Toronto One Bloor East | 257.24m | 76s | Great Gulf | Hariri Pontarini

DenzilMinnan-Wongshington said:
It looks like something you'd see in Las Vegas or Florida. I don't like the hollow that runs up the building, especially, but the entire tower just doesn't excite me in general. I just find it boring. The skin kind of reminds of the Holiday Inn on King West.
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I prefer the original 1 Bloor East bldg, but this one isn't all that bad.
And please god don't ever compare Vegas to Toronto. Vegas is disgusting stucco-covered faux cities (including the new City Centre Casino which I like to call 'Toronto, Toronto').
 
DenzilMinnan-Wongshington said:
I prefer the Bazis proposal. Aren't they building Musuem House or something else in that area? What exactly stopped their 1 Bloor project from going ahead if they're building elsewhere in the city?
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Bazis had sold out their proposal within days, but they had also arranged funding for the project through Lehman Brothers. When Lehman Brothers unexpectedly went belly-up, they took the project financing with them into oblivion, and the resulting worldwide credit collapse meant than no other bank was giving out building loans.

Basically, Bazis were about to start construction when they suffered incredibly bad luck with their construction financing and were forced to hand the project over to GG. Not that it stops people from making snide comments about foreign Kazakh businessmen without the smarts to put together a project of this size.
 
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Could it not just be that the new 200 units refer to some combination of the following:

1) The 5 new floors that we already know are being added to the 65 storey tower.

and

2) The possibility of larger units being divided into smaller units in order to better fill market demand?
 
DenzilMinnan-Wongshington said:
It looks like something you'd see in Las Vegas or Florida. I don't like the hollow that runs up the building, especially, but the entire tower just doesn't excite me in general. I just find it boring. The skin kind of reminds of the Holiday Inn on King West.
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Well it really is just another box shaped building - with undulating balconies - no real magic. The construction would be very much a typical box, nothing new, no great design. It's amazing how a little aesthetic switch up with the balconies can make people think it a great design when really its 'same old'.
 
What can be done within the existing planning approvals? 1BE was approved up to 290.5m. That's 52.8m taller than the existing One Bloor design. At 3.4m per floor, that's a bit more than 15 additional floors. Floors 8 through 37 have 12 units per floor -- rather small units compared to those on the higher floors, but apparently the easiest to sell. That's 180 additional units. 180 is close enough to 200 that I would expect the number to be rounded off to 200 in casual talk, such as that which started this rumour.

So Great Gulf could simply use all of the already approved height allowance, which would allow them to insert 15 additional floors, possibly between the current design's 37th and 38th floors, for a total height of 289m and 85 floors.
 
sodapop said:
this is just a rumour, no?
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Yes, although it now apparently comes from multiple sources:

From rbt at SSP: A numbers of trades in X believe Great Gulf is hunting for a major height boost to One Bloor. It's possible another 200 units could be put up for sale before construction starts.

From urbandreamer at SSP: So there's truth in this rumour, says my source...
 
With a shape like One Bloor already has, wouldn't adding floors make for very extensive changes to people's unit layouts and balcony sizes, and cause a lot of hassle to contact all the people who have bought units and make sure they're okay with the change (legally), etc. etc.?
 
Seems odd it has been quiet for so long. Why not push for extra height if the demand is there, but it seems like whenever a project in Toronto tries to push the height envelope, they get scaled back or canceled (Aura is the exception)
 
DaninToronto said:
Seems odd it has been quiet for so long. Why not push for extra height if the demand is there, but it seems like whenever a project in Toronto tries to push the height envelope, they get scaled back or canceled (Aura is the exception)
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Well thats because as architect Peter Clewes puts it “Toronto is not ready to become a big city†you know he may be right.:eek:
 
Mongo said:
Bazis had sold out their proposal within days, but they had also arranged funding for the project through Lehman Brothers. When Lehman Brothers unexpectedly went belly-up, they took the project financing with them into oblivion, and the resulting worldwide credit collapse meant than no other bank was giving out building loans.

Basically, Bazis were about to start construction when they suffered incredibly bad luck with their construction financing and were forced to hand the project over to GG. Not that it stops people from making snide comments about foreign Kazakh businessmen without the smarts to put together a project of this size.
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+1...exactly.
 
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