Toronto Union Centre | 298m | 54s | Westbank | Bjarke Ingels Group

We now have three BIG office towers that are proposed: THE HUB, Union Centre, and CC3, all of which would be game changers. I wonder which one will break away from the herd and get built first?

160 Front is confirmed and already starting demolition, CIBC Square is under construction. Very interesting times for office construction in TO.
 
I'm saddened to see the gorgeous previous design replaced with a bunch of boxes. On the other hand, it sounds like the new proposal has a lot of other things going for it. Is there any real chance that they might put an observation deck on top? That would seal the deal for me.
 
Lets take a moment to contemplate something.

Right now, this moment. Toronto has either under construction or committed (pre-leased) more than 4M sq feet of office space downtown (or downtown periphery).

The proposals in the next cluster, CC3, HUB, Union Centre plus assorted smaller towers (King East, King/Peter) etc. would represent at least the same again.

Union Park could be 2M on its own.

Not factoring in areas in Liberty or the massive Lever site.............. we have 10M sq ft (or more) in the pipeline. Now I realize a chunk of this will likely not be built in this wave.........

But here's the thing.........if we even assume 5M sq ft, at current normative calculations........ that's 50,000 jobs if that space is full.

Let that settle for a moment.....now take in that that is fairly likely to complete and be online space by 2024. Five years earlier than the most ambitious target for the Relief Line.

If even 1/3 of those jobs are filled by people who arrive by subway........that's another 16,600 and change people on Line 1, during the peak 90m or so. Or around 10,500 pph.

I'm not assuming any growth in retail, in tourists/hotels, convention space or residential.

We really have to accelerate our infrastructure spend...... (we all knew this)....... but eesh......
 
interchange42 said:
That's my understanding. I think all the majors route through there. If the data centre floors are to expand, I would hope that existing users could be moved incrementally into new space, freeing up area along the north wall to go in and make adjustments to that frontage: this building should have a prominent Front Street presence.

42
Click to expand...

My brother used to work there. He said that if anything were to happen to that building, large chunks of the internet would go offline and rerouting that traffic wouldn’t be trivial nor could it happen quickly enough to avoid major disruptions.

Given that they’re in fact building new data centres into the new tower and it looks like at least 4 floors, perhaps the long term plan is indeed to move some or all of it from the Front Street building.
 
MetroMan said:
My brother used to work there. He said that if anything were to happen to that building, large chunks of the internet would go offline and rerouting that traffic wouldn’t be trivial nor could it happen quickly enough to avoid major disruptions.

Given that they’re in fact building new data centres into the new tower and it looks like at least 4 floors, perhaps the long term plan is indeed to move some or all of it from the Front Street building.
Click to expand...

I understand that this is for additional data floors. The existing data hub will not (cannot) move due to the critical nature of this infrastructure. You need redundancy at all times. Even the 30 minutes that it could take to move a server from one floor to another would mean 30 minutes without the appropriate redundancy which is not feasible.

I have seen the plans (which were executed) to move down the hall at 151 Front for a critical internet provider. They needed a different space and at the same time were upgrading some hardware. So they basically created triple redundancy, moved one, moved the 2nd and then turned off the old hardware. Note they also have location redundancy as well (another city). It costed a pretty penny. You actually see very few moves in this building for that specific reason (hence why this is the most expensive rent in the GTA)
 
travis3000 said:
We now have three BIG office towers that are proposed: THE HUB, Union Centre, and CC3, all of which would be game changers. I wonder which one will break away from the herd and get built first?

160 Front is confirmed and already starting demolition, CIBC Square is under construction. Very interesting times for office construction in TO.
Click to expand...

The HUB will likely get built first. I would not be surprised if prep work started later this year. CC3 will probably have to go through another design iteration before it goes through. Union Centre is hard to tell. The proposal has been around for a while, but I would imagine that the site now needs reapproval, as the previous approval was issued for approx 1m sqft of office space, if I remember correctly, whereas this has 1.7m sqft.
 
I really like the design but i think it's kinda fat, it they remove the highlighted part it will be perfect.
P.C. Interchange42.

177113
 
smuncky said:
I think we'd all like to have the Front St facade redone, but this building has some really specific requirements to run all the equipment. Trying to do any construction around that would probably be pretty expensive.
Click to expand...

Would an overclad be possible?
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top