I recently read about a restaurant barge in Cleveland, Ohio that is undergoing a massive renovation to re-purpose the vessel to become floating office space for its new corporate tenants. A Cleveland-based software firm called LeanDog is looking to be Cleveland’s first “office harbour” visionary to have their office on the water. The are not alone on this venture – it seems they will be joined by a marketing company on the former restaurant and the city hopes that the attention the concept is getting will attract the creative corporations who are looking for inspiring workspaces like this one.
This inspired me to think of creative office space that Toronto could use. One thing is for sure, I could not imagine converting the former Captain John’s floating restaurant into Toronto executive offices. Besides, being too similar to what they are doing in Cleveland, it would not be an option price-wise for a small-to-medium sized business. Only a large corporation such as a software or internet giant could afford the massive renovations and price tag of the ship itself.
For the fun of the exercise, I wanted to present some novel office-space ideas that could only be done as unique Toronto office space. The first idea would be to take over the rotating restaurant in the CN Tower and offer a 360-degree view of the city every 90 minutes. When you to to step out for a break, you could just go on the EdgeWalk around the top of the observation deck. My other unique office space Toronto idea was, where else in North America could someone have office space for rent in a castle? Casa Loma has 98 rooms, 30 bathrooms, 25 fireplaces, 3 bowling alleys and a tunnel which connects Casa Loma to the stables across the street that could be converted to additional office space.
But it did get me to thinking that even if an office business centre like Telsec wanted to open a novelty office space, would customers of its tenants take them seriously for not having a prestigious business address that was intended to be an office, and not a playground?