Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos
The building had basically been abandoned (except for the VIA station on part of the ground floor) since the late 80s or early 90s. As I recall after One London Place was built, there was a large surplus of office space, and nobody wanted the CN building.
I was last in the building in 1999, and it seemed very run down and dated - even though it was only 24 years old.
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CN basically abandoned their building after large regional HQ's were no longer required - technology allowed a large corporation to run most of it's operations out of a handfull of national offices. A lot of companies pulled up stakes from Ontario regional centres in the 90's and retreated to Toronto. The building was outdated and full of asbestos - so no one wanted to lease the space when the Talbot Centre and OLP came online. Gutting the building and pulling out the asbestos and then rebuilding the interior wasn't economically realistic. Easier to pay for 70 pounds of explosives once the asbestos was stripped out and build a nice station for the Canada Games.