By Jemicah Colleen Marasigan
Some people have mastered the kitchen-table commute. If the office is going to win them back, it has to make the day better: an easier trip in, a welcome that feels human, and tools and rooms that work from the moment you arrive.
That focus anchored a panel at NAIOP’s CRE.Converge this week in Toronto. Moderator Brendan Sullivan, senior vice president – national lead investor leasing, CBRE, put the market in plain terms: new supply has slowed, demand is selective, but the best-run buildings are filling first.
Start where the day starts. For Kevin Hardy, head of the Eastern Canadian office at Oxford Properties Group, the return to office begins with a commute that lands at a building that simply works. He pointed to a tower beside Toronto’s main transit hub and said, “Our highest performing asset here in Toronto is a building on 61 Bay right beside Union Station.”
The reason is straightforward: shorten the trip, make arrival effortless, and showing up becomes routine.
Granite Properties Senior Director of Development Aaron Bidne takes the same view when he sizes up a deal. “I would much rather have a 1990s vintage asset in the best submarket than have a brand-new asset that’s on the side of the freeway [that’s not surrounded by amenities].”
Run service like a program, and not just a promise. If location is the first win, reliability is the second. Elevators, entries and service should feel calm and consistent so people can get to work fast.
Oxford backs that with a “property experience” (and not “property management,” as Hardy noted) model that moves on-site teams front and center to greet, guide and solve problems in the flow of the day.
Concierges handle visitors and room bookings. Coordinators help tenants plan all-hands days. Operations keep tech quiet and reliable.
Welcome people at street level. Ada Healey, chief real estate officer at Vulcan Real Estate, starts at the sidewalk. If the walk, the lobby and the first few minutes feel good, the rest of the day follows.
“We were very focused on what the pedestrian experience was like, what the ground level was like, the retail, the amenities in the project,” she said.
On two large Bellevue projects that ultimately landed Amazon, her team adapted to user needs.
“We shifted to all electric. We installed operable windows. We changed the whole lobby configuration,” she said. The goal is a front door that feels like an invitation, not an obstacle.
Give teams rooms they actually use. Hybrid days need places to gather, present and breathe, not just more desks.
At 23 Springs in Dallas, Granite put parking below grade to open a half-acre of green space ringed with restaurants, then wired outdoor areas with full A/V so all-hands meetings can happen outside.
“Teams can meet outside with full audio-visual, get fresh air and go back upstairs energized,” Bidne said. Food nearby matters, fresh air matters, and the rhythm of the day matters even more.
Design for the day people live now, not the schedule from six years ago.
Make move-in painless. For Gordon Wadley, chief operating officer at DREAM Asset Management, speed is the answer. Prebuilt, fully furnished spec suites remove uncertainty, which is why they lease.
“If everything is in there and it’s ready to go, and you don’t have to spec the cost of fitting the space, it’s going to be very attractive,” he said.
Swing space helps too, especially when hot-desking leaves firms short on rooms during peak days. Ready-to-use suites and short-term expansions bridge the gap.
Invest where it matters. On Bay Street in Toronto, DREAM turned aging mid-rises into places people want to be by upgrading systems, refreshing entries and curating ground-floor retail that actually gets used.
“We brought in some of the best retail in North America,” Wadley said. And the leasing response followed.
“We took a portfolio that was about 65% vacant at the time, and now we’ve committed just under 90%.”
Let data steer. Real usage data enables efficiency and smooths operations. Live room bookings and access patterns help right-size cleaning, security and HVAC, and show which programs deserve another run.
Design for patterns and not debates. In-office policies vary by market, but usage is rising. Canadian banks are moving to four days a week. Public agencies are asking for more in-person time. In the Sun Belt markets, activity is below 2019 but trending up.
Hardy put it simply: “We do not talk about return to office. We ask how to help people do their best work.”
Make the first five minutes effortless and keep trimming friction through the day. When the building does that, attendance follows. Because none of this is an accident.
It is the work of steady teams who listen hard, fix fast and implement small improvements every week. That is the difference. Keep that promise and people come in. Keep it again tomorrow and vacancy turns into momentum.
Do it long enough and that is how you bend the curve back toward full floors.
This post is brought to you by JLL, the social media and conference blog sponsor of NAIOP’s CRE.Converge 2025. Learn more about JLL at www.us.jll.com or www.jll.ca.
