HighPark Condominiums by The Daniels Corporation is growing noticeably now on Bloor Street across from the famous park, and can be seen from a distance beginning to poke above its surroundings. The view of the building looking across the valley at Keele Street from Indian Road is going to be an impressive one of the Diamond Schmitt Architects-designed building.

HighPark Condominiums as seen from east of Keele Street, image by Craig White

From across Bloor Street in High Park itself, there's always something going on for passersby to watch.

HighPark Condominiums as seen from across Bloor Street, image by Craig White

The ground floor retail spaces are starting to be fitted out with the mechanical systems, such as the sprinkler pipes which will largely go unnoticed in the background once the building is finished, but which are always there if ever needed.

Work begins on fitting out the building with mechanical systems, image by Craig White

To build columns, concrete is poured into a sonotube, a form essentially made out of paper. A steel rebar cage in the centre of the tube will reinforce the concrete, giving it immense strength.

Concrete for columns is poured down sonotube forms, image by Craig White

Once the concrete in the columns have cured sufficiently, the sonotube's paper wrap is peeled off and tossed out.

The wrap comes off the columns, image by Craig White

Into the dumpster with the column sonotube wrap, image by Craig White

A little higher up, another part of the job is underway. On the third floor a construction worker watches from a temporary platform as the operator of crane #1 lowers the main hook, fitted with chains, for a hoisting job.

When you need to move materials from one level to another, a crane is the way to go, image by Craig White

The materials that need to be moved here are shoring jacks. You can see a number of them in use in the photo; the shoring jacks are installed between floor and ceiling during the concrete curing process to make sure that the slabs do not sag at all during this time. Once the slabs are sufficiently hard, the jacks can be removed and taken to where they are needed next.

A bundle of shoring jacks are ready to be hoisted, image by Craig White

In the image above, the worker has attached straps tied around the bundle of jacks to the end of the chains hanging from the crane's hook, and he has signaled that they are ready for the hoist. Below, we have lift off.

The shoring jacks are hoisted off the platform, image by Craig White

A minute later the crane has hoisted the jacks three storeys higher, and is swinging them around to land on the sixth floor. They will be installed as soon as the flyforms used for the pouring of a slab have been transferred to where they are needed next.

The shoring jacks arrive where they will be needed next, image by Craig White

Back down at ground level, and looking east along the front of the building reveals custom work to build forms that will be used to create the concrete ledge that the building's front windows will rest upon. These forms are built in place as the end result here is not something which will be repeated in another spot in the building.

Work proceeds on sidewalk-level details, image by Craig White

You get a feel in the image above for how tall the ceilings will be for the ground level retail spaces.

So that's what was seen along the Bloor Street side of Daniels' HighPark Condominiums when we last stopped by for a visit. There were other things to check out on the north side of the building too, and we will return with a look at that in our next story on the project.

Looking back towards the east at Daniels HighPark, image by Craig White

Want to know more about Daniels HighPark? Our dataBase file for the project, linked below, contains lots of information and several renderings. Want to get in on the discussion? Choose one of the associated Forum thread links, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.