When will Canada get a supertall???

[Spocket]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

No, this is distictly untrue.

Building above 800ft is prohibitively expensive for a multitude of reasons. This is why someone123 said, and he is correct, that in most cases building 300m is not necessary.

It is much more sensible and cost effective for a developer to build a fatter, shorter building, or multiple buildings, than one supertall. Given Canadian's propensity towards sensibility I would put my vote in that it will be at least 10 years before we see a supertall, with a 65% chance of it being in Toronto, 25% chance of it being in Calgary, and a 5% chance of it being in Metro Vancouver or Montreal. If you like give Edmonton a 1% chance too, but the land economics there just make so little sense to build a supertall it would ahve to be someone with an enormously large ego and correspondingly small common sense to do it.

And again , no , it's not untrue. Just as we have all now said (which is why I'm not sure why you're belaboring the point) in most cases a supertall makes no sense . We're not talking about most cases here .

As I said before , just look at the Bow in Calgary . Encana already had the space but it was all in separate locations . Even though it cost far more to build it at one location , EnCana needed the space consolidated . There are other factors to consider than the rent which was what I said in the beginning . Building and leasing costs are often enough just not that important to large companies . Consider for example how much of a profit EnCana can pull in on a good year . For them The Bow is chump change . This is obviously not an argument for a supertall per se but rather to underscore the point that the economics of any building are not necessarily the same for the one next door . EnCana could have built a supertall and they could have also built a suburban office campus . Was it necessarily vanity that influenced EnCana to build the Bow ? Seems unlikely to me but sure , let's say that that was the case . My guess is that they'd have spent far more than necessary no matter what format they opted for .