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The Entertainment District remains a hotbed of construction activity, as crews work away on the many skyscraping condominium towers now rising throughout the area. On the southwest corner of Adelaide and John Streets, Pinnacle International's eponymous 'Pinnacle on Adelaide' is one of the several new buildings redefining the Entertainment District into an ultra-dense vertical community, and the 46-storey, Hariri Pontarini Architects-designed tower has recently topped off at 474 feet. We have been keeping a very close eye on this condominium and retail development since its earliest stages, from its excavation to the complicated move of a heritage house, and yesterday afternoon we returned for our first trip inside the project.
Like many of our high-rise construction tours, the very first step is boarding the construction hoist for a ride up the tower's exterior, all the way to the roof. Climb on board with us for the first video from our new GoPro camera!
The roof of the building is still a very active part of the construction site. The tower crane is now gone, and the temporary derrick used to dismantle the crane is itself now too being disassembled atop the now topped-off building.
The top level will be Pinnacle on Adelaide's mechanical floor, holding the building's heavy heating, cooling and ventilation equipment. The mechanical penthouse will be largely obscured from the east by a large sloping fin, the steel framework for which can be seen in the image above.
One floor below the mechanical and roof level, a terraced green roof is taking shape on the building's west side.
This penthouse level, the building's 46th, will be shared by two penthouse units, each with large terrace spaces. Residents of both will find they have a commanding vantage point over our growing city. We have captured the views, as well as some dizzying vertical angles looking down towards street level below, in our second QueasyCam short, for your amusement:
To the northwest, the views stretch all the way to the horizon while the view to the northeast shows the substantially denser downtown-north and midtown skylines.
Looking to the west, the recently completed Cinema Tower can be seen on the left, while the nearly topped-off Peter Street Condos is visible on the north side of Adelaide Street.
Looking even further to the west, we can see Adelaide Street's western terminus in the lower foreground, while the skyline of Etobicoke's Humber Bay Shores is obvious in the middle ground, while Mississauga's Square One area can be made out on the horizon.
If you look directly to the south, the view is dominated by the Festival Tower, but it's easy to look past that building to the southwest or southeast.
Before we turn towards Downtown, it's worth noting that Cinema Tower seems to have the city's most dramatically located barber's chair.
Like the guy getting his hair cut at Cinema Tower, Pinnacle on Adelaide residents with the east view will be the envy of surrounding neighbours, thanks to the that side's vantage point over Toronto's Financial Core.
There is much more to see at Pinnacle on Adelaide, and we will return next week for a look inside the building's 10-storey podium, amenity spaces, suites, and even a look inside the heritage Richard West House. In the meantime, additional information including building facts, renderings and floorplans, are available in our dataBase file, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out one of the associated Forum threads, or voice your opinion in the comments section provided below.
| Related Companies: | Hariri Pontarini Architects, Jablonsky, Ast and Partners, Janet Rosenberg & Studio, U31 |
