Toronto's decreasing vacancy and rising rental rates were the drawing cards for the newly formed joint venture to acquire 1670 Bayview Ave., a five-story structure built in 1958 and renovated in the late 1990s and early 2000, according to Richard Recny, Time Equities' asset management director. The tenant roster includes Bank of Montreal, B Street Communications Inc. and Genmark Insurance Services Inc.

"We think the first sales will be the bank branch and a clinic and they'll go to investors," Recny tells GlobeSt.com. "After that, I think a fair number of sales on the upper floors will go to users." He says office condos on floors three, four and five will be marketed for $350 per sf, with the ground-level getting tagged at $600 per sf and the second floor, $400 per sf to $475 per sf.

[IMGCAP(2)]Recny says about $600,000 to $650,000 will be pumped into renovating the elevator and mechanical systems. Basically, he says the building was in ready-to-go shape for the conversion, which was bought through the Bank of Montreal from a German fund that had teamed with a local partner to build a Toronto portfolio in recent years and then pushed it to market earlier this year. The class B building along Bayview Avenue was pulled from the sale stack and re-marketed as a one-off after an institutional buyer said it only wanted the class A stock, Recny says.