Toronto Festival Tower and tiff Bell Lightbox | 156.96m | 42s | Daniels | KPMB

Not I don't have to personally wring their necks.

Lots of buildings have lit tops and or signs way up there, and while it remains to be seen what will be proposed for Festival Tower's crown (animated in some way?), I would suspect that the windows of the actual condos will pose a much greater risk to birds than the relatively small peak.

Birds across the province must not be looking favourably upon the near-exclusive use of glass in the new highrises.

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This is easily the slowest condo project in the city from initial announcement to starting sales.
 
Yes it is, and the only one with a multimillion dollar podium at its base, built to house a world-renowned film festival. Some times it can take a little while to raise the bucks for something like that.

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It has been the misfortune of this project that planning and financing have been under way at the same time as several other major cultural facilities. They all came to fruition within a fairly tight time frame.

The good news is that when this finally is built, and assuming that it ends up as presently planned, it will be a facility which we can unapologetically call "world class". How many other cities anywhere will have something like this?
 
They're probably counting on another film festival's worth of fundraising to push them over the top.
 
Well it starts Spetember 7th so they better get their butts in gear. I feel that this design will look even more dated by the time it gets built.
 
Every ticket sold to a fest film now come with (and has for the last two years I believe) a building fund charge of about 25 cents per. There are somewhere around a quarter of a million tickets sold throughout the run of the fest I believe, so that adds up to a grand total of...

$62,500 towards the new centre. That's nothing. I don't know why they have even added the charge, they get so little out of it. Each condo sold in the centre will probably bring that much into the building fund coffers, so I don't think that they have been waiting for one more festival to put them over the top. It's really the beneficence of wealthy individual, corporate, and institutional donors that they are counting on. The festival itself will merely be a publicity vehicle they can use to say 'look who's been so generous to us, and we're grateful'.

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They have received many, many, many millions of dollars in donations. The 62,500 figure does indeed seem paltry by comparison.
 
Oh that's what I mean, interchange. I'm just assuming that donations pick up around festival time.
 
Perhaps the small surcharge is more of a psychological ploy than a financial necessity? It can always be raised later. The COC has been using subtle psychological terror tactics for years, with their thinly-disguised threat to give you lower seating priority unless you make a charitable donation. The St.Lawrence Centre includes a $2.65 surcharge on each ticket to help fund their renovations.
 
This tower would have been a good candidate for a signiature design, don'tcha think? Seems like a waste of a brand...

I agree. Something creative as far as the tower is concerned would've been nice.
 
Something a little flashier. This is the 'festival' tower, this is the entertainment district, after all.
 
Why flashy? The opera house exterior isn't flashy, but sparks will fly onstage. The Festival Tower podium, where the film stuff happens, is distinctive enough as a cultural signifier, isn't it? Why can't the condo tower just be a nice tower?
 
I agree with Tudararms. If any building in the entire city should be flashy, it's this one. TIFF is the two weeks a year (or whatever) when Toronto becomes what it is not for the rest of the year: glitzy, overstated, celebrity-obsessed and yes, flashy.

By the way, Tudararms, I love your posts.
 

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