Toronto Living Shangri-La Toronto | 214.57m | 66s | Westbank | James Cheng

DtTO said:
Great, except for the fact that every incidence of falling glass in 2014 has been from a building with curtain wall. Shangri-La/Trump, and one of them (Trump) was due to human error (workers striking the panel, IIRC).
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And not to paint with a broad brush or anything, but each of those buildings were also curtain wall that was sourced from China. There've been lots of Canadian sourced curtain wall projects over the past years that haven't had these issues.
 
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...uct_fallingglass_barriers_over_sidewalks.html

Shangri-La ordered to ban guests from balconies, construct falling-glass barriers over sidewalks | Toronto Star

The City of Toronto has ordered the Shangri-La hotel and condo building to take immediate action to prevent injuries from falling glass.

The city issued the “order to remedy unsafe building” to the developer of the 65-floor Shangri-La tower on Aug. 5, demanding they install overhead falling-glass protection on the sidewalks around the downtown property.

The city also ordered the developer, Westbank Corp., to prevent the building’s condo owners and hotel guests from using their tempered-glass balconies until they can be wrapped in a protective netting to prevent them from falling.

The order comes after a pane of patio glass shattered and fell from the 51st floor of the luxury hotel and condo tower on July 17.

No one was injured when the glass fell onto University Ave. at the height of the busy morning commute, but that hasn’t always been the case.

Last September a 53-year-old man suffered minor injuries when he was struck by falling shards, one of five such incidents at the building since it opened two years ago.

Since the “unsafe building” order was issued for the 180 University Ave. property last week, construction scaffolding has gone up on the sidewalks around the building as a temporary overhead barrier while the balconies are wrapped with webbing.

How long the scaffolding stays up will depend on how quickly the wrapping is completed, said Westbank spokeswoman Jill Killeen in Vancouver.

“Once that is in place, then the street-level scaffolding can come down,” Killeen said.

That wrapping has already begun, according to the city.

The city’s building department and the developer have already removed more than 300 pieces of balcony glass from the Shangri-La to test for nickel sulfide inclusions, or microscopic imperfections in the glass that can cause spontaneous breakage.

Inclusions have been blamed for balcony failures at three other new downtown highrise buildings in recent years: Festival Tower, One Bedford and the Murano Towers.

Of the 325 tempered glass panes removed from the Shangri-La, only 44 have been tested so far.

“You have to physically take the actual piece of glass, reheat it in an oven and if it breaks, you can determine if the cause of the break was nickel sulfide,” said Mario Angelucci, Toronto’s deputy chief building official. “Likely if it breaks, it’s nickel sulfide.”

Of the five Shangri-La balconies that have failed since 2012, one was likely caused by an impact, one was caused by nickel sulfide and the causes of the other three are unknown but may have been sulfide inclusion, according to Angelucci.

All of the Shangri-La pieces taken for testing so far have been replaced with laminated glass, which is sealed and holds its shape when shattered, unlike tempered glass.

Before the city issued its order last week, Westbank had applied for a permit to replace the balcony glass with laminated glass on the two sides of the building overlooking University Ave. and Adelaide St., according to the city and the developer.

Once testing is complete, further measures may be taken by the city, Angelucci said.
 
DSC said:
That is hardly going to be a great selling point for either hotel or condos!
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Exactly my thoughts though once corrected I will be glad that we should not have to worry about the balconies in the future.
Big expense for the developer.
 
What a mess. I understand that falling/defective glass can happen to any building anywhere. But has this become more of a unique Toronto problem in terms of the magnitude of which this is happening in our city?

It's embarrassing. Especially when it comes to out-of-town era visiting the city in our best hotels.

And it can't be our climate too. Since many cities nearby (namely New York and Chicago) share very similar climate and weather conditions.

It's really such a shame when such a beautiful (higher quality glass building for our city's standards) becomes major headlines and a victim to falling glass. Because a building like this should be a stand out to your average person showing them that not all glass condo buildings have the same poor quality. Glass buildings already have a bad reputation. This doesn't help it either.
Shangrilas is one of our better buildings. It's got a beautiful curtain wall that now becomes no different than the type of glass on Murano. It's hard to tell that to someone anyway if the glass keeps falling.
 
For reference, the window wall contractor for this project:
http://www.fareastglobal.com/eng/project.html
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whatever said:
And not to paint with a broad brush or anything, but each of those buildings were also curtain wall that was sourced from China. There've been lots of Canadian sourced curtain wall projects over the past years that haven't had these issues.
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The balcony glass at Shangri-La was not supplied by Far East Global.

For reference, every incident of falling glass that I've heard of has been either A) balcony glass or B) caused by mishandling or accident (breakage), which is not a design issue.

The latter should have already been dealt with by the City of Toronto or the Ministry of Labour adopting NYC like policies and telling developers to spruce up their so-called "overhead protection" that they currently provide at construction sites, which is, quite frankly, an absolute joke. If developers in Toronto were forced to erect scaffolding like this (http://www.sidewalkbridgeny.com/) as overhead protection, you would never hear about falling glass again.
 
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DSC said:
That is hardly going to be a great selling point for either hotel or condos!
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It should be fine after all of the balcony glass is replaced.
Look at Festival Towers, it had all of their balcony glass replaced, and it still sells really well. I was looking at a unit there when they had all of the balconies covered up and they were still selling and renting for top dollar.
Though there was a class action lawsuit from homeowners because they couldn't use their balconies for an extended period of time.

The Shangri-La has fewer balconies, so the work wouldn't be as extensive as Festival Towers.
 
neuhaus said:
It should be fine after all of the balcony glass is replaced.
Look at Festival Towers, it had all of their balcony glass replaced, and it still sells really well. I was looking at a unit there when they had all of the balconies covered up and they were still selling and renting for top dollar.
Though there was a class action lawsuit from homeowners because they couldn't use their balconies for an extended period of time.

The Shangri-La has fewer balconies, so the work wouldn't be as extensive as Festival Towers.
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I wouldn't say Festival sells too well. I'd say it's the opposite.
 
TheKingEast said:
I wouldn't say Festival sells too well. I'd say it's the opposite.
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I don't believe however that the selling record has to do with the glass. I believe the $800/sq.ft. and above price is what was making this difficult to sell and that there were issues with resales at that price even before the glass issues came to light. However, it certainly does not help. I wonder how long the balcony issues will be at SL until the fix is affected and whether there will be class action suits here in the future as well.
 
interested said:
I don't believe however that the selling record has to do with the glass. I believe the $800/sq.ft. and above price is what was making this difficult to sell and that there were issues with resales at that price even before the glass issues came to light. However, it certainly does not help. I wonder how long the balcony issues will be at SL until the fix is affected and whether there will be class action suits here in the future as well.
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Oh for sure. They were hard to sell before the glass problems. Don't think the area's attractive enough to older people to want to throw down $1000/sqft. Cinema Tower's having the same problem. There are some deals to be had for that reason.
 
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