World Exchange Plaza
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The World Exchange Plaza is a building in downtown Ottawa, Canada. The first phase of the project was completed in 1991. It covered an entire city block between Metcalfe and O'Connor south of Queen Street. The twenty-storey building was unusual in Ottawa for its visual flair. The eastern side was marked by a large plaza modeled after the Roman Coliseum. The building opened in the middle of a deep recession and initially had trouble being filled. The 1990s boom solved this and work began on a second tower, which was completed in 2001. This second tower greatly increased the available office space, but also made the structure far less visually arresting.
The two towers hold offices for a variety of companies, including Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche, Borden Ladner Gervais, CTV, Microsoft, Telus, EDS, Ogilvy Renault, RBC Dominion Securities, TD Canada Trust. Atop of one tower is the TD logo and atop the other is the BLG logo. The base of the structure holds a shopping mall known as the World Exchange Plaza. It is home to a number of stores and an Empire Theatres movie theatre, one of the only cinemas in the downtown core. The mall is also noted for the life size models of narwhales and belugas that hang from the ceiling.
