MaRS Settles Ontario Government Through Private Financing

 Finally, MaRS Discovery District has made the government proud by silencing the mouth of its opposing parties. Some time ago, the innovation hub was in a situation in which it lacked tenants, and to this effect, the Ontario government had to come in and grant them a loan of about $400 million just to ease the struggle of finding tenants for virtually empty tower that they were faced with. According to a state by the Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid and Research and Innovation Minister Reza Moridi, the best of the whole deal is that MaRS was able the pay majority of the government’s loan , with interest, three years ahead of scheduled time.

According to Gord Nixon, chair of the board of directors at MaRS, he stated that with tenants like Airnb, IBM, JLABS, Autodesk, Merck, PayPal, Etsy and even Facebook, it’s highly possible that they wouldn’t be seen seeking for a loan from the Ontario government in the future. It’s actually very productive to see MaRs pay off their loan, this way it shows that Ontario government didn’t make any mistake granting them the loan, plus it shows that the government really supports individuals who bring forth good proposals. However, MaRS still needed funding for it’s second tower, so it reached out to province, and was granted a loan of about $225 million, $86 million line of credit for the purpose of tenants attraction, spent $65 million buying out an American real estate company’s interest in the project, and gave a $16-million grant for the purchase of the land.

The company hopes to get a finance of about $290 million from Sun Life Financial, iA Financial Group, and Manulife through investing in a 19 year bond, seeing that they had an issues leasing the tower which was 30 percent complet after getting the loans, its not as if they spent the loan on un necessities, but with high rents demanded by the U.S real estate company, they were bound to be faced with such an issue. The good side is that they’ve paid the Ontario government, plus they have established new generations of innovative mind that would take Ontario to the next level.