Those following the Toronto real-estate scene have been watching the dramatic transformation of the city’s waterfront for more than a decade now.
I remember an interview I did with John Campbell, then Waterfront CEO, in 2013 when the city was in the early stages of development there, most of it east of Yonge St. and Queens Quay, on the water, all the way to the Pan Am village (the Games were held in 2015) in the West Don Lands.
Waterfront Toronto’s role at the time was to take seed money from the federal, provincial, and local governments, invest it in infrastructure, and sell public land along the waterfront, and reinvest the profits into infrastructure as well.
The big priority was blending parks, natural features, and ecology with brand new residential communities and commercial development, done in a way that connects the bustle of a world-class city with the expanse of the lake.
A big lure, Campbell said back then, would be an advanced telecommunications network, Canada’s first open-access, ultra-high-speed, broadband, community network that would create a digital cluster on the waterfront. It wouldn’t be Apples or Google, but a mix of mid-sized established companies, with the Corus Quay building as a base in those earlier days.
Campbell spoke about the vision for Toronto’s re-energized waterfront, When theScore CEO John Levy gave his opening remarks to industry types at an event the company hosted last week during the one-year anniversary of Ontario regulated internet gaming market, they were reminiscent of Campbell’s vision 10 years earlier. theScore hosted the event at their spanking new offices, right in the heart of the new community that Campbell envisioned
theScore moved into the new office at the Waterfront Innovation Centre in February. It smells new and the glass gleams, as an office worker commented. The 80,000-square-foot space overlooks Lake Ontario and features state-of-the-art amenities, floor-to-ceiling windows, and plenty of open spaces for team members to gather.
Levy talked about how this was theScore’s third office building. The first was located at 360 King St. W. in the Holiday Inn building, when they launched their TV station in the 1990s and had a studio there. When the TV network was sold, the company moved to a brick-and-beam structure at 500 King St. W., where they built their betting app.
Now owned by PENN Entertainment, the proprietary tech stack powering theScore Bet in Canada and Barstool Sportsbook across 16 jurisdictions in the U.S. was built through this new location.
And theScore hired 300 people in 2022, tapping into the city’s deep technology talent pool, further building out the product and engineering teams, attracting people from all over.
theScore occupies floors four, five, six, seven, nine, and 10 and is currently adding studio space in the building for its content operations. As the first tenant in the newly completed building, theScore was able to customize the space to the needs of its growing team and fit its collaborative culture.
That’s what comes across, whether you’re walking through the content and marketing areas on the fourth floor, human resources on six, the executive offices on nine – massive windows with lake views, expansive open work areas, lots of couches and cushy chairs, fully stocked kitchenettes on each floor, countless breakout rooms for meetings and conference calls, private work stations, and larger rooms with multiple TV screens for NFL Sundays to broadcast each game, stay on top of game developments, and report on them. Certainly not stuffy, staid, or formal, the space fosters a collaborative, creative environment.
The building is part of a 475,000-square-foot complex that is one of Canada’s first developments to receive a LEED 4.1 certification, the most up-to-date standard architects use to designate a project as environmentally friendly.
