Last year Canada’s pension funds and institutional investors became active as joint venture partners and owners of property in major money-center cities, including Manhattan, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston.

Last spring, the Canadian Retirement Investment Fund, Oxford Properties Group, announced that it will partner with the Related Companies to develop the 26-acre Hudson Yards. Oxford acquired a 50 percent interest in Hudson Yards, investing alongside New York-based Related Companies in the 12 million-square-foot, mixed-use development. Related and Oxford will act as the general partners for the project. [more]

Hudson Yards rendering

The Related Companies has a new financial partner for its $1 billion Hudson Yards development deal, which was approved last month by the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and signed today. Canada’s Oxford Properties Group, the real estate and investment and development arm of the Ontario public retirement fund, will join Related in forking over an additional $21.75 million in deposits as its new general partner. Plans for the 26-acre site call for 12 million square feet of commercial and residential space, including 5,000 apartments, a hotel, public school and roughly 12 acres of public open space. Goldman Sachs, originally the minority partner in the project, dropped out in February. TRD

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The government of Canada is reportedly looking for as much as 100,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan, and it’s hired Studley CEO and Chairman Mitchell Steir and executive vice president David Goldstein for the job. The government currently has two other large leases in the city, one at 1251 Sixth Avenue, used for its Consulate General offices, and the second at One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 885 Second Avenue near 48th Street, where the Mission of Canada to the United Nations operates.