Ottawa Nortel campus for sale

Nortel's sprawling Ottawa campus has been officially put up for sale.

Real estate broker DTZ Barnicke posted newspaper ads this week marketing the 2.35-million-square-foot complex  — formerly Nortel Networks Corp.'s global research and development headquarters — as a user and investor opportunity. The ad features a large aerial photograph of the campus at Carling Avenue and Moodie Drive in the city's west end.

As of Friday, no price had been listed and no posting yet appeared on the DTZ Barnicke website for the 11 interconnected buildings on 150 hectares of land, billed by Nortel as the "largest industrial high-tech campus of its kind in Canada."

The blue glass pyramidal dome capping the main building was once seen by many as a symbol of Silicon Valley North, the nickname sometimes pinned on Ottawa over a decade ago when Nortel was a successful Canadian telecommunications technology giant that anchored the booming local technology industry.

Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2009 and has been selling off its assets ever since. It has already completed the sale of its major divisions, and their new owners have leased a fraction of the space in the building that once housed 15,000 workers. A sign bearing Nortel's name was removed a few weeks ago from the campus.