RICHARD SIFTON

FIVE MINUTES WITH
RICHARD SIFTON
108FIVE | SUMMER
A remarkable London success story, Sifton Properties began with one man, Harry Sifton, in 1923. Today,
Sifton is an award-winning construction and property management company, and a major player in the
region. Sifton also demonstrates a commitment to making the community better with countless charitable
sponsorships, park land donations, and support for local hospitals and libraries. Through it all, aside from
one brief flirtation with public ownership, the company has stayed in the family. Currently guiding Sifton
Properties as President and CEO is Richard Sifton.
Five: Sifton Properties is one of London’s biggest employers; what
do you think London can do better to create or attract jobs?
Five: Giving back to the community seems to be important to
Sifton; where does that come from?
RS: I think what we need to do is to continue to grow and
be innovative and actually keep the population in London.
If you think about it, we want to remember where we are,
so we don’t need to find a Toronto solution because we’re
not in Toronto. What we do need to do is to find and
keep our great pool of employees and public that want to
be employed – they’ll have great skills, and those skills will
actually cause employers to want to come to London. You
don’t need the employers to bring in people; you need the
people to bring in the employers. If you don’t grow as a
business or as a city, then you’re typically going backwards,
and if you’re going backwards then people don’t want to
stay, and if they don’t want to stay, then you’re not going to
attract new people. That’s where we found ourselves a few
years ago, and it’s probably time to expand.
RS: My grandfather was a farmer; he then became an
insurance salesman and he didn’t like any of those so he
became a builder, and through all of that, my mom and
dad instilled in all of us the desire to give back to the
community. Obviously we’ve been lucky in some of the
things we’ve done, and we believe that there’s always a
good need to give back to the community whether that is
giving back in terms of through our family foundation or just
giving back in terms of encouraging our employees to be
volunteers, and all of those things are very worthwhile. The
family foundation targets youth and children and families,
and we’re doing that because we believe that if the
youth have a good start to their life, it will lead into better
families, which will lead into people who are coming into
the community, those new people will become employees,
they’ll become business owners, they’ll become leaders,
and they can make the difference and grow London to be
better in the future.
Innovative doesn’t necessarily mean creating something new; it’s
trying things and those things should be a benefit to everybody,
obviously, but that innovative thought process will also help keep
new, young people in the city. I think that our council has a
lot of great ideas. I think that there’s still some resistance to try
something new, which is a challenge, and I think they need to
work together in order to move forward, and if all of those things
can come together then I think there’s a lot of great opportunity.
Five: Since its inception, Sifton Properties has diversified from
building single homes to developing whole neighbourhoods,
townhouses, apartment buildings, office buildings and
retirement homes; what does the future hold for Sifton?
RS: We are very diverse now, not only in terms of the areas
of business that we’re in, being new homes, townhouses,
residential rentals, office buildings, retirement homes, but we’re
also diverse in terms of our cities that we’re in. We’re going
to continue to increase that diversity in the not-too-distant future:
we’re moving into Ingersoll, Ilderton, we’re going to be back
in Brantford building, Forest, Sarnia, Campbellford. So all of
those are great opportunities. We’re also expanding in terms
of our retirement living – we have one under construction in
Kitchener now that will be opening up in October, and we
have another one starting shortly in Sarnia. Being a leader in
the industry is probably the hardest thing you can do, because
it’s the hardest to maintain. You’re always trying to improve
on your ways of doing things, improve on the way we’re
dealing with our employees and in terms of our customers, and
all of those opportunities just allow you to grow as an entity,
hopefully for the better. The toughest thing is to be on the top
because everybody’s now targeting you to beat you and it’s
not easy to stay there.
Five: Many years after construction of One London Place,
what do you think its legacy will be? Do you view it more as
a blueprint for London’s future or a unique, one-off project?
RS: It was a vibrant, innovative new design, new ideas when
we built it some time ago, and I think it’s going to continue
to be that form of construction because there isn’t a lot of
opportunity for new office buildings in London. Even today,
because of its architecture it’s still leading-edge. We make
ice in off-hours in order to cool it during peak times, so we
were even environmentally friendly before environmentally
friendly was the vogue or a word that gets used on a regular
basis. All of those things lead it to be a legacy of saying
it was the first item in downtown London that led to the
redevelopment of downtown London, because people started
to see that it was new and vibrant and innovative, and
maybe that helped to kick-start the downtown revitalization.
I think it’s more of a blueprint for the future. It’s a question of
whether it will be repeated or not, but I don’t see it as a oneoff; I see it as a lead-in to many other opportunities that can
come down the road.
Five: What do you like to do for a night out in London?
RS: I’m not a night hawk, but certainly a great meal with
friends and/or family is always a great opportunity.
Downtown is a great place to come – a Knights game is
always enjoyable – or just a nice time at somebody’s house
with friends and family is always enjoyable.
SUMMER | FIVE109