Toronto Pinnacle One Yonge | 345.5m | 105s | Pinnacle | Hariri Pontarini

This is a great plot of land for intensification though I'm not enthused at all about Pinnacle being involved. Hopefully by the time this area is developed and built we'll be only a few years away from a downtown relief line.
 
10 York and the Menkes project was reduced in height from their original proposed heights. In one of the reports, the city planning department was stern about not being supportive beyond what is additionally allowed in the area. If this tower ends up anywhere near as high as has been mentioned, what does that mean for future development in the area and the rest of the city. The unofficial skyline cone policy would be dead. The tall building guidelines would be kind of silly to use as a guideline since the waterfront and the areas to the west would have taller buildings than what would be allowed in the downtown core.

Reading up on these development proposals for awhile, it seems like the only ironclad height limit is a prohibition against anything that would cast any additional shadows on NP Square. Odd.
 
Wasn't there something in one of the waterfront plans about an iconic structure at the foot of Yonge? That would likely be the rationale if this gets approved.
 
I present: The Burj Toronto. In grey.

burjtoronto2.png
 
LoL! Next time I'm in Toronto, I'll need to take some pics from that site.

Tall Building Guidelines calls for maximum floor plates of 750 m2. Since 1 Yonge is a massive site, I was under the impression it would be a multi-tower development. Just realized that the UrbanToronto thread title confirms that there will be multiple towers. So many another twin tower development?
 
dt_toronto_geek said:
I agree too it's ridiculous, unless anyone can explain why the skyline tapering policy is good.
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...crickets...

It was just probably an attempt by city planning to limit building heights. U.S. planners like to have maximums on heights, density, and coverage while impose minimums on setbacks and parking spaces. I'm really happy to see Toronto has not fully adopted U.S. planning philosophy but this push back against tall buildings downtown is silly. Toronto is a city of very tall buildings. Embrace it!

I wish they would instead focus their energy on the siteplan of these towers and the bottom six stories or so to better influence the pedestrian realm. There is one city councillor awhile back that spoke about incorporating office uses into the podium and to have higher floor to ceiling heights for the first storey to have more prominent retail. I was also encouraged by reading this UrbanToronto article about 263 Adelaide and how Adam Vaughan is trying to have a nearby development share a parking garage so there will be only one car entrance for the two garages. Cutting down on curb cuts so the pedestrian realm can be approved. That's encouraging thought rather than worrying about the height of the building. My personal preference would be the use of more brick and stone in podiums along with better defined facades. Make the building interesting to look at when walking past it.
 
Huh? The cone policy? Says who? Lol! That cone crumbled years ago with Concord Place, now it's more a game of "fill in the blanks" with height being secondary. If Gehry and Oxford get approved our cone is going to look more like an ECG printout of a heart attack victim! But hey, unless it's circus freak tall, if done properly (HA!) almost anything can be made to fit, just not the Burj, although if we build one at the foot of Parliment, and another at the foot of Spadina, we could have a lovely inverted cone or a valley!
 
Mongo said:
And about time!
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I'm just curious. Your opposition to "the cone shaped policy" is superficially aesthetics and nothing to do refuting the benefits of a tapering policy; maximizing density through height without overwhelming infrastructure and the public realm.
 
dt_toronto_geek said:
I agree too it's ridiculous, unless anyone can explain why the skyline tapering policy is good.
Click to expand...

I would imagine the cone policy is meant to satisfy the demands of transit and infrastructure, if you add tall buildings to already dense areas you usually don't need to add as much extra subways and sewer/water capacity. (the downtown core has a subway loop providing multiple options for transit if one station gets too full) If you all of a sudden add a huge amount of density to an area without heavy transit and built up infrastructure you run into problems. (eg. the huge complaints from people living near mirvish and gehry) The problem is the buildings go up 20 to 30 years before the subway get's built and the city also has to scramble to upgrade pipes, sidewalks and other infrastructure. (which is ironic seeing as how we're building subways in Vaughn 20 to 30 years before the density is there) It seems like it would be more cost effective for the city to simply use up the existing capacity in the core's infrastructure (if there actually is any) and get the payoff of extra revenue from new residents and development taxes rather than add a ton of new infrastructure to areas outside the core (like southcore and the entertainment district)
 
I truly believe that without with all the new residential and commercial development that additional infrastructure development will follow. The Downtown Relief Line use to be a relic of the past, but it has been reborn and is now a top transit priority in the province. The people will demand it.
 
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