Toronto Atrium on Bay Expansion | 114m | 34s | KingSett Capital | Hariri Pontarini

Also, by the way, the building is slowly being renamed to just the "Atrium" as new signage is beginning to show. It has a more contemporary logo too. H&R are doing a much, much better job than Hines on this building already. Hines has really got a crappy image in my head because of the way they kept this building.
 
yonderbean said:
I heard somewhere that Atrium on Bay was originally intended to be taller, but that economic doldrums in the early eighties forced the developer to scale back. Anyone have more solid info on that?
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Dunno, but another factor behind its low-riseness may be the lingering Crombie/Sewell-era phobia t/w high buildings. And "reflective boxes with atriums" were all the rage in the 80s (also cf. 33 Yonge, and the Davisville Centre much further up Yonge)
 
Better integration with the Eaton Centre would be welcome by me. I dislike the jumble of staircases around the Dundas subway station end. It always feels like I have to go up one too many staircases to get where I need to go, but I guess the floors are at different levels and nothing can be done about that now. Perhaps a new connection between the two could be made at the Bay Street end? The Atrium will get a lot more traffic if The PATH can ever be properly extended north-east from here. The outdoor connection to the bus terminal that exists today is silly.
 
SP!RE said:
Also, by the way, the building is slowly being renamed to just the "Atrium" as new signage is beginning to show. It has a more contemporary logo too. H&R are doing a much, much better job than Hines on this building already. Hines has really got a crappy image in my head because of the way they kept this building.
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It makes you wonder why the place was ever branded as 'on Bay' rather than 'on Yonge' to start with?
 
Any chance this addition could result in the removal of that god-awful "media tower" (which is a mighty grandiose name for a pile of scaffolding bedecked in cheap vinyl banners advertizing crummy CTV shows)?
 
That media tower was so hyped as a modern, multi-media, Times Squarish advertising tower, when it was going up. I was quite excited about it until it was finished. Nobody told us that half the tower would be uncovered, exposing all the clutter of the interior. I've hated that thing since the day it opened and will be quite glad to see it come down. It had none of the pizazz, colour or creativity of the Times Square advertising. (not one tiny bit of neon or whimsy) It's amazing how the end result can differ so much than what was originally promised. Metropolis was very much the same thing. (great rendering but terrible results that we now have to look at every day)

No wonder we're all a bunch of skeptics, when it comes to developers and their promises. When they screw up/cheap out, our eyes pay the price, indefinitely.
 
Jonny5 said:
Better integration with the Eaton Centre would be welcome by me. I dislike the jumble of staircases around the Dundas subway station end. It always feels like I have to go up one too many staircases to get where I need to go, but I guess the floors are at different levels and nothing can be done about that now. Perhaps a new connection between the two could be made at the Bay Street end? The Atrium will get a lot more traffic if The PATH can ever be properly extended north-east from here. The outdoor connection to the bus terminal that exists today is silly.
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I think the Atrium's subway connection should have escalators. I've always hated how it's only stairs there. And there is certainly room for two moderate or smaller sized escalators, in addition to some stairs.
 
Wait, what makes you think the media tower is coming down ? There's been no confirmation of that yet.

Honestly, if its not being replaced by something, I'd much rather it stayed !
 
caltrane74 said:
Media Tower is a money maker, don't see it coming down.
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Well if it's such a good money maker, why don't they take some of that money and cover up the unused portions of it. It always seems like 25% of tower goes unused, so why not cover it up by giving free advertising to important causes/non profit organizations? They could do a lot to cover the exposed areas and make that tower look so much better.

The tower might not come down but one can hope. If The Atrium wants to make a bold, new presence on Yonge Street, they should incorporate that whole block of the Street. It could be a big improvement for the Yonge Street Strip.
 
taal said:
Wait, what makes you think the media tower is coming down ? There's been no confirmation of that yet.
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No, there's no confirmation of anything, I was just speculating wildly. If the project does indeed include a major retail tenant (Target or whatever) it seems like a logical place to put that might be on top of the 2-3 storey section fronting Yonge St., where the Media Monstrosity currently lurks. Presumably any redevelopment facing the Y/D intersection would also be plastered with ads, but one hopes it would look less depressingly cheap than it does now.

Torontovibe said:
...Nobody told us that half the tower would be uncovered, exposing all the clutter of the interior. I've hated that thing since the day it opened and will be quite glad to see it come down. It had none of the pizazz, colour or creativity of the Times Square advertising.
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Word. That thing is pug-fugly.
 
Re the media tower, look at it this way: it's more successful as the intended advertising space than the original Yonge facade of the Eaton Centre ever managed to be.

Personally, I don't mind its steel-framed ghastliness. It is what it is.
 
And it aint going anywhere. It cost a fortune to install and there is little reason to take it down - they will build around it, most likely.
 
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