Cadillac Fairview

Cadillac Fairview is a Toronto-based owner, operator and developer of commercial real estate, and one of the largest in North America.

It began in 1953 as the Cadillac Development Corporation, building high-rise apartments in Guelph at the height of the post-war boom. Its long partnership with the Toronto-Dominion Bank, later joined by the T. Eaton Company, produced the projects it is still best known for: Pacific Centre in Vancouver, opening in phases from 1971, and the Toronto Eaton Centre, opening in phases from 1977.

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which bought the company outright in December 1999 for $2.3 billion, acquiring the 78 percent of shares it did not already hold.

That ownership is the most important fact on this page. Cadillac Fairview is the real estate arm of a pension plan that pays retired Ontario teachers, so its investment horizon is measured in decades and its obligation is to fund pensions rather than to exit a project at a profit.

Pension-owned developers build differently. They hold what they build, they operate it themselves, and they are structurally uninterested in short-term flips.

A portfolio of landmark commercial property including the Toronto-Dominion Centre, the Toronto Eaton Centre, Pacific Centre in Vancouver, the Rideau Centre in Ottawa and White City Place in London.

Its core has historically been office and retail rather than housing, which is why most Torontonians know the buildings without knowing the company owns them.

Because the large downtown sites it has held for decades are being redeveloped as mixed-use, and residential is part of that.

Office and retail owners across Toronto are adding housing to sites they already control, which is generally where the best-located new residential in the city now comes from. The land was assembled long ago, the transit is already there, and the owner has no reason to rush.

For a buyer that is a different proposition from a purpose-built condominium site. The residential is one component of a place that also has to work as an office, retail and public environment.

Establish who is actually building and who will be the condominium declarant. On large mixed-use redevelopments the landowner and the residential developer are often different companies in a joint venture, and the one whose record matters to you is the second.

Ask what else is planned on the site and over what period, since these projects run for many years.

Ask how the residential component is separated from the commercial one: shared entrances, shared servicing, and how costs are split between the condominium corporation and the commercial owner. That cost sharing agreement will affect your maintenance fees for as long as you own.

Then the usual: deposit schedule, parking and locker, interim occupancy and the closing timeline.