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Downtown Toronto's Front and Spadina intersection is a hive of construction activity as work progresses for a mixed-use megaproject on a 7.8 acre site. Known as The Well, the project from Diamond Corp, Allied Properties REIT, Rio Can REIT, Tridel, and Woodbourne, is bringing a new office tower, multiple condominium and rental buildings, pedestrian plazas, plus a retail galleria carving through the site.
Construction-wise, furthest along is the 36-storey office tower at the site's southeast corner, designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects. The office tower—the tallest building on the site—reached grade at the end of 2018, and has been steadily rising beside Spadina Avenue in the months since. The latest photos show that forming is now underway for the office tower's fourth floor.
To the west of the office tower, work is moving along below ground level. To rise above the parking and retail levels here will be six residential towers, including three buildings facing Front Street designed by architectsAlliance, and three buildings fronting Wellington designed by Wallman Architects. These include rental buildings of 46-storeys on Front and a pair at 16-storeys on Wellington, while two condo towers on Front will be 38 and 22 storeys, and one on Wellington will be 14 storeys. From Tridel, these will be known simply as 'The Well Condominiums'.
The underground levels are in varying stages of progress. Forming is furthest along for garage levels under the more easterly buildings.
At the west end of the site is where excavation continues for a large underground water cistern which will expand Toronto's energy-efficient Enwave district deep lake-water cooling and solar thermal system to the west. The tank's walls are being formed with the same slipform construction used to build the CN Tower, and will then be capped by a thick transfer slab before new levels are constructed above.
At the site's southwest corner, the final bits of excavation are now wrapping up on an area of the pit that previously was home to the earthen access ramp that connected the base of the pit with Front Street above. Due to the depth of this section of the site, a pair of excavators are working in tandem to clear away the remaining excavate. In the image below, an excavator at the base of the pit can be seen handing off a load of soil to a second excavator at ground level which has lowered its shovel. The hand-off of excavate is a painstaking process, with the material, transferred from shovel to soil, to then be dropped into the truck waiting above.
The residential and office components of The Well will be tied together via a 432,772 ft² retail galleria, with BDP in charge of design for the retail spaces. The entire project has Adamson Associates Architects serving as architect of record.
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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