It was fun to spend the day at our Toronto office again, which is at the Centre for Social Innovation at 215 Spadina St. It’s a beautiful scene, in a vibrant, diverse and hip part of town – steps away from Chinatown, Kensington Market, and Queen St West. The building itself is very cool, with a “living wall” of plants cleaning the air and welcoming you into the lobby, a roof top deck, and one of Toronto’s only green roofs. Very livable.
The Centre is a shared space with over 30 tenants so the biggest perks are the people you run into. Today I had a meeting with the Executive Director of The Natural Step Canada, who knew and worked with at least 3 other tenants. Toby, the CEO of Corporate Knights, Canada’s foremost CSR mag, was over in the corner, and my good friends Tonya Surman, who co-founded and runs the Centre along with Social Innovation Canada, and Phillip Smith, a partner we do Web of Change with, were also there.
Just before the meeting, I serendipitously met Jordan Gold, who is based here part time while leading an environmental communications project for Enwave, one of Toronto’s biggest energy producers. Enwave has a very cool “Deep Lake Water Cooling” system that uses cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario to cool over 130 buildings downtown, using 90% less energy than air conditioning. It was over 35 degrees today, smog is low and yellow, and the city is threatening brownouts again so this kind of solution needs to be more known about. Luckily we’re talking about helping them get the word out through an online campaign.
The Centre was conceived to support social innovation and build capacity and connections through shared space, shared services, and an exciting compatible tenant mix. It has been highly successful and is part of a growing movement towards multi-tenant non-profit spaces. I think the model works and wish we could see more of these. Today proved the benefits once again!