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Toronto's next major office tower is well underway just south of Union Station, as construction presses on for the first phase of Ivanhoé Cambridge and Hines’ CIBC Square complex. The WilkinsonEyre-designed, 49-storey office tower has been under construction since the project broke ground in June 2017, across Bay Street from what is now known as the Scotiabank Arena.
It has been a frenetic year and a half of construction activity, and the tower's impact is now being felt from various points around Downtown. CIBC Square is being constructed with structural steel floors surrounding a reinforced concrete core. Work on the core has been moving along steadily, now roughly halfway towards its final height, as the surrounding steel skeleton begins to take shape on the tower's lower levels.
While work is proceeding on the first levels of the tower, work has all been progressing on the new GO Bus Terminal which will take up much of the space in the building's podium. Above, the second floor of the terminal was covered with a dense network of rebar and cables so that a super-strong post-tensioned slab could be created. An extended overnight concrete pour began just after midnight on Saturday morning, starting an 18-hour operation.
Above, about 11 hours into the concrete pour on Saturday, and below, what the second floor of the GO Bus Terminal looked like on Sunday, after 20 or so hours of curing.
A projected construction timeline for the tower released in the summer shows that forming of the concrete tower core is well on track for its July 2019 topping out, while the tower is expected to reach substantial completion in July 2020. As it stands now, CIBC Square’s south tower core is over 24 storeys in height, and is expected to reach the 30-storey mark in January.
To the north of the building, work continues on the park that will bridge over the rail corridor. Above, to the left side of the image, a layer of steel decking is being installed over the trusses. More trusses, meanwhile, continue to be installed: the diagonal truss seen above and below is one of the latest to be put in place. Shorter trusses will extend from it to the concrete wall to the south.
An update on the tower's leasing was released by Ivanhoé Cambridge last month. Between anchor tenant, CIBC, and other tenants including Microsoft Canada, BCG, AGF Investments Inc., and more un-announced tenants, the south tower is now 100% leased, just under 18 months after the project’s launch.
Additional information and images can be found in our database file for the project, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out the associated Forum thread, or leave a comment in the field provided at the bottom of this page.
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