VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA — (Marketwired) — 07/24/15 — (TSX: T)(NYSE: TU) – The partnership building TELUS Garden in Vancouver has issued $225 million in green bonds – the first time in North America green mortgage bonds have been used to support real estate financing. Proceeds raised by the 500 Georgia Office Partnership, the joint venture of TELUS and Westbank building TELUS Garden, will be primarily used to retire short-term construction financing for the office tower.
“When the TELUS Garden partnership was looking at options for retiring the short-term construction financing and establishing new financing for the TELUS Garden office tower, issuing green bonds quickly became the obvious choice,” said Andrea Goertz, TELUS senior-vice president and Chief Sustainability Officer. “Green bonds are a relatively new concept allowing conscientious investors to make the choice to put their money into environmentally sustainable projects like TELUS Garden. We hope our issue of green bonds will encourage more Canadian organizations to pursue environmentally sustainable developments.”
The one million square foot TELUS Garden development in the heart of Downtown Vancouver includes a 22-storey signature office tower built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum specifications as well as a LEED Gold 47-storey residential tower with 424 green homes and retail space along Robson and Georgia streets. The multi-tenant 496,000 square foot Class AAA office tower is TELUS– new headquarters and executive office. Located adjacent to SkyTrain, the development offers facilities for bicycles and charging stations for electric cars. The development is one of the first in Vancouver to incorporate a district energy system, which will prevent about one million kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions annually by recycling heat in the building to warm air and water.
“TELUS Garden utilizes the most modern design initiatives to decrease its dependency on traditional forms of energy use,” said Ian Gillespie, President of Westbank Projects. “By employing the architecture in a thoughtful way, and when coupled with the creative reuse of neighbouring excess heat, the building uses 90 per cent less energy from the grid. The LEED Platinum designation, the first of its kind in Canada, is impressive for this project, but TELUS Garden–s use of energy, and what it contributes to the City, are the true representations of sustainability.”
The privately-placed 3.40 per cent 10-year bonds will mature on July 22, 2025. The green bond issue includes senior notes secured by the environmentally and technology-advanced office tower. The companion residential tower is under construction, scheduled for completion next year, and is not being financed by this bond issue.
TELUS Garden is registered with the Canadian Green Building Council (CaGBC) as a LEED certification candidate under the LEED Canada for Core and Shell Development 2009 Rating System. The partnership expects the property will achieve the highest level of LEED certification, being LEED Platinum, a designation achieved by only a limited number of buildings in North America. LEED is a rating system consisting of prerequisites (green building strategies that must be included in any LEED certified project) and credits that a project can elect to pursue to gain points toward LEED certification. The Issuer submitted its LEED certification application to the CaGBC for review in May 2015 and expects to receive the LEED Platinum certification for the property by mid-2016. Achievement of the certification, when received, will be reported on the project website.
About TELUS
TELUS (TSX: T)(NYSE: TU) is Canada–s fastest-growing national telecommunications company, with $12.1 billion of annual revenue and 13.9 million customer connections, including 8.3 million wireless subscribers, 3.1 million wireline network access lines, 1.5 million high-speed Internet subscribers and 937,000 TELUS TV customers. TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services, including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment and video, and is Canada–s largest healthcare IT provider.
In support of our philosophy to give where we live, TELUS, our team members and retirees have contributed more than $396 million to charitable and not-for-profit organizations and volunteered and more than 6 million hours of service to local communities since 2000. Created in 2005 by Executive Chairman Darren Entwistle, TELUS– 11 community boards across Canada have led the company–s support of grassroots charities and have contributed $47 million in support of 3,700 local charities organizations, enriching the lives of more than 2.1 million Canadian children and youth. TELUS was honoured to be named the most outstanding philanthropic corporation globally for 2010 by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, becoming the first Canadian company to receive this prestigious international recognition.
About Westbank
Established in 1992 and with over $12 billion of projects completed or under development, Westbank is active across Canada in a diversity of product types from luxury condominiums, rental apartment office, commercial, retail, hotel, non-market housing and industrial. Westbank–s primary focus is on large mixed use projects involving highly complex entitlement processes. Westbank is best known for being the leading luxury residential developer in Canada, along with being the owner/developer of the finest hotels in Canada. Some of its best known projects include Shangri-la Vancouver, Shangri-la Toronto, Fairmont Pacific Rim and the Woodward–s Redevelopment project.
Contacts:
Shawn Hall
TELUS Media Relations
604-695-6500
Jill Killeen
Westbank
778-837-8907
Darrell Rae
TELUS Investor Relations
604-697-8192
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