The Globe and Mail

One of the most unusual, trend-bucking and contrarian class A office buildings in Canada is under construction on the fringe of downtown Toronto. Its setting is dramatically different from that of BCE Place, 12 blocks to the west in the city's financial core -- which the new building's developer/owner will vacate. SAS Institute (Canada) Inc. is bucking the trend by building its Canadian head office on the edge of downtown rather than in a business park in Richmond Hill, Markham, Mississauga or another location. That's a bold move for the subsidiary of SAS Institute Inc., of Cary, N.C., -- which bills itself as the world's largest privately owned software company. There was a price to pay for staying downtown, and for incorporating a number of "green building" bells and whistles. SAS Canada president Carl Farrell says the company could have bought a conventional, comparable-sized building for about half the $30-million it is spending on acquiring the parking lot site at King Street East and Ontario Street, construction and incorporation of highly specialized energy-efficiency features and indoor-air-quality systems.