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It's not just an ongoing condo boom that keep construction workers busy in this city: new offices in and around the downtown core have been opening or under construction constantly for a few years now. Shoring is underway for RBC's new Canadian head offices on Harbour Street, while word is that the office component of York Centre, where the Ïce Condos are now rising, is about to go ahead, and where across the street we expect to hear shortly about a new lead tenant for the Bremner Tower at the Southcore Financial Centre.
While all of those complexes have us eager with anticipation for what they will bring to Toronto's emerging southern extension of the core, another highly anticipated complex is now fully underway that will help extend the core to the west - Queen West, or Queen Richmond West - to be exact. Allied Properties REIT has work fully underway bracing the walls of the heritage warehouse building at 134 Peter Street which will make up part of the base of this urban intensification project. Completion of the temporary bracing of the walls will allow excavation of the site to begin soon after.
134 Peter and the building seen in the background, 364 Richmond St West, are to be incorporated into a modern structure which will envelop them on two sides with a 70-foot high L-shaped atrium, supporting a new office tower above on giant X-beams. Respectful of the past, this nevertheless futuristic and very clever design is by &co Architects. It will bring 285,000 square feet of new office space to the area when complete in early 2014.
Here's how this same corner should look in the not-too-distant future, when the new 16-storey tower is finished.
Below, a view of the giant X-beam supports which will feature as functional sculpture in the building's atrium lobby. This will be one of the most stunning front entries to any office in the city once it opens. With retail being added to ground level, and with Urban Capital's Tableau Condominiums soon to be rising kitty corner from QRC West soon, we anticipate an amazing new locus for Toronto at Richmond and Peter a short time from now.
We have many more images of the complex and more information about it too in our dataBase listing, linked below. Otherwise, if you'd like to get in on the conversation, choose the associated Projects & Construction Forum link!
