Buying buildings and building social innovation!

Yesterday, at exactly 4:59pm, the Centre for Social Innovation became the official owner of 720 Bathurst. We are ecstatic! We can’t wait to be able to bring even more social change to the city of Toronto!

Buying a building, it turns out, requires an incredible array of talent and expertise. And in our case, attempting to move from having no assets to actually owning a building, it also requires a level of belief in social innovation, a willingness to take risks and a commitment to doing things in a new way. The Centre for Social Innovation has been blessed with an incredible team to help make this happen!

Our board of directors have been visionary, our staff team dedicated and our business and building advisors clever. Our investors are proving that a commitment to values can make sense and they have put their trust in the future of Toronto. Our partners in the city and the credit unions are demonstrating that institutions can enable social change on the ground.  So many conversations along the way have helped bring it all together. We are so grateful.

And so today is a new day. Now when the alarms go off, they will call us.  OMG! And what a summer we have before us.

Next week, we begin hosting Information Sessions for potential tenants/members.

Next Friday, May 28th, we will host the party to end all parties, and although there are still some tickets available, we are filling up fast.

Then, June 1st, renovations to the space begin. We will begin work outfitting the 1st and 2nd floors immediately. Our goal is to begin opening space for new members beginning September 1st. We are particularly keen on folks interested in co-working and desk space (turns out our building is smaller than we would like).

We are still looking for investors! Although we have recruited the most world-class social investors in order to close the deal, we are still looking to raise $250K in Community Bonds. This, assuming that all works out with the complex web of financial systems, will make it possible for small investors to become a part of the Centre for Social Innovation.

In the meantime, I will begin working on a series of blog postings which I am loosely calling ‘Anatomy of Structuring a Social Investment with No Assets of Your Own’ or maybe it will be called ‘How to Become Completely Leveraged in 3 Easy Steps’ or ‘Convincing the Smartest People in Canada to Help Bring your Project to Life.’

In any case, we are grateful, we are happy and we are ready to get to the real work of bringing this new location to life!