A more congenial and effective workspace for our employees

Remember that weird memo that came out a few weeks ago, about how the “Real Estate Division is currently exploring the possibility of bringing new tenants into the Toronto Broadcasting Centre?”

Yesterday the CBC went to Toronto City Hall to apply for a change to the zoning bylaw (item #23), which would allow for 10,000 more square metres of non-CBC space in the CBC building. Word from the hearing is that they plan to rent out the entire 7th floor and move the sets department to the suburbs where the rent is cheap.

Which strikes me as terribly retro. Isn’t that the kind of setup we had before the TBC was built?

And if this is what they want to do, why don’t they just tell us?

5 Comments

  • Anonymous says:

    yeah, they were gonna do this in Montreal… and all we got was a bunch of empty floors. eerie. I think they’re gone now.

    See also CBC Halifax: a hulking, empty studio facing right onto the sidewalk…. ugly.

  • Anonymous says:

    Next they’ll be trying to slip an application for a permit to make use of the “dead” space from the 2nd floor to the roof we call the Atrium. Imagine all the revenue they could make closing that in?

    Ugh.

  • Anonymous says:

    I’m really afraid that the “plan” can be characterized in just two words: “scorched earth”. There’s no doubt in my mind that the current management is filled with vindictive, money-grubbing self-aggrandizers whose only vision for public broadcasting is to run it into the ground.

    The CBC’s board of directors should be ashamed of what it’s allowed to happen to the once-proud institution it’s charged with overseeing. Its cowardice in not censuring senior management for their continuing abject failures is just the most recent, most visible sign of an overall failure to uphold its duties to the Canadian public.

    We saw during the lockout that what makes the CBC truly great is the people whose passion is to tell the stories of those around them to the country and the world. If there’s one hopeful thought to take away it’s that these talented and caring individuals—who understand what the CBC is and should be—won’t allow themselves to be silenced for long once the Rabinovitches and Stursbergs finally destroy the last shreds of the organization they purport to be guiding.

  • Anonymous says:

    It’s a bit astounding really but at least if they have somewhat of a plan for the 7th floor it makes more sense than what they did with the CBL space on the ground floor — Move everybody out, close studios, cram everyone onto the 3rd floor, build a new radio studio — all so the lucrative downtown real estate of the CBL space could be used for…wait for it…I-News Training. Great for the public viewing gallery on Front Street. I suggest maybe this time they get some new tenants to sign on the dotted line before they boot the CBC tenants out.

    I really wish the folks behind this great plan would clear out of their own offices and put that space up for rent!!

    Someday we’ll be renting space from the Design Academy for the one CBC floor.

    Jeez. I think freezing rain makes me cynical. Hell, let’s just move back to Jarvis Street.

  • Justin Beach says:

    From where I’m sitting it all comes back to the same spot – there is no plan, or if there is a plan they are afraid to tell anyone what it is out of fear of the reaction. They are shooting blind into the forest and hoping a tied up deer staggers out and falls on the hood of the car.

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