision on the Haiti rebuilding contract is expected within the next 60-90 days.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Clive Hobson, Innovative Composites  International Inc.

Solar panels installed by GEMCO (Glennbarra Energy Management Company) at three city-run agencies will provide hot water through solar power. The zero emissions water heating is expected to meet almost half the hot water needs of the Toronto Zoo, Birchmount Community Centre and True Davidson Acres. The truly inspired touch is that the installations and the water will cost the city no more than regular hot water usage would have, thanks to an innovative financing arrangement through the Toronto Atmospheric Fund.

"The innovation we provide is a utility-style service -- we install and maintain the solar system and the city facilities get hot water at the same price as fossil-fuel heated water, without up-front capital costs, operations and maintenance responsibilities or pollution," Darren Cooper, President and CEO of GEMCO, said in a statement.

The 237 solar panels that will provide the power were financed through the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, who expect to get a competitive return on their investment. The city agencies have contracted to pay rates equivalent to what they would pay a carbon-based utility for their water usage for the next 20 years. Glennbarra expects to see a profit as a result of that contract. Everyone wins.

Tim Stoate of the Toronto Atmospheric Fund says that this type of financing arrangement represents a new model for clean energy companies and users that offers both financial return and environmental benefits.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Tim Stoate, Toronto Atmospheric Fund; Darren Cooper, GEMCO

The Town of Markham, just outside Toronto, bills itself as "Canada's High-Tech Capital." Already, the town is home to more than 800 technology and life sciences companies, including AMD Microprocessors (whose new processor took the recent CES convention by storm). It's a reputation the municipality is looking to build on with their "Markham 2020" plan, which urbanist Richard Florida called "the tightest, the smartest and the best" such plan he'd ever seen when it was released in 2009.

Late last year, the physical focal point of that plan opened its doors. The Markham Convergence Centre is a 30,000-square-foot home for technology business incubation in the heart of the town. As of its opening, it becomes the new home of York Region's existing technology and life sciences organizations including NCMDD/YORKbiotech, ISCM, Innovation York, Markham Small Business Centre, Markham Board of Trade and York Technology Alliance. The Mayor of Markham, Frank Scarpitti, declined to comment for this story -- his office cited a major announcement regarding the MCC coming at a press conference this week. Last May, Scarpitti said of the MCC, "This facility will allow Canada to compete globally in the medical devices industry while attracting highly skilled jobs to our community."

Since it opened it's doors in October 2010, it has already begun accomplishing that, according to Jeremy Laurin ISCM. "Still early days here, we get a lot of industry traffic already," Laurin writes in a post this month on the MaRS blog. "The MCC offices see some of York Region's top industry and academic people here on a regular basis. That's a good sign." Laurin notes that he expects the incubator concept to come alive at MCC this year.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Office of the Mayor of the Town of Markham; yorkregion.com; Jeremy Laurin, ISCM; Markham Convergence Centre
 

The provincial government's Health Technology Exchange -- known as HTX, it was created to fund and encourage healthcare technology innovation in Ontario -- announced last week that it had helped secure Toronto as the location of the first global GE Pathology Imaging Centre of Excellence.

The facility run by GE Healthcare will conduct research and promote best practices. As GE Healthcare VP Peter Robinson says, pathology is largely an area that has "escaped the impact of technology," and the new imaging centre will change that. Robinson expects the centre to fundamentally transform global medical practice. "We have the potential to drive much higher levels of quality ... and really change the way cancer is diagnosed and treated."

Robinson says the project wound up settling in Toronto due to a number of factors, from "a pressing need on the public policy front, a willing partner in the provincial government, especially the Ministry of Reasearch and Innovation, a depth of clinical expertise," that he notes is among top 10 in the world in the field, combined with, "a research community that extends across the entire region that is rich with capacity ... with tremendous imaging expertise. So a number of things came together to convince [GE's startup digital pathology venture] Omnyx that this was the right environment.

The announcement was officially welcomed by representatives of the provincial government, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and the University Health Network, whose members will participate in and benefit from the centre's research. According to Robinson, the centre will employ 15 engineers directly.

HTX provided a $2.25 million grant to the project, which will join a $7.75 million investment from GE Healthcare. According to HTX, an additional $7.2 million in investment has been promised by R&D partners in the project.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Peter Robinson, VP and General Manager, GE Healthcare Canada

Armed with a paper bag full of cash and a love for design, urban planning, art and science, the newly formed Awesome Foundation Toronto is looking to encourage people to improve the city, make it more fun and encourage serious social projects with a decidedly unserious-sounding grants program. They're offering $1,000 to the person who submits the best idea to "do something awesome."

The Toronto project is spearheaded by Mozilla Foundation consultant and "pitch designer" Geoffrey MacDougall, and joins the growing international Awesome Foundation network. As outlined in the Boston founder's founding post, the project is a sort of "micro-MacArthur Foundation for your flashes of micro-genius": "The idea is simple: create a monthly $1,000 grant awarded to a person doing things to forward the interest of Awesome. The money will be spent on a project, activity, or research, and it will be (intentionally) broadly defined. We don't even really care if it's for fun or for profit. We will never claim your intellectual property or anything like that, and anyone in the world is eligible. So long as you need the money and the idea is awesome, you will receive it with no strings attached. Period. End of story."

The Toronto chapter's first call for submissions asks for videotaped entries explaining the awesome idea, and why it needs $1,000 to be realized. The deadline for submissions is February 15th.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Geoffrey MacDougall, Awesome Foundation Toronto

Roughly 6 per cent of Toronto's population lives in buildings owned by Toronto Community Housing -- that's 164,000 people with low and moderate incomes, making it Canada's largest social housing provider and the GTA's biggest landlord. So when TCH embarks on a large-scale renovation project, it provides an opportunity not just to make the quality of its tenants' lives better, but to make a difference in the jobs and training atmosphere for low-income people across Toronto. That latter mission is a component of a forthcoming announcement from TCH.

According to information provided by TCH communications representative Keesha Abraham, an initiative soon to be announced will see the city invest $21.6 million in renovating and retrofitting 49 social housing buildings across the city. The work will be aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of the buildings, in some cases through the installation of solar panels that will generate revenue for TCH.

Abraham notes that a community economic development component of that project will include guaranteeing jobs and training opportunities for tenants of TCH buildings. Since the installation of solar panels and energy efficient retrofits is one of the fastest-growing employment markets in Ontario since the introduction of the province's Feed-in-Tariff program, the jobs and training provided through this project provide the potential for real employment stability for the residents who participate.

Work is scheduled to begin this year, and will continue through 2012, according to Abraham.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Keesha Abraham, Communications Consultant, Toronto Community Housing
 

Construction on the redevelopment of Markham Stouffville Hospital began Dec. 6, after a fixed-price contract was signed with PCL Constructors Canada for $200.4 million. The redeveloped facility will include two new wings and renovations to existing areas of the hospital, that will double the size of the facility. The expansion will include a new emergency department, more beds, and new diagnostic imaging, maternity and mental health units.

According to Jim Dougan, regional president of PCL, the construction itself will create about 300 on-ste jobs during its peak. The enhanced facility will create even more new jobs once it opens -- an estimated 875 staff will be added to the current 1,700, including 60 new physicians (in addition to the 275 currently employed).

Hospital President and CEO Janet Breed credited partners at Infrastructure Ontario and the Ministry of Health for helping fund 90 per cent of the project's construction costs, and said it will benefit residents of York Region. "This announcement assures our community they will have access to a state-of-the-art hospital," she said.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Lisa Joyce, Markham Stouffville Hospital

The Toronto Port Lands -- the site of heavy industry on the waterfront since the 1800s -- represents one of the largest soil remediation projects in the world. And rather than "digging and dumping," the standard practice for such sites, Waterfront Toronto has opted to attempt a massive soil recycling project on the spot.

It has partnered with international environmental consulting giants DEC and Tetra Tech on the Port Lands Pilot Soil Recycling Facility to test the effectiveness (and environmental soundness) of reusing the soil rather than dumping it. If it is successful, Waterfront Toronto President and CEO John Campbell says it could "change the way impacted soil is managed in Ontario."

Last week, the project was recognized with a technological innovation award at the prestigious Canadian Urban Institute Brownie Awards.

"We are very proud and honoured that the Canadian Urban Institute acknowledged our pilot soil recycling facility with a Brownie," said Campbell in a statement. "Soil recycling is an opportunity to turn contaminated soil into a resource instead of a liability."

The pilot testing, which began in September, should conclude this month. After review and assessment, the decontamination process is expected to take place over the next 10 to 20 years.

Writer: Edward Keenan

Source: Tari Stork, Project Communications Manager, Waterfront Toronto

The Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre, a non-profit agency that serves its community through programs to help low-income and vulnerable people, is currently hiring 16 youth aged 16-30 for a variety of positions ranging from junior marketing assitant to culinary arts worker to junior fashion designer.

The positions are full-time 24-week contracts, funded by Service Canada to help youth who face barriers to the job market, and are especially suitable for youth who have not completed high school, according to program worker Irfan Ali, although all youth are welcome to apply.

The hiring is being done through the agency's youth program "The L.O.F.T.", which aims to give local youth -- especially immigrant, aboriginal, low-income and others who are at-risk -- job skills development opportunities while engaging them as citizens in the development of their own community. Lynn Daly, Executive Director of the Centre, said upon accepting Service Canada funding this summer that this program would be "life changing" for participants, noting that Toronto has the "highest high-school dropout rates in the Greater Toronto Area."

These hiring announcements follow an earlier six job postings also funded by Service Canada -- those employees were scheduled to begin starting work this month.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Irfan Ali, Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre; Michelle Bakos, Press Secretary, Office of Minister Diane Finley