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The Sky Isn't Falling
The grim economy may hush Toronto’s building boom, but the city you see here is still on its way
For the decade-and-a-half that ended in 2006, a concrete stump stood at Bay and Adelaide. The unfinished skyscraper, cut off by the 1990s recession, lingered as a token of its cruelty and of a lost decade of
skyscraper-building in Toronto.
A symbol of the recent (but now concluded) boom times has risen to take the stump’s place since it was demolished in 2006. The Bay Adelaide Centre, a 51-storey edifice of steel and blue-tinted glass, will fill up with lawyers and accountants starting in July.
(Ryk Stryland, senior vice-president of development at Brookfield Properties, reports that the view from the top is “stunning.”)
So, the Bay Adelaide Centre defied the recession and got built. Now what? Will less fortunate skyscrapers be aborted, frozen in mid-construction, before the worst is past? The short answer is probably not. Recession or no, downtown Toronto will grow considerably denser and taller in the coming years. Though it was abruptly yanked out from under us, the recent economic boom’s momentum — coupled with the prudence of our lenders — will carry us through, says condo sales guru Brad Lamb.
Among residential projects, “The ones that were hoping to start won’t get started” in 2009, he says, due to slowing sales, “but anything that’s got a shovel in the ground, whether it’s a condo or a hotel, will get finished, and anything that’s an office building will get finished because it’s months or weeks from being completed.”
Other commercial buildings going up include the nearly complete 42-storey RBC Centre at Wellington and John and the 30-storey Telus Centre at York and Bremner.
Lamb warns they’re the last for a while due to the banks’ caution. “You’re not going to see any new office buildings in the downtown core for another six to 10 years. There’ll be a long gap in construction.”
In the meantime, Toronto is becoming ever taller and denser at its core. Today, 52 completed buildings stand 122 metres or higher over the city. Eighteen of these were “topped off” during the past five years. Seventeen more — mostly residential buildings — are under construction. And around a dozen more have the official approval to join them if and when the economic winds blow the right way again.
If it seems as though the skyline has changed a lot over the past five years, just wait for the next five. See Scott Dickson’s digital cityscape renderings. Portraying the Toronto of, say, 2014 or ’15, they reveal a city with a heavier cluster of steel and glass at its heart and extending along its major arteries.
These drawings require dozens if not hundreds of hours of research and work to complete, Dickson admits, including keeping up with developers’ changes in plans. “I’m embarrassed to say I do it because for me, a skyscraper geek and wannabe architect, it’s the perfect hobby. It’s very meditative,” says the creative director of the marketing and design firm Upside Down.
The renderings are just a taste of the labour to be expended on our skyline in the near future.
None of these buildings will knock the 298-metre First Canadian Place from its spot atop the list of Toronto’s tallest buildings, but some of the ones under construction will come within reach, including the soon-to-be-completed Bay Adelaide Centre at 218 metres and the Donald’s baby, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, at 257 metres.
The current recession will indeed cull the herd a bit. Near the foot of Bay Street, a new stump has consecrated by the downturn. What was to be the Success II tower, the fourth high-rise at Pinnacle Centre, has instead been shrunk to a single-storey clump of rebar and concrete, capped (meaning postponed) until further notice.
Uptown at College and University, the second phase of the Medical and Related Sciences project, dubbed MaRS, couldn’t find enough tenants and was put on hold last November. And don’t hold your breath to hear anything further about Oxford Properties’ Richmond Adelaide Centre 2.
For that matter, just what is going on at One Bloor East?
All in all, though, for skyscraper geeks such as Dickson, it’s been an exciting time to be living in Toronto. “In some ways, I have an evolving render in my head as the city is changing,” he says.
The change will continue, following a short gap. When the dust settles from the current recession, Lamb says a new condo boom in the Entertainment District will crank up again.
Within the box defined by University, Queen, Spadina and Front, according to Councillor Adam Vaughan’s website, 11 high-rises of at least 35 storeys are at various stages, from proposal to construction —
including Lamb’s own 45-
storey development next to the Royal Alexandra Theatre, tentatively called Theatre Park. Another 20 or so buildings of at least seven storeys are also glints in some developers’ eyes.
In other words, Dickson has plenty of Photoshop hours ahead of him.
National Post
amcdowell@nationalpost.com
Photo illustration of Toronto skyline by Scott Dickson
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