Colliers Teams Collaborate with Nokia and Governments on Mixed-Use, 11-Acre Campus

In 2025, Colliers teams working out of three different Canadian cities, partnered with the municipal, Ontario and federal governments and Nokia Canada to develop the latter’s Innovation Campus at 600 March Rd. in Ottawa’s Kanata district.

Upon completion, the project will be an R&D innovation campus comprising 300,000 square feet of workplace and community amenities and 450,000 square feet of lab space.

The Colliers team involved with the deal included David Bowden (Vancouver); Jason Rutland and Tran Chow (both Toronto), along with Michael Pyman and Jeff Brown (both Ottawa.)

The partnership helped align economic development, global technology leadership and long-term real estate value creation. One innovative aspect involved the capital structure, which used a credit tenant lease (CTL) financing framework. This typically underused mechanism allowed Nokia to access CAD $430 million in capital at favorable, fixed, long-term financing rates.

Economically, the project creates more than 300 new roles tied directly to R&D expansion.

These are some of the reasons why Colliers Strategy & Consulting and Colliers Macauley Nicholls teams and Tracey Allen, Nokia’s global head of real estate, were honored with Connect Canada’s Transactions of the Year Award for their work on the Nokia Innovation Campus. The award highlights deals and closings impacting Canada’s commercial real estate sector.