Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Les Klein on Transforming 299 Queen St. West: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1799

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

In this 1799th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Les Klein, founder of Quadrangle, about how he transformed a heritage building at 299 Queen Street West into the headquarters of the CHUM-City media brand, fulfilling the vision of Moses Znaimer. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, Blue Sky Agency, Kindling, RetroFestive.ca and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

If I see her, what do I say that I'm doing here in the building? You came to see me. I work in the building. What do you do? I'm an architect. Toronto. I'm in Toronto, where you want to get a city love. I'm from Toronto. Where you want to get the city love. I'm in Toronto. I'm like, you want to get the city love.

My city love me back for my city love. Welcome to episode 1,799 of Toronto Miked, proudly brought to you by Retrofestive.ca, Canada's pop culture and Christmas store. Great Lakes Brewery. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Blue Sky Agency. Ask Doug Mills about how Silen delivers the space to focus, collaborate, and recharge. Nick Aini's, he's the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Building Success. Two podcasts you ought to listen to.

Kindling, go to shopkindling.ca for free one-hour cannabis delivery. Recycle My Electronics.comitting to our planet's future means properly. recycling our electronics of the past and Ridley Funeral Home Pillars of the community since 1921. Today, making his Toronto Mike's debut. It's Les Klein.

Pleasure to see you again, Les. Nice to see you, Mike. We have to give some love to the man who brought us together. Do you know who I'm referring to here? I'm going to assume it's Nick. It's Nick. So Nick Aini's from Fusion Corp. Have you done any work with Nick yet?

Not directly, no. We're going to fix that, right? Well, of course, we know of each other, so I think the fate has already been confirmed. Okay, because he's listening right now. He'll be very happy to see that. Nick was here this morning, actually. Oh, cool.

We recorded with Tony Clement, an episode of Building Success. People can find that in their podcast feed. But I want to thank Nick Aini's for this connection because you were a guest on Nick's podcast, Building Toronto Skyline. Yep. And you did that one remotely. I think he's a bit jealous.

I got you in the basement for this one. What lured you here? Was it the lasagna you were going to receive from Palma Pasta, the beer from Great Lakes? How did I get you in the basement? I'd always prefer face-to-face meetings. Okay. Yeah.

So do I. And so we're cut from that same cloth. But people can hear, if they want to hear like architecture talk and more like about building homes and stuff, the Nikaiini's episode of less Klein is a it's an episode of building Toronto Skyline go check that out but I was here right where I am now and I was listening to you chat with Nick Iini's Les and then I heard a reference

to 299 Queen Street West and just hearing that address it's like I perked up all of a sudden I said wait what does Les have to do of 299 Queen Street West and then I reached out because we're going to go back and then we'll get to 299 Queen but what was your role in the renovations, the redevelopment of this historic building, 299 Queen Street West, when Moses Nymer and the Chum City Empire was making that their home. What was your role in all of that less? Well, I, sorry. No, you're all choked up because you're on Toronto-Miked.

This is a big deal for that. That must be it. No, I was the architect for I, my firm was the architect for that project. We worked on that building for over 25 years. until um essentially the chum empire was sold to uh bell media well here's what i could do less i can set you up to

start talking about like what got you interested in architecture and then how you came an architect i can run up right now i can run up and get a glass of water do you want a glass of water um if i can just try to clear oh yeah take yeah step away there here let me do this i'll mute you for a few seconds you uh get that voice in order because this is a deep dive. I need to hear less flying here. And I'm muting you now. And go ahead, clear that

throat, go nuts, because I'm going to tell the listenership about a couple of partners that made this possible. In addition to Nick Iini's, I want to just say that Recyclemyelectronics.ca has been a wonderful sponsor throughout 2025. And if you have old electronics, old cables, old devices, you don't throw that in the garbage to have those chemicals end up in our landfill. go to Recycle My Electronics.ca and put in your postal code and find out where you drop that off. Also, if you enjoy cannabis, perfectly legal now, Les, I'm going to unmute you now. But if you enjoy cannabis, go to shopkindling.ca, you know, make your purchase. And in under an hour, it will be in your possession.

It's delivered to you. In under an hour, you can track the delivery like it's an Uber ride, and it's fully discreet. So shopkindling.ca is free one-hour cannabis delivery. and thank you, Kindling. I'll give you the rest of the gifts later. But, you know, even before we talk about architecture, am I remembering correctly from building Toronto Skyline that you, less, are the son of Holocaust survivors?

I am, yes. Would you mind sharing with me, you know, what you learn from your parents? Any, any... I know, it's a heavy one to start. That's a heavy one to start with. I'll say that. I am a Jew, my parents.

were Jewish. My parents were both Hungarian. My dad for many generations, because he had to track it at one point to prove that he was in fact the proper Hungarian during the time of the rise of fascism and Nazism. And then the inevitable, as it appeared to be, in World War II, happened and the Nazis came to Hungary to clear the place of Jews. And my father, being of a certain age, was recruited, quote, unquote, into labor brigades, which was basically forced labor. And my mother and her family were sent on train to a concentration camp. Stories that I don't really know the true reason for,

but they did not end up at Auschwitz, as most Hungarian Jews ended up. up, and therefore, into the gas chambers and the crematoria, they ended up in Bergen-Belsen, which was a concentration camp in Germany, where they spent the rest of the war until, luckily, they were liberated by the American army before the raging typhoid epidemic killed most of the people in the camp. Oh, my goodness gracious. I'm so, like, I know how difficult that must be to kind of start off talking about such horrific events in your family's history, but I think it's important that we don't forget these

things. It is, I've always said the Holocaust is at once a very, very specifically Jewish experience, and on the other hand, an extremely important human experience. What we do not learn from people's ability to dehumanize others can be repeated over and over again. And sadly, despite the motto of never again, we have seen it happen again and again, and why we stand up for, stand up against terrorism, stand up against that notion of dehumanizing others for whatever purposes they choose is just wrong. It's, again, it's a Jewish value, but it's also a human value. Did your parents ever talk about this experience?

Um, initially no. Uh, they did not speak to my sister and me about it until we became about high school age and we started to ask questions, at which point they realized that, uh, it was in fact the wrong thing to do, to not talk about it. And they began to talk to us about it. And then more importantly, they began to volunteer, to present to community groups, to churches, to high schools, to universities, to any kind of group that would want to listen, to tell them, again, about their very specific experience,

but more importantly, about the larger human lessons that need to be learned from that kind of horrible, horrible condition. And your parents, did they emigrate to Canada? No, no. Again, this is a long. long story. But I have time if you do. As many, as many Hungarian Jews tried to do at least, they returned to Hungary. Obviously, it was the language that they knew. It was the culture that they knew, despite the hatreds and horrors that they saw. So they returned to Hungary, and

it was not until four years later that my mother and father met and were married. And then in the way of many Holocaust survivors, the idea of repopulmonary. the people. I was born a year later. And at that point, my father had been ordained as a rabbi. So first, in a very small community in the south of Hungary, and then a slightly larger community in the north of Hungary. And, of course, when I say communities,

these were shadows of the communities they were before the war, because they've been cleared, as the Germans like to say. But he became a rabbi. he was active in the community and kind of like a traveling clergyman to all the little towns where there would be one or two Jewish families left. Anyway, in six years after that, six years after I was born, the Hungarian Revolution broke out. And most people don't know about that, but it was an uprising against communist rule in Hungary. There were several in that time frame.

There was one in Poland, but the Hungarian was the largest. for about three weeks the Hungarians managed to put into place a provisional government that was not directly communist and then unbelievably brutally the Russians rolled in with their tanks and crushed the rebellion but in that three week period

my mother, my sister and I with my mother's family managed to escape Hungary and ended up in Vienna and ultimately in the United States States. So we arrived in the United States on U.S. Thanksgiving Day in 1956. My dad, who was involved heavily with assisting people who wanted to leave and was in Budapest at the time, especially Jewish people who wanted to leave Hungary at that point, was captured by the Russians and sentenced to death for his role in the revolution and through a series of

coincidences and pure luck managed to escape and he ended up in Vienna to find out that we had gone to the United States and he ended up coming to the United States and arriving on St. Valentine's Day, 1957. So these are two holidays that had no meaning to Hungarians and certainly no meaning to Hungarian Jews, Thanksgiving and St. Valentine's Day, but to this day, those are two very important days in our family's history. Well, Les, we haven't even talked about architecture, and I know we're going to dive deep into 299 Queen Street West, but part of this is also getting to know you.

And I think that that backstory, that's tremendous. Your parents, you know, surviving the Holocaust, then meeting, and then what happened in Hungary, and then ending up in the United States. So where in the United States are you all living at this point? Well, we arrived to an Army, camp in New Jersey, but ultimately settled in New York City while we tried to find out what happened to my dad, and he came, and you know, you really do have to understand, we knew not

a word of English. We knew nothing of American culture other than what my parents and my aunts and uncles knew about, you know, the golden land where opportunities were enormous and there was freedom. Right. So as soon as my dad arrived, he set to work to get a job. I think he worked in a fur factory and a bunch of other things while he learned English and tried to connect with the Jewish community in the U.S. And about a year

after he arrived, he got his first job as an assistant rabbi in Springfield, Massachusetts. And after that, it was kind of every two or three years, we moved to a different city to where he tried to find a bigger congregation, to better

to offer a better life to his family. Ultimately, we settled in Manchester, New Hampshire, which is a city about an hour north of Boston, where I lived through my high school, but my parents lived there for 45 years. And he was the rabbi in one of the synagogues there, and I went to high school, and then I was very, very lucky to get into MIT,

where I went originally to be a theoretical mathematician. I'd like to say that when I got to MIT, it was a humbling experience on a number of different levels. First of all, because every kid in their high school, every kid there was the smartest kid or the second smartest kid in their high school. And I realized that I actually could be just class average in this group. But more importantly,

I realized that theoretical mathematicians were really, really, really, really smart, maybe smarter than me, and more importantly, they didn't have quite as many social skills. So I actually had always had an interest in architecture in the back of my mind. I would draw things and I would read things. And I said, you know what, maybe I'm going to try architecture because it has to do with actually building stuff that you can touch and feel. But everything at MIT, whether you're studying architecture, mathematics, nuclear science, electrical engineering was about problem solving. And that was a really, really important part of my education.

It wasn't that architecture was first and foremost an art. It was rather that it was a process like any other problem solving process. It's a tool for coming to a solution. and that I mean to this day that is my approach to architecture I think an architectural education gives people tools to manage complex processes synthesize them and create a solution or in fact several solutions to any problem and we used to say at MIT that there are two kinds of solutions one is the brute force solution you know a kind of to crank through and carrying through and then the other one is the elegant solution you're

always trying to find the elegant solution to a mathematical problem or whatever um i always thought what was really the lesson was that there were always more there was always more than one way to solve a problem well we need more problem solvers like you less because we got a lot of problems well the world and life is uh problems but there i i i don't actually allow my staff to use the word problem I call them issues or concerns. Are they challenges? There you go. Exactly.

You're right. My wife gave me a speech. She works for one of the big banks. And she gave this presentation on the language and the apps and how words matter. And it's funny, we had this chat last night. And she would agree with you. There's better words than problems. These are challenges.

These are opportunities. And every opportunity is an opportunity to learn, which I think is really critical. So when you, you know, pivoted to architecture there at MIT, how much of a role does Mike Brady from the Brady Bunch play? I'm just thinking, who's the only architect I ever saw on TV was Mike Brady? He'd be at that desk and he'd have, I don't know, a blueprint or something? He was the architect to go to. When I went to my first, the answer is no.

When I went to my first architecture department meeting, you know, and the chair of the department introduced the new members of the student body. He said, if any of you are here because you read the fountainhead, please leave. It ain't like that. It ain't like that. And why do you think, again, you've got a couple of years on me, but the next architect was the fake architect, George Costanza.

I played that cold open up the top because George is several episodes of Seinfeld. where George fakes that he's an architect. Why do you think George always wanted to present as an architect, even though he was absolutely not an architect? Okay, this is, this is, this, this can touch a couple of different directions here, Mike. And then we'll get to the serious business. First and foremost, I think in the popular culture, architects are kind of portrayed as kind of a little bit like thinkers,

but they're warm and sensitive people. you know. So I think that that's why he thought it would attract ladies. And I won't argue with him whether that worked or not as a character. But more importantly, I do think that architects have a particular approach to the way that we do our work in that we have to listen to everybody. One of the things I used to say early on when we founded our practice was we have big ears. You know, and Listening is not, I would dare say, notwithstanding the world of podcasts, listening is more important than talking in terms of learning where it is you want to go. Yes, it took me a long time to figure that out, though. And as I progress here, and we're in year 13 and you were episode, what is it, 1799. Better late than ever to get less flying over here. It was a great year, 1799.

Oh, yeah, you were just a kid. What do you remember about 1799? And so thank you again to the almighty Nick Aienis for bringing us together. But what I try to do now is listen, far more listening, give the guest room to breathe. And instead of just interjecting so often, I really do try to give the guest space to complete the thought and make sure they're completely. And that's actually partly why I prefer the in-person, because initially I think we could have done this earlier remotely. But I have difficulty gauging when my guest is finished with their thought when it's remotely. Like in person, I can read your body language and I can see your eyes.

And it's a whole different kettle of fish here. But I'm glad you're here. Thank you. What brings you to the Great White North? I have my career, and I've said this to a number of people who've interviewed me. My career has been focused on incredible timing. So I managed to graduate with my very fancy master of architecture degree from a very fancy Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the middle of the 1974 recession. This was the recession that was brought on by the Arab oil embargo after the Yom Kippur War in Israel.

And I looked around and said, oh my goodness, I can't find a job with my really amazing. I did find jobs. And within eight months of having graduated, I'd been late on. off twice due to lack of work by, you know, reputable firms. And a friend of mine said, you know, there's this place over here up north called Toronto. I hear there's some work for architects and Toronto's starting to grow. So why don't you look around? So I went to the library, which is where you did research, looked through a bunch of magazines, found a couple of architectural firms whose work I liked, I thought would be interesting, sent off a couple of

letters. And within two weeks, I was asked to come in for an interview. So I came to Toronto for a day and interviewed with two people, got two job offers. Wow. And you're a thousand. It was pretty good. It was pretty shocking. In fact, you know, there were two lovely, lovely interviews. I interviewed with Roger the late Roger Toy. And with AJ Diamond, Jack Diamond's office, Wilford Warland interviewed me. actually, and I was offered these two jobs, and Roger actually said, if you're interviewing with Jack, he's got more interesting work than me. Take that one.

Anyway, so I did, and I put all of my worldly belongings into the back of my baby blue gremlin. Well, that's the one from Wayne's World, right? Yeah. Once I got my papers from the Canadian government to be a landed immigrant. Here I was an immigrant again. And I moved lock, stock and barrel to, to Toronto. I did not know a single person when I arrived.

Wow. But it was an adventure. I was just absolutely open to it. I was excited. I met amazing, amazing people. Very quickly realized that Toronto was a place that had kind of built up energy about to bubble to the surface. And so I worked for Jack Diamond for three years.

I became an associate. I worked on a number of great projects. And then at that point, having nothing and therefore nothing to lose, I decided to hang up a shingle, as they used to say, and start my own practice. Is that Klein-Taylor-Goldsmith? No, it was Leslie M. Klein, architect planner first. A year later, I had suddenly gotten a whole bunch of work, and I asked a friend, actually the guy I met my very first day starting at Jack's office,

you, Taylor, to come and help work with me, and quickly he became a partner, so it was Klein and Taylor. And then a year later, we landed another big project, and we brought in another friend, Phil Goldsmith, and that became Klein Taylor Goldsmith, and ultimately Klein Taylor Goldsmith, limited. And we were, we were at the, so that was eight years in. We were 12 people with three partners. We were getting interesting work. And another friend of mine, who was a partner, at another firm had recently decided to leave the practice of architecture and go into the development with his family. But he said to me, I have a great partner and you guys should put your two firms together. You would be amazing. So the four of us, Klein Taylor Goldsmith and

Kirtner, Brian Kirtner, joined together and formed a quadrangle. It will be 40 years ago next year. I was going to say, so when you arrive in Toronto, you had never been. being here before, right, when you had one day. So you're right, it's mid-70s, right? What are we in, like 74, 75? This is 75, yeah. Okay, coincidentally, because I've only stolen two guests from Nick Aini's in the history of Nick's podcast, he has a couple of them.

He's stolen way more from me, by the way. I just, he had 20, well, not, oh, I'm not getting, I'm not getting involved. Don't get involved. You guys sort that out. We'll hug it out. But the only other guest I stole from Nick was a chap named Jack Mesley, who was an iron worker who was on top of the C.N. Tower when they completed it and that was 75. So when you arrive here, we're wrapping up the tower. I remember driving along the Gardner Expressway going over the

bump at the Humber Bridge and seeing helicopters circling the top of the C& Tower, just finishing it off. Yeah. What was the name of that? Olga. Olga, I think, was the name of the helicopter, Olga, I believe. I'm just remembering my Jack Masley chat. But it's funny that that's when you were arrived and you stuck around. So you pointed, you're still here. So you must have liked what you saw here. Well, I grew some roots pretty fast. So tell me like just a little more about quadrangle, which was, is a big deal. And I see you got a pin on you that says BDM because it's now BDM. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. BDP. You know Close enough for jazz.

I have my readers on, but still couldn't remember that third letter here. But what did quadrangle do? And then we're going to talk 299 Queen Street West. But what did quadrangle do? What did they do? What was your specialty? What was going on there? Wow.

I'll try not to be too boring. But one of the initiatives, one of the reasons we pursued this idea of, putting these two firms together was that we felt that our values are very similar, but our client base was completely different. So by that time, we were doing lots of housing and what we used to call radio and television for Moses Neimer and Brian's firm was doing primarily office space and commercial. So we were thinking that with that kind of client base,

if one was down and the other would be up and we wouldn't be exposed to the boom and bust, which we'd already experienced once. So there was a 74 recession. Diversifying your portfolio. Exactly, exactly. So that was the initial initiative. But the other thing was that we really did believe

in building a practice around long-term relationships. So we didn't fall in love with projects. We fell in love with our clients and what they could bring and how we could do it in such a way that we would be able to serve them and they would help support our growth. We did believe in growth. We thought the bigger pie allowed us to share more of it without more people and that would be a great platform for future success.

So that's the short version at the very beginning. And I'm going to let the listeners should go. reading that that was from the the top of your head there so that's what i do um but uh the other the other thing that did happen is that we we used to joke that we were the most overmanaged architecture firm in the world um some some architects are not known for being great business people uh we were very proud of the fact that we ran a business uh brian and i in particular because hugh left uh the practice after a couple of years when it got to be 20 people and it was a bit big for him.

And Phil left about it, about 10 years later because he really wanted to focus on heritage architecture, heritage restoration. And he formed an incredibly successful to this day, incredibly well respected firm called Goldsmith Borgle architects. They are highly recognized as great restoration and heritage architects. But Brian and I were very focused on this idea that you could do great design and know business. So we got to know our clients and their business plans. And we always made sure that whatever we were designing actually addressed them.

We used to say that we didn't have a style. We had style so that we could adapt our designs to really reflect the identities of our clients and not us. What a great segue, because you mentioned Moses Nymer, and you mentioned, you said it was called radio and television, is what you referred to it as. So before 1987, so we're going to talk to 99 Queen Street West, obviously, but you already had a working relationship with Moses Nymer? Yes, I'd actually started doing little tiny bits and pieces of work for Moses

while I was at Jack Diamond's office. And it was, you know, move a partition here. set up a wall here. Can you put a glass wall here so I can shoot through this over there? And where I say there, I guess, $2.99 Queen Street East. No, not sorry, 99 Queen Street East. I knew this. The Electric Circus.

Yeah, absolutely the namesake. Not the electric circus, electric circus. Electric Circus. So 99 Queen Street East is the headquarters of the Moses Empire at City TV. I did have on this program, less than a month ago, I had on Jerry Grafstein. Oh, my goodness. Senator Grafstein.

Yeah, until they forced him out, because I guess once he hit 65, I think they forced him out. I mean, he's in his 90s, he's 90, I believe, but he's as sharpest attack, that guy. Put me to shame, that's for sure. But we just had a great chat about the founding of City TV, and there's only two founders left, Moses and Jerry. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So you would do jobs for Moses at 99 Queen Street East. bits and pieces. I got to know him. And when I left and started my own practice, Jack, very kindly said to

me, you know what, this work is too small for us. Why don't you, with your brand new practice, take it? And so I continued to work with Moses. And then, I mean, we'll get to that. Yeah, we're setting the table, but yeah. But when it came to pass that, that Chum bought City TV as part of their empire and there was actually money to be had, they started looking at how to expand and where to expand. And they asked me initially to do a little feasibility study, like what are my needs for the next five years and what are the needs for the next 10 years, assuming things continue to grow the way they did. We did an analysis. We told them about how much space they would need, how they could organize it. And they actually looked at a piece of land on River Street.

Hey, or the Humane Society is. Next door. Next door. And we were, we were designing a building there and then one day. But doesn't Moses, like, isn't that where prior to the Zoom Replex, I suppose, Moses did have his office there, right? He had a, he had, he moved his office after the sale to, to the building at the north-west corner of River Lake. Because I know FOTM, that means friend of Toronto, Mike. You're now an FOTM less.

Oh, cool. There'll be gifts at a moment. Are there pins? Well, there's more, better than pins. You're going to get some food out of this. This is going to be great. But shout out to Ziggy Lawrence, who I know was working there too. Yeah, yeah.

Wow, I saw your list of guests. A lot of very familiar names on that list. Well, when Ziggy, she's visited a couple of times, I believe, but she always came with Joel Goldberg. Yes, indeed, Joel. A co-creator of Electric Circus. Yeah, indeed. The actual show, I should point out.

The actual show. So, yeah, I mean, we'll get to that because ultimately the story of 299 Queen Street and City TV is about the kind of, I hate to use it because it's such a cliche, but the kind of family experience that we all had, we got to know each other really, really well because we worked like dogs and worked hard. This is what I'm asking, what I'm curious about is,

what is your relation, well, at this time, So prior to 1987, what was your relationship like with Moses? The visionary meets the problem solver? Like, it feels like a marriage made in heaven. I was, I like to think that I was a trusted advisor. He and his team would look to us to say, if we wanted to do this, what it would be like? And we were, we had begun to actually put, in that case,

literally pencil to paper. about how a building could look, how a building could work. And from the very beginning, I mean, you have to really understand, I think, and I'm sure you've heard it from other people, but Moses thought differently about everything. I mean, to some extent, I think it was always a budgetary issue. You know, you had to make do with far less. I mean, we'll get to that, but we used to joke that the construction costs to renovate

299 Queen Street West was the cost was the same as the cost of one of the studios at the CBC headquarters down the street that's the kind of private money I'm looking for public money anyway well because like Chuck that chat we're gonna we're gonna I guess we'll get to 299 quiz right now but I that was a big point Jerry Grafstein is like there was no money and then chum when chum buys in and now there's some cash like now they can actually do things But go back earlier. Go back earlier. Moses, Jerry, Phyllis, Phyllis, and...

I don't remember the... I'll find this name. Yeah, I'll find the name while you chat to say. But they came up with this idea of this rogue television station that would break all the rules and would get by... Edgar Cowan. Edgar, right. would get by on basically bravado.

And they said to the CRTC, they said, you know what, give us whatever channel you want. You know, we'll take the furthest channel all the way to the end of the UHF spectrum. But there's this stupid thing. Nobody cares about cable. but you know give us cable seven you know nobody's going to watch it don't worry about it

it just happened to be right next to cable six which was the CBC yeah and then you get CTV at 8 exactly so it was rather you know forward looking and recognizing that that was the future but then you get to

you get to designing the building and one of the first things Moses said to me was this is not a black box this is not the TV the TV stations in suburban Toronto or suburban Oklahoma City or suburban anywhere else

exactly who would mention such a thing where there's a black box and you don't know what's going on inside and what you see on the TV is all made up stuff on a set he said no no no this is a building that will in its and what I loved about it was he said this is going to be the first television station where the building is part of the logo it actually is the identity and plunking it in the

middle of the city opening it up and creating a gateway to what that's like created not only again much more economical but also it created a magnet for the youth of the city that made them feel like City TV was their station, not their parent station, their station. And the fact that they could visit it and, you know, go up against the glass and look inside and watch breakfast television or sometimes you don't have to push the glass because the glass doors opened onto Queen Street. You could watch from the street. Speaker's Corner, City TV news everywhere.

All of those things were about creating a different vision for what a television station is. I mean, he always called it the environment, right? And I've had, as you saw on that list, I tracked down as many people who worked at 299 Queen as possible, and I pepper them with questions. Shout out to my dear friend Peter Gross, who I talked to just yesterday. Wow. Wow. And you can get, you know, Peter Gross on the horn. Here, I'll call him right now. We'll get him over here. And also shout out to Lauren Honakman, all of them. Oh, my gosh. And Roskowski. The only one who's alluded to me, Jo Jo Chinto. I was going to say,

politely declined, but it wasn't the most polite decline I've ever received, but he has not made a Toronto mic debut, but I digress. So now that we're going to get into, you know, how 299 Queen Street West was chosen to be the headquarters and what 299 Queen Street was, like I know it was a heritage building, but maybe a little context there. And then we're going to talk about how you were hired to fulfill Moses' vision for 299 Queen Street West. But let me right now just do the last partner mentions here and give you a few gifts and then we could just roll with 299 Queen Street West

for the rest of the way. So I have in my freezer upstairs, Les, I have a large frozen lasagna from Palma pasta that you can take home with you. That is very, very, very thoughtful. It is delicious. I can be delicious, I'm sure. It's delicious and thoughtful.

And since I mentioned Palma Pasta, I'm going to invite you, Les, your family, your friends, and also everybody listening. So, I'm inviting the world to Palma's Kitchen in Mississauga on November 29th at noon. That is the last Saturday of November. We are having TMLX-21. That's the 21st Toronto mic listener experience.

It's a live recording. So if you want to, you can pop on the mic and say, happy holidays and check in. But regardless of whether you want to get on the mic or not, you will be eating for free. Palma pasta will feed you at that event, delicious fresh pasta. and I will bring fresh cold Great Lakes beer if you want to have a can or two if you're over 19 of course and Great Lakes Brewery has sent over some beer

for you to take home less Klein you can take that back home with you I hope to see Brad Jones from Ridley Funeral Home he's a great supporter of this show and Brad has a measuring tape for you what architect does I need a measuring tape another one is you can never have too many measuring tapes

you can never have too many so thank you to Ridley Funeral Home And RetroFestive, this is exciting because if anyone listening goes to RetroFestive.C.A and uses the promo code FOTM, they'll save 10% right now. Like, you can go do that right now. But RetroFestive is going to give a gift

to the first 75 people who come at TMLX21. And they sent over a different gift for you, Les. I have for you. They're the moose mug. So if you have ever seen, I don't know, have you ever seen National Lampoon's Christmas vacation. Of course you have. What a silly question that is.

But that is the moose mug made famous in that movie. Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for these amazing gifts. It's hard to imagine that Hanukkah is just around the corner. So now you've got you and he'd eight gifts. I know Ralph Ben-Mariggi was just here and I was giving him the moose bug and he said only seven more gifts to go.

Exactly. Exactly. He and I think alike. Oh, it depends how old your recipient is. Okay. So Les Klein, less me, more, you. Less is more. Is that your slogan?

More or less. More or less. And less is Leslie, right? This is your given name. Well, less is Leslie, but my given name was Loslo. So it was Americanized when you... It was Americanized by my first grade teacher who said, Loslo, that's not an American name.

You're Leslie now when I went, okay. You know, it's interesting because Moses would have hated that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He'd still hated. That's, you know, I just chatted with, and it hasn't even dropped in the feed yet, but Thalia Assuris left, well, she was on City Pulse for a few years,

And then she went to Global, and then she got recruited by ABC News, and then she went to CBS, and she became a big deal, and now she's retired in the States. But she was talking about her interview of Moses before she got the gig, because everybody had to meet Moses so he could bless every hire. Right. And Moses liked the fact that she was Greek. And Thalia tells me they didn't have a Greek person,

and that this would be a great reflection of this multicultural city. No changing the name, less it's a... Well, you go by Lesz now. Okay. I go by Lesley. You're okay with it. But I don't go by Leslie. Only my mother ever called me Leslie,

and it usually meant I was in trouble. Well, I'm not going to call you Leslie. And I won't call you late for your Palma pasta dinner either. Thank you very much. That was my next line. I'm stealing your, we're going to make a good duo here. Yeah, it's good. We've got to make Nick jealous.

That's our goal here. So $2.99 Queen Street West. What can you, what can you share with us about what was this building in 1987? and when did you start working on it and since you're going to kind of give us this background and I'm going to be quiet for a while, how did that site get chosen as the future home of the Chum Media Empire?

Well, let me roll the tape back a little bit, sorry. So we were in the midst of doing a number of different things. We were starting to work on that site on River Street. There was a proposal by the owners of 99 Queen Street to renovate the building, and turned that into the headquarters. There was a little design competition. There were all kinds of other things going on.

And I was really, you know, I was anxious because all these other players were coming into play, and I said, oh, you know, all this work, and I might end up out on the street. Anyway, one day Moses called me up and said, I want you to go to this. Well, can you do an impression or no? No.

Called him and said, I need you to go and see this building that's being sold by Royal Lepage. meet the agent there and walk through it. Jerry McMaster was his name, actually, as I remember. And I went there, of course, rode my bicycle, as I did in those days, and still do. But arrived at this building, I walked through the building, and I literally rode back to my office as fast as I could, sat down at the typewriter, and wrote Moses a one-line letter saying,

Dear Moses, you have found your new home. And it was an amazing building. So 299 Queen Street was built in the early 1900, 1914, I think it was completed. It was built as the home of the Methodist book publishing company, or the Wesley building. And it was a publishing house. And therefore, it had a number of really interesting elements. One was printing presses are really heavy, and they make a lot of noise, and they shake the floors. So it was built unbelievably solidly.

It had gigantically tall ceilings, perfect for equipment, hanging lights, and hanging equipment, and getting air conditioning where it needed to go. It had gigantic windows. It had personality. Um, we, uh, both Moses and I fell in love with the gargoyles. And as you know, there is a gargoyle up there. Yes. Um, so, uh, and, and we really realized that the location was fantastic.

Because Queen Street West, I mean, it was so uncool as to be painful. It was full of used furniture, used furniture stores, uh, used appliances, um, little bits and pieces of things you could buy to build something called computer. It was really, it was really, really run down. But it was an amazing location because it was just down the street from City Hall. It was on a streetcar line. It was up the street, as we found out not too much later, up the street from the new rising, unbelievably expensive CBC headquarters. So we really loved this building, but we thought immediately that it could do all of things that it needed to do.

So what needed to be done? We needed to have a proper master control. Equipment room, equipment space, space for storage, space for all of the stuff that gathers. More importantly, it had elements that could open out onto the street. What were the key things that Moses wanted? He wanted a place for much music. We had built a $10,000 construction cost studio for much music at 99 Queen Street East. He wanted something that would be a little more interesting.

You wanted a space that he could shoot that would be incredibly flexible, where he could shoot breakfast television and open the garage doors onto the street. He wanted a place for Speaker's Corner. Speaker's Corner was an essential element of what he wanted this station to be so that the audience could express themselves freely, kind of a foretelling of TikTok and whatever else. And of course, City TV News. He wanted a place where he could not only broadcast the news,

but he could get wherever he needed to go quickly. There was a gigantic parking lot. And of course, part of the thing that we did, which everybody still knows, is doing that news van crashing through the wall of the east wall of the building facing Queen Street. So there were so many opportunities. but the building was gigantic also.

So we figured that when we first moved in there, all of their requirements could be met by renovating the basement, the ground floor and the second floor. And that meant that the tenants on the upper floors could stay for a while. So hearing you describe this building, in knowing what happens, spoiler alert, you know, it is perfect.

It sounds absolutely, I mean, Steve Anthony has a place to throw a Christmas tree. Yeah. It sounds perfect. It, it, well, the, the, so we've, we've done a lot of renovations, what we call adaptive reuses of old buildings over the course of our, of our career to date and continue to do so. One of our most important rules is don't fight the building, work with the building. And if you went into a building and you said, yeah, it's pretty good, but we got to move this column,

we got to break through that wall and we've got to do this, this just kind of opened itself up to, It had a personality that was amazing and fitting. And it was a smashing success. So we started work on this in 1984. Before we were Quadrangle, we were Klein-Taylor Goldsmith in those days. When does Chum buy this building? Well, they bought it in, I think, in 84 or 83.

Okay, okay, yeah. Okay. Obviously, they have to buy it before you can work on it. Yeah, it's kind of, it's the way most things are done. Okay, because Chum doesn't buy City TV until 85. I think. Yes, that's correct. That's correct.

So this is all just coming together like it was, like, like, like, I think you could, you could say that, uh, chum said, if you're going to, if we're going to own you, you better get a proper place. Right. I mean, I wasn't there. So I'm, I'm, I'm making that conversation up. You need a new home here. Yeah.

And these things like, you know, 299 queen, um, you know, when I think about the, the, the environment and the street and then they'd have, you know, intermittent and interactive in these different, you know, live musical events where people can collect and the much music video awards and all this. Of course. It really was, like, looking back, it was such a huge part of the cultural fabric of this city was 299 Queen Street West. That's exactly the phrase that I would use. It was part of the cultural fabric. And it allowed a new generation of people to identify with the medium of television as their own. Well, it worked on me. Like, because I'm doing some math of my head to tell you I'm about like 11 or 12 years old or something when they move from 99

Queen Street East to 299 Queen Street West. And there's a reason, there's a reason why I gravitate towards these people who worked that much music or city TV because that's where I got my news. I watched Gordon and Markowski and I want Jim McKinney over here. You know, I want Harold. I think the only podcast Harold Hussein has done in his entire life is this one. Somehow I found Harold. I talked to his daughter and I got him to visit and we talked about Harold. Hurricane Harold. Fantastic. Yeah.

So, you know, it's unbelievable this happening. But could you elaborate a little bit on like, so obviously you mentioned a few there, like Speaker's Corner and it had to, you know, it has to be this and that. But I went, so is it just Moses has a vision. This is the sort of the mythology of Moses is that he's like he has these visions and you can see the future and this is what he wants. And you're just like, and this is how we can satisfy that desire? Like, is this where you fit into that whole thing?

And then you just do it. Well, we, once you, one of the reasons our practice has been built on repeat clients is eventually you get to know your clients very, very well. And you can essentially speak shorthand. You can say, well, you know, this is kind of like what we did over there, but we got to fix this and this and this. and you say, oh, yeah, I understand. Let me show you three ways of getting there.

That kind of conversation can only happen when there is deep, deep, deep collaboration. And we brought together not only our creative elements, but our technical. We learned from Ron Reed how to do a master control. And of course, since then, we've done them for Rogers and we've done them for CBC and we've done them for CBC in Montreal. So we know how to do those kinds of things, but we knew it because we learned it from the best.

So talking about visionary, we talked about Channel 79 Cable 7, but he also, Moses also saw very early on that specialty channels were the wave of the future. Moses articulated to me very early on that he does not want to appeal to everyone. He very strongly believed that your success is based on very deep and very narrow loyalty versus mass broad mainstream appeal. Like a niche appeal. Absolutely. So that explains like, well, let's have a station just for fashion television. Exactly.

Or let's get Bravo up here. Right. How many people watch Bravo? It doesn't matter because the people who watch Bravo love Bravo and will support it and will support the sponsors and will continue to support your growth. Book TV, sex TV, fashion TV, you name it. There was room in that building to grow those things to give each of them their own identity. you know, we shouldn't, we shouldn't ever forget, you know, FX.

So these are, these are audiences that adored what was being offered and was cult. Yeah, space TV, I think it was called. Space TV, space TV. You know, if you're a trekkie, this is where you live. And, you know, X percent of people are trekkies, but they dive deep into that world. They're rather fanatical. And it was, in fact, it taught me a lot. lot about how you build a business. I want a few amazingly loyal clients that I can service

and service to the ends of the world because they're so good to me, but also because I know that I can help them achieve their goals. So there are lessons there. So Moses also taught me that people can remember only three things. News, movies, music. That's it. Don't try to give them four, five, seven things to remember, give them, you know, snappy, clear information. The idea of the videographer. I mean, Dominic Shulow. He came up with this idea. Why do we need to have perfectly enclosed, soundproofed elements?

Let's make the ambiance part of the story, you know? Get the reporter, not in a studio. The city is the newsroom. I think Ed Conroy from Retro, Ontario. who, you know, works with Moses to this day, uses that line. Yeah, the city is your newsroom. Yeah, and, you know, walk over to the reporter's desk. You always got to be moving.

You always got to be moving, right? You don't sit behind a desk and you've got to have some kinetic energy going here. Absolutely, absolutely. So, 299, Queen Street was a building that just served its purposes and Moses' vision incredibly well. over all of the course of those years we ended up taking the entire rest of the building then we ran out of room and we had to go to 250 Richmond Street West we built that amazing the Jaffe bridge that connected the two buildings right and there was

only one shocking challenge that we had to deal with was when we work working on Bravo yeah which is what the back of the building, you know, where it was, to the back of Queen Street facing onto Richmond. We had, the idea was that there would be the rehearsal hall, that would be a performance space. And we had a column in the way. This column had a lot of buildings sitting on it, and we had to figure out how to get rid of this column in order to allow shooting there. We had an amazing structural engineer, Stanley Cooper.

who was no longer with us, but Cooper consultants, had worked with us all this time, and he looked at it and then looked at it and said, yeah, we can do this. You designed the structure that basically took the column and split the loads to either side so we could have this clear view space. And I very clearly remember being in the building

when we had built the entire structure and cut the column. And we said, okay, there's one of two things could happen here. Anyway, cut the building. The faith you have to have, right? And absolutely no movement. Well, as I like to say, you know, in architecture and structural engineering, gravity is not a theory. It's the law.

So they cut the column. Nothing moved. Remove the rest of the column and the rest of the history. It's funny. You'll know Stanley Cooper believes in his work there. if he's there. Oh, he was there. So, you know, that's your sign.

Okay, he's here. So, you know, just, oh, I forgot to carry the one. We're in big trouble now. So, say, going back for a moment here when they, no, I love this. And, and I know, I'm going to just share of the audience that you have notes. You're not reading these notes, I noticed. But if there's anything on these notes, we don't actually cover before we wrap up, I feel like we need you to drain that swamp.

Like, whatever's on there. But let me just go back to 87 for a minute. So this reopening of 299 Queen Street West is. May 1987. So a couple of questions, but one is, that must have been

a heck of a party that Moses threw. Like, I know the Moses parties are, like, I mean, I've had all these guys over,

and the John Gallagher's and the Peter Grosses, they give me the straight goods on these parties. That must have been one heck of a party. There was a party,

but the day they threw the switch and moved everything from 99 to 299. That was a day where we, again, we held a breath and said,

hope this works and it was seamless it was amazing but yeah parties uh were again part of the culture obviously the mnvAs were a lot of fun um because the city came out the streets were closed and all of that but the really for me i i i not me but all of us who were involved uh ted shore and uh rob dyson and the whole bunch of the team that had worked on all all of those years worked on those buildings, uh, from my staff, we were always invited to the staff parties. And the staff parties were, as you know, they're legendary. They're legend, um, including the talent show, uh, which was, uh, really something to remember every single year. If you could remember it. Well, if you could remember it, you weren't there. Yeah, well, they, they, they do say that. But, um,

it was all, again, it was not random. It was about building a culture of, of, of us. And to some extent, us against them, the underdog against the big guys, the gigantic syndicates, the gigantic corporations that ran the other stations. But it was also built on this idea of personality. Moses had a show that he did for many years, called the originals. And, you know, I mean, he was the original original, in my mind. Always has been, always will be. And, you know, the fact that he put us on the map, and I, and I say,

this absolutely clearly. Until that time, we were a little architectural firm doing some interesting stuff, but nothing that caught anybody's eye. But when we did City TV, suddenly Quadrangle was on the map. When you look back at the ongoing history, well, now you're BP, sorry, BDP Quadrant. We'll get to that in there. We'll get to that eventually. So when you look back, is this, does this remain a highlight the work you did on 299 Queen Street West? absolutely absolutely i mean i i i have to beat it right i do need to say that there is a tinge of sadness uh seeing what the building has become because i ask about that yeah tell me what you think well you know i think i think the soul that was in that building has been removed

there's no speakers corner there's no opening windows everything is blocked up it's it's it's really become essentially a black box in the city in my mind i certainly have been invited have not been invited back, but... Well, the parties aren't as good now. I'll take your word for it. But I wouldn't doubt it. But there was this unique culture of people. And, you know, you name some of the people.

I probably name more. You can name. I love the name checking. Like, because you obviously... I shouldn't say obviously. You tell me, but did you also consume the media, like on your television? Oh, well, of course.

But mostly because I loved seeing the cool, That's what I'm wondering. Like, when you tune into CityPulse, okay, and Mark Daly, sub-divisions, okay? So Mark Daly is, I don't know, given some news, City Pulse update or something like that, you must have some sense of pride, like just seeing that environment and... Just, it always brings back, it always brings back these cute little slogans we had, like, uh, um, a hundred days to build a station. You know, when we got CP 24, um, we built, or we built.

I didn't build, but the contractors built to our design, CP-24 in the middle of the newsroom while the newsroom was an active newsroom. Wow. I mean, the sheer madness of what that involved was crazy, and we were there all the time. And again, you know, my team, Ted and Rob and others spent a lot of time there just checking everything all the time. And it was it was not flying by the seat of our pants. We knew exactly what we were doing. And by we, I mean us and the team at City TV. The technical guys were unparalleled, are unparalleled.

They really knew how to do things in a way that made sense. It wasn't like, no, we've got to just throw more money at it. How can we do this cleverly, efficiently, and appropriately? Because they couldn't throw money at it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The necessity being the mother invention here. Were you invited to the Christmas party? where they would show the

speaker's corner blooper reel? Those were the ones. They were amazing. A couple of those VHS tapes found their way to my basement here. Oh, very impressive. The stuff they couldn't air. But, geez, okay.

There was a lot of stuff they couldn't air. So why do you think? And I don't know how much you can even say to this, but when Moses exits and at some point there's a sale, I get confused at these big companies. It was CTV, but it was Bell Media. Right. In fact, I wrote down the name. Yeah, CTV, Globe Media, I think is what it was called at the time.

And it got more into Bell Media at some point, sure, of course. But I documented on my little blog, Toronto Mike.com, the characters pieces I loved being kind of stripped out piece by piece. Like, okay, no more Silverman helps, okay, whatever. No more Speaker's Corner, you know, goodbye, Ed the sock, all these different parts. And it really did become just like another CTV or whatever, just another, it just lost a lot of that character that was so a appealing in the first place. I mean, appealing to us because we were involved and we were growing up with it.

But, you know, the new owners have their own corporate image and that's the image that they were working on. So Bravo Studio became a newsroom with fake brick behind, you know. Well, yeah, the more things change, the less they stay the same here. So we did, you know, you talked about how this, well, we talked about how the studio was. alive. And you could see the people working in the background and all this cool vibe in the

environment, as Moses would call it. And I realized when I was shouting out the partners, I did not shout out Blue Sky Agency who have forged partnerships with established office furniture brands like silent and green furniture concept and Roolyard and Doug Mills at Blue Sky Agency is eager to chat with any and all Toronto Mike listeners who are looking for dynamic and creative work environments. This ties in nicely to our chat today, actually. They have these privacy pods from Silen that Blue Sky Agency can hook you up with. And if you have any questions about any

of this, Doug is easy to get a hold of. Just write them. Doug at blueskyagency.ca. Let him know you're an FOTM, and he'll be happy to chat with you about dynamic and creative work environments, be it from Silen or Green Furniture Concept

or Rooleyard or whoever. So, thank you to Blue Sky Agency. we uh we you so there's the initial launch in what date did i say what date was that uh may of uh 80 87 right how long did you work on it two years or so how long was that that work before it could be uh that initial work with it was three years three years okay all right and then uh would there be new new ideas like uh as we proceed like moses and the gang there would have new ideas for new shows or new channels or new different things and they would call in and we need to modify this we need a space for this like was it was ongoing i'm assuming

it was it was indeed ongoing um but there was a broader broader strategy as well because one of the great things about the city tv concept was that it could be exported uh so uh at one point And I think it was in the 90s, we began to work with one of the sub-organizations of Chum called Chum City International. And we started exporting, franchising essentially, the city TV concept to other locations. There was one in Helsinki, which I didn't work on, jerky TV, jerky music. I can't remember what it was called. Yerki music. I think there was Mucha Musica in Buenos Aires.

Maybe I'm not sure if I'm getting those locations right, but we did in fact directly work with Moses and his team on City TV Bogota, which still exist today, which was amazing, an amazing experience. We also did City TV Barcelona, which was also amazing, but the last time I was in Barcelona, I discovered that the location is now a yogurt shop, or was at that time a yogurt shop. We tried to do one in Sao Paulo as well. And what we learned there was that, obviously, you needed the right partners, but that it was, in fact, transferable.

This idea of creating an open environment where the city is your studio, where you engage a deeply, deeply loyal but relatively narrow audience that is focused on what you are interested in, in providing it was amazing and we did the same thing across canada because uh we established uh what we called the new networks the new vi the new vr right uh barry london ottawa victoria um a couple of stations in edmonton and calgary uh those also became uh city tv city tv light i guess they would say. But they were all fundamentally the same. They had the same kind of approach to the audience, same kind of approach to news. Obviously, they were able to share a lot of the facilities and the support from the mothership at 299, but it was an exciting, exciting time. Sounds wild. I just now remember Dan O'Toole from Jay and Dan on TSN. He was telling about being at the

the opening of the city TV in Vancouver. And another great Moses party. Victoria. Victoria. And I know Monica D'Oll went there. Yes. Speaking of, do you know she's not the original host of Electric Circus?

Michael Williams was the host. Really? Initially, yeah. And then Monica D.O. And then, yeah, and then Juliet Powell took over for Monica when she left to go out west. And we recently lost Juliet Powell. at the, to meningitis in her 50s. Oh my gosh.

I had the honor of having her on the show, but my God, we lost her too soon. That was very sad. We're sure. Jeremy Hopkins is the official historian of the Toronto Mike podcast. In fact, Jeremy and I, this is interesting, we're going to be recording live on Monday.

So this coming Monday in a few days, we'll be recording live from Casaloma. Like an episode all about the history of Casaloma. Oh, that'll be fun. We could turn that into a TV studio. We need your help, Les, come on. But his question is, And when we talked about 299 Queen Street West, what was it before Chum bought it?

Jeremy says, I'm wondering if Les can recall any prominent remnants of the Methodist book and publishing company that might have been found inside when they revamped 299 Queen Street West. So other than the structure, was there anything left inside from the Methodist book and publishing company? No, no, that use had long since ceased and it was used essentially as an office building. So there were numerous organizations there that had found good and affordable downtown office space. But no, there was nothing of, no vestige of Methodist book publishing. Okay, because he'd be asking if he could come get it from you. I know Jeremy collects a lot of this cool stuff. Oh, and Tyler, shout out to the VP of Sales.

I think next Friday I'll be in Guelph to see FOTM Hawksley Workman. Can't wait for that, Tyler. His, you don't have to answer this one, but he says, very cool when I told him you were coming on. He said, a question for Les, will he hire my daughter as a co-op student? We are always on the lookout for good talent. Okay, Tyler, tell your daughter, now that I'm BFFs with Les Klein, I can introduce her to Les and make that happen.

So tell us, on our way out here, you've been amazing. I love this very much. Quadrangle, we keep talking about it being BDP, Quadrangle. What the heck does that mean? did you merge? What happened? Are you joining BDP? What happened? So first I have to do to you what I had to do with every single receptionist we ever had in the office. Oh, I'm saying it wrong. It's not quadrangle. Okay, say it again. It's not triangle. It's triangle. And therefore, it's quadrangle. Quad angle. Quadrangle. You know, that's difficult for my, I can barely say, brewery. I recognize it's not easy. Why did you name it then?

Well, we, actually, we were one of the first firms in Ontario to have what the Ontario Association of Architect called an anonymous name. Because until that time, you had to name the firm after yourselves. And it was one of, when we, when the four of us formed the firm, we really wanted to send the message that it was not about us. It was about the firm. And we wanted to express something that, that would say that. So obviously we had four partners, quadrangle, but quadrangle is also a form that's created by buildings. And more importantly, you find quadrangles in places like universities

where ideas are exchanged, where things are learned and taught, and where there's an opportunity for continuous learning. Okay, quadrangle. I'll work on it. Very good, much better. Okay, good. So then we also, I joked earlier that we were,

this hopelessly over-managed architectural firm. But one of the things that we did in our annual management retreats was we would create strategic plans. And in the mid-2010s, we created a plan that we wanted to pursue, which was to expand geographically, to expand the number of sectors that we worked in, and to really create new opportunities for our staff to work on interesting cool projects.

Just as we were thinking about how we were going to implement that, we had a knock on our door, on our figurative door from BDP. And BDP is the second largest architecture and engineering firm in the UK. They are, we are, the architects for the retail component of the well, the new development at Front and Spadina, where our new offices are, which is really cool, so you should come down and visit. Very cool space.

But as they were coming to work on that project, they said, wow, we really should have an office in Toronto. They found us. We decided that we liked each other quite a bit and that we could get along. And we made a deal and joined BDP in 2019. And we rebranded as BDP Quadrangle because our quadrangle brand was extremely strong. And we wanted to maintain that connection with our community. And you got that cool pin you're wearing. Is that part of the deal?

It's all about the pins. It's all about the pins. It's all about the pin. We've always had pins. Well, that's amazing. But Moses, of course, didn't rest on his laurels. He built up a zoomer, and there's a lot going on there, including blog T.O. And, you know, he got Zoomer, and there's a radio, and a whole bunch of stuff going on.

And don't forget the Moses and Imer Television Museum. How could I forget? I've seen it, and then, of course, doing good work. People like Joel Goldberg still. I know he's still working there. And of course, Ed Conner. We did do the design for the Zoomerplex. That's where I'm going, because just to tie it back to Jerry Grafstein, you know, he creates a YTV anyway. So this is the old, right? This is the old YTV studio in Liberty Village. So I was going to ask gently if you were involved in when it became the Zoomerplex. In fact, we were. Yes. Okay, good. I don't want to ask

that question and find out Moses went to a different place because Moses likes working with you but is there anything that didn't come up organically or I didn't prompt for that on that piece of paper less well I just wanted to do a shout out to um do as many as you want to my partner Ted Shore

because Ted is now retired from BDP Quadrangle because he's decided to rest on his laurels do other cool things but he's still working with us on a new interesting media environment project but he was really the heart and soul

of the work that we did for Moses all those years. Okay, and I'm glad you shuddered them out. And I think I need help in this TMDS this studio you're in right now could use a little love. Well, maybe raising the ceiling would be a good idea. What's that going to set me back? That would probably cost more than whatever

that $10,000 you spent way back in the day on I would cost more to do that. Sadly, you're right. Love this very much. Love what you're doing there. Thank you to Nick Aenees for introducing us. It was a real pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

What's next for 299 Queen Street West? Is this some kind of a transit hub? I can't remember where we're at with that. You don't know. No, no idea. But when you drive past it or bike past it or walk past it, are you flooded with memories of when you... It never fails to move me, and I'm not exaggerating.

And that... brings us to the end of our 1,799th show. You were so close to the big... It's a PD day, so I got the 11-year-old running around upstairs. You were so close to episode 1800. Maybe you need to come back on... Oh, that'll be Casaloma. That's actually kind of neat.

The Casaloma episode with Jeremy Hopkins, we're recording live from Casaloma, all about Casaloma. That'll be episode 1800. But this is 1,799th show. go to Torontomike.com for all your Toronto mic needs and much love to all who made this possible. Again, that's retro festive.

You got your moose mug. Great Lakes Brewery. You got your fresh craft beer. Palma pasta. Don't leave without your lasagna. It's in my freezer. Nick ainies. Thank you, Nick.

You're going to do some great business with my friend, Les Klein here. Recyclemyelectronics.ca. Blue Sky Agency. Right, Doug. He can hook you up with a silent pod. And Ridley Funeral Home. see you all Monday again. Jeremy and I live from Casaloma. We'll see you then. Subdivisions

Subdivisions Subdivisions I'm going to be able to be. You know,