If you live in one of Canada’s major cities, then you’ve likely set foot in a building owned and managed by Cadillac Fairview, the Toronto-based wholly-owned Canadian real-estate subsidiary of the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan. Last summer, Salvatore (Sal) Iacono, BEng 86, became its president and CEO. It’s a role that entails overseeing 36 million square feet of leasable space at 69 landmark properties worth roughly $30 billion.
Iacono isn’t new to the scene, having worked in real-estate development, sales and operations since 1989 and at Cadillac Fairview since 2008. Along the way, he contributed to the evolving skyline of his hometown, Montreal, by helping to develop soaring high-rises such as the IBM-Marathon Tower (now known as 1250 René Lévesque), the Deloitte Tower and the Tour des Canadiens.
Among the challenges Iacono has faced on the job, he says the COVID-19 pandemic stands out in his mind, in part because Cadillac Fairview’s portfolio features numerous large shopping centres — including CF Fairview Pointe-Claire on Montreal’s West Island, opened in 1965 as one of the country’s first enclosed malls — that were forced to shut their doors, at least for a while. But since then, he says, those properties have bounced back.