The Concourse Building was a 16-storey tower at 100 Adelaide Street West in Downtown Toronto. Built in 1928, the buff brick and limestone clad building was adorned with Art Deco flourishes. Over time the building's restricted spaces, low floors, and handicap accessibility issues made it less and less attractive to tenants. Several attempts were made over the last decade to find a way to retrofit and repurpose the building, but all prospective plans fell through. More recently, owner Oxford Properties made plans for a façadectomy while creating a new 40-storey office tower on the site, and work to bring that building about, The EY Tower, recently rebranded from the Ernst and Young Tower, is now underway.

The Concourse as it used to stand, image courtesy of TOBuilt.ca

The first step has been to take down the parking garage and the Concourse Building. Demolition of the 16-storey building and dismantling of the exterior elements that will be reused started in August, with work on the interior have started earlier in 2013. Seven weeks ago at the beginning of October we brought you the work up to that point, while today we have the work since then which has brought the building right down to the ground.

The Concourse Building on October 16, image by mk39920

Thanks to several UrbanToronto contributors, we have the work from several angles including from the street and from nearby office towers. Notice the dates on the shots: the building has come down quickly.

The Concourse Building on October 31 image by Roundabout

The Concourse Building on November 08, image by wmedia

The Concourse Building on November 18, image by mk39920

Above, from the First Canadian Place tower to the south, four days ago, show just two floors remaining. Early today, looking south through the rain, only one floor remains. The crane in the centre of the photo will be coming down tower before demolition of the basement levels begins.

The Concourse Building on November 22, image by panther5125

The image above also shows the patchwork roof of a new temporary loading dock entrance in place; the old entrance immediately south of it will soon be demolished too.

All of this is in aid of creating the 900,000 square foot building shown below. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and WZMH Architects, the 40-storey tower is about 3 and half years from opening with the reconstituted Concourse façade fronting the south and east elevations. As office floors are higher now, the façade's elements will be reassembled in a 13-storey configuration. 

The EY Tower with the reconstituted Concourse façade, image courtesy of Oxford Properties

UrbanToronto will be back to highlight more milestones in this project. Want to know more about the project in the meantime? Click on our dataBase file for the EY Tower, linked below, for piles of renderings and lots of information. Want to talk about it? You can get in on the discussion in the associated Forum thread, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.