As demand for office space in Toronto pushes towards all-time highs, a new generation of office towers are preparing to spring skywards. With ongoing high-rise office developments like One York, the SouthCore Bremner Tower and RBC WaterPark Place extending Downtown past its traditional southern edge, it is clear that the commercial real estate market is soaring. In addition to building out the area south of the rail tracks, this unprecedented flurry of office tower construction is also adding density to the already bursting-at-the-seams Financial District.

Work on Brookfield Properties’ Bay Adelaide Centre East (BAC East) is now well under way with demolition crews continuing to prepare the site for construction of the 44-storey office tower. A portion of the underground parking garage, built to serve an earlier plan, is being torn up to make way for the reworked tower's foundations and underground floors. The absence of a traditional, lengthy and costly excavation is expected to greatly reduce the project’s overall construction time.

Demolition of underground parking lot at Bay Adelaide East site, image by Jack Landau

On the eastern side of the property, the work is a bit more complicated. The historic brick building on the northwest corner of Yonge and Adelaide, seen below draped in green netting, is having its façade carefully disassembled and catalogued before demolition proceeds on the structure.

Historic facade being removed in preparation for demolition, image by Jack Landau

Ongoing demolition at the Bay Adelaide Centre East site, image by Jack Landau

This demolition will make way for BAC East’s podium, which will front onto Yonge and Adelaide. Later on in the construction process, the historic façade will be applied to the former AdditionElle building located at the corner of Yonge and Temperance, which has recently been stripped down to a concrete shell. 

Ongoing demolition at the Bay Adelaide Centre East site, image by Jack Landau

Rendering of the Adelaide Street podium frontage, image courtesy of Brookfield Properties

Once complete in early 2016, the 643-foot tall, 980,000-square-foot KPMB Architects and Adamson Associates Architects–designed tower will be anchored by professional services giant Deloitte, whose offices will occupy 43% of the East Tower. Another major confirmed tenant of the building will be Borden Ladner Gervais, who will move their offices from Scotia Plaza across the street, occupying 165,000 square feet of the tower.  

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