PlayValue Toys 

When Doug, Janet and Reid Jones, owners of PlayValue Toys, came to see us more than five years ago, they had a number of objectives—

1. To own their own premises/they were tired of paying rent;
2. To customize their own building to suit a growing business that was heading into the next generation with booming Internet sales;
3. To find a location that had a high profile, was affordable, was large enough to accommodate growth over the next 25 years and had easy ingress and egress not only for customers but for shipments in and out since the company now ships their products all over North America.

Finding a site in the City of Ottawa for a hybrid—a company that does retail sales, wholesale sales, light assembly, transshipment (of up to 24,000 pound loads) and storage as well as needing both inside and outdoor showrooms—is hard because, frankly, such an animal does not exist in Ottawa zoning codes.

So Doug and his team created their own future by finding a raw site that took advantage of a new interchange and highway built by the province of Ontario at a huge cost and Hazeldean Road, rebuilt by the City of Ottawa at a cost of tens of millions.

The result is a stunning new building that will take this family-owned company safely into the future.

The Jones’ faced long odds—they struggled with the landowners for more than four years to get the zoning done and the fact that more than 56% of development land in Ottawa is controlled by just ten companies.

Their patience, perseverance and courage are to be commended proving once again that the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Here’s to a great future for PlayValue Toys,

Bruce M Firestone, broker, Century 21 Explorer Realty, founder, Ottawa Senators

November 2013 profbruce bruce.firestone@century21.ca

“We make the impossible, possible.”