Toronto The Globe and Mail Centre | 83.21m | 17s | First Gulf | Diamond Schmitt

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From this morning

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Taken New years Eve, December 31, 2013:



I would expect that by this time next year, progress of construction will be well above ground.

 
Razz said:
I would expect that by this time next year, progress of construction will be well above ground.
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I could be wrong about this, but there's a good chance that this could be a half-a-year to excavate, half-a-year to get back to the surface building, depending on how deep they go.

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interchange42 said:
I could be wrong about this, but there's a good chance that this could be a half-a-year to excavate, half-a-year to get back to the surface building, depending on how deep they go.

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Agreed. Just digging down and building back up seems to take forever (at least a year or more!). Finding artifacts and/or coming into ground water issues can make things even messier.
 
slicecom said:
Funny thing is, living in the area, it seems like there's still a ton of surface parking lots that could be developed into buildings. I agree though, it looks dense from that angle.
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It depends where you look, so between King and Queen, I'd say its fairly built up with only a handful of lots left, all the way out to the west donlands. King in particular and the streets just north is essentially completely built out (I'd argue King east is one of the most 'complete' streets in Toronto ... it just has that feeling).

But once you get a little south, particularly on Front, past Jarvis, things change, and there are a lot of lots, and a lot of small buildings ripe for redevelopment, this is all the way out to the Distillery District and north of it ... past this is the West Donlands.
 
taal said:
But once you get a little south, particularly on Front, past Jarvis, things change, and there are a lot of lots, and a lot of small buildings ripe for redevelopment, this is all the way out to the Distillery District and north of it ... past this is the West Donlands.
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Yes, Front east of Jarvis has several 'vacant lots" and most of them have plans.

154 Front Street East (ex Greyhound). Cityzen proposed to build two 26-storey towers joined by a bridge. This was approved by the OMB, over City and neighbourhood objections. They are still haggling over details.

177-197 Front Street East. This is the Acura-Sobeys site at Front/Sherbourne/Princess/The Esplanade. Current proposal is to have three 34-storey point towers on a 10-storey base building with residential and commercial uses. This is not being very well received to date (see UT thread). God knows what the final result will be but undoubtedly something will go on this huge block.

250 Front Street East. This is the Staples site and it was recently purchased by a condominium developer (Greenpark Homes. No plans announced and Staples apparently still have 5-7 years left on the lease.

271 Front Street East. This is the First Parliament site and will be redeveloped in 2017 into a new St Lawrence Library, more parkland and some sort of 'museum'.

There are a couple of other smaller sites like the small parking lot at George and Front and the gas station and adjacent building at Front and Sherbourne that might be developed sooner or later. The data centre on Parliament just south of Front is under construction and the library processing centre at the corner of Front and Parliament is moving out soon. No doubt there will be a condo proposal for that site in due course, it now belongs to the data centre developer, swapped for the First Parliament site.
 
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The OMB has been adamant at not approving anything over te height of VUE, (VU? The Hariri pontarini tower from a couple of years ago) the Cityzen development got chopped down to that.
 
RiverCity1 said:
Agreed. Just digging down and building back up seems to take forever (at least a year or more!). .....
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It's true - especially for condo developments (Freed's Thompson took an eternity), but then again commercial developments or even projects by big-name developers can go at at breakneck speed by comparison. The Ivory on Adelaide went shockingly fast probably because they have the resources to throw at it.
 
An excavation is not a unit of measurement that can be used to compare projects though; it's an operation that differs for each building. Each will have a different size footprint, different materials to dig through, and different depths to dig down to. Despite those variables, we have noted on UT over the years that it averages out to a month per level excavated going down, and then coming back up again. Got a six-storey garage to dig out and then build? Expect around a year, etc.

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