1K 
Few sites in Toronto's core neither have languished as a surface parking lot for so long, nor have seen so many different plans come and then go without materializing. Is something finally viable at 70 Temperance Street? Skyline International Development Inc., who bought the site from the financially troubled Harry Stinson in December of 2007, are now pressing ahead with the Canada Tower Hotel and Residence, a 54-storey project inserted between Toronto's financial core at King and Bay and its civic heart at Nathan Philips Square.
Both nodes have played a role in the site's troubled history: King and Bay's bank towers to the south seem to will a tall tower into the Temperance Street site, while Nathan Philips Square's civic function demands sunlight to the north. Trying to find an attractive plan than maximizes real estate on the tight but expensive land, while still avoiding a design that would cast a shadow on the square, has been a major factor in derailing plans before. Here's a very quick look at some of the older plans for the site before we view some screen captures from a preliminary video now online for the Canada Tower. In 2002 the Sheppard Group proposed the 58-storey First Toronto Tower, designed by Burka Architects. A website for that development has been preserved here, while images of that plan persisted on billboards on the building site for several years after.
By March 2003 Harry Stinson entered the picture and the building morphed into Downtown Plaza. Stinson's designs came from Turner Fleischer Architects.
Downtown Plaza morphed into the Sapphire Tower; many versions of the Sapphire Tower. The first was a double-barrelled cylinder above a square base, and topped with a spire.
As the Sapphire Tower benefitted from media attention, and in competition with the Trump Tower which was being marketed concurrently, plans for it gradually became more refined, more grandiose, and taller. When the building finally went to Toronto City Council for approval in November 2005, the 90-storey plan was turned down based on the shadows it would cast on Nathan Philips Square. This image also remained at the building site for years after cancellation.
The plan was radically redesigned and reduced to 73 storeys, then 62, before Stinson cancelled plans amidst financial difficulties.
Skyline bought the land in December of 2007, and in December of 2008 we got our first detailed idea of what Skyline was proposing for the site. At the time that included lobbies and hotel and dining services on the first several floors, offices on floors 6 through 22, hotel suites up to the 32nd floor, and condominium residences above that. All planning remained quiet for the last two years however, but now plans are coming together again. We know the building will still be a hotel with condominium residences above; we do not know yet if intentions to include office space on lower floors remain. A video of the project can be viewed at this link, and we are providing some screen captures from it here for your pleasure. The new concept is designed by Page + Steele / IBI Group Architects.
UrbanToronto will keep you posted on news about this building as marketing progresses.
