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Following completion of the 44-storey Bay Adelaide East tower, new marketing material for the third and final element of Brookfield Properties Partners' Downtown Toronto office hub reveals a fuller look at a tower provisionally known as Bay Adelaide Centre North. Set to rise immediately west of the Cloud Gardens, the Class AAA office tower would complete the high-rise development, adding 843,000 ft² of commercial space to the core.
Situated immediately north of Arnell Plaza which separates the two existing high-rises, the north tower will extend the highly rectilinear design language that characterizes the complex. Designed by Toronto's KPMB Architects, the planned building would be the shortest of the three towers, with a height of 394 feet previously approved for what was touted a 31-storey edifice. While it is unclear whether those plans are being maintained or slightly amended, the new renderings reveal a massing strategy that appears in keeping with the City-approved Site Plan.
Notwithstanding potential variations to previous plans, however, the City's concerns about new shadowing onto Nathan Phillips Square mean that any tower built on the site will be effectively capped at a height of about 400 feet. This will make for a noticeably shorter presence alongside the completed 51- and 44-storey towers, which reach respective heights of 715 and 643 feet.
Renderings of the project depict a design that matches the Bay Adelaide Centre's existing aesthetic at ground level and in the skyline. The rectilinear tower meets Temperance Street with an airy, minimalistic lobby. No retail space is planned at grade, with storefronts underground instead. (The PATH system and parking garage for the tower already exist below the tower footprint, with the Bay Adelaide Centre's food court connecting the complex to The Hudson's Bay store to the north, and beyond.) Streetscape improvements for the two-block-long Temperance Street aimed at making the street more pedestrian friendly are indicated in the renderings with new paving materials, while a revitalization of the adjacent Cloud Gardens Park—partially funded via the Bay Adelaide Centre project—is also planned to the east.
In the works for over five years—and at one point floated as a mixed-use commercial and residential tower—the project has undergone the comparatively long gestation process typical of commercial office development in Toronto. Unlike condominiums, which rely on gradual pre-construction sales of individual units, the viability of major office projects is often (though not always) contingent on securing a single anchor tenant, or a few major tenants who would take up a substantial proportion of the available space.
The new marketing material comes online amidst a growing influx of office development, with the announcement of on-spec construction at Cadillac Fairview's 16 York closely followed by recent details of CIBC's anchor tenancy—of up to 1.75 million ft²—at Hines and Ivanhoe Cambridge's more architecturally adventurous Bay Park Centre. In the meantime, the commercial component of Diamond Corp, Allied Properties REIT, and RioCan's The Well is also getting underway, contributing to a relatively strong infusion of Downtown office space in the coming years.
Given Toronto's exceptionally limited commercial office vacancies in the core—recently reported as the lowest across all North American downtowns—the various new projects are coming online amidst relatively strong demand. Following in the footsteps of the above projects, Bay Adelaide North would add another signifiant dose of office space to the Downtown submarket. However, no concrete announcement regarding tenancy or construction timeline has been made as of yet.
We will keep you updated as more information becomes available, and the project continues to progress. In the meantime, our newly established dataBase file features additional information, as well as renderings. Want to share your thoughts? Leave a comment on this page, or join the ongoing conversation in our associated Forum thread.
