A couple blocks east of Yonge Street and on the fringes of Toronto's Financial District, work is underway on a new office tower representative of the district's outward expansion in recent years. Carttera Private Equities' 65 King Street East has been underway for a few months now on King Street, between Victoria and Church streets. The 18-storey, WZMH Architects and IBI Group-designed office tower officially kicked off with a ground breaking held in September, several weeks after work crews began to arrive on site. In the months since, demolition, heritage preservation, and shoring have all been progressing.
The most evident work is happening along the King Street frontage, where a row of heritage facades have been secured in place with steel bracing as demolition progresses behind. These facades will be incorporated into the base of the office tower, overseen by heritage architecture specialists GBCA. Just south of King Street, on Leader Lane, a view back towards King Street offers another angle on the in-situ facade retention.
The view above also shows ongoing demolition, with crews from Mitchell Demolition working away at the easternmost building on the site. Meanwhile, a shoring rig is working away at the south end of the site, a recently-closed surface parking lot along Colborne Street. Drilling will continue around the site's perimeter to create the below-grade earth retaining walls supporting a safe excavation.
Most dramatic currently are views across King Street through the supported heritage facades, behind which the building's podium will be formed.
65 King East will eventually rise 83 metres and introduce 400,000 ft² of office space to the area. Some of the tenants in the building will have access to outdoor terraces, depending upon which floor they hav offices on: 18,152 ft² of terrace space will be spread across eight floors, with individual terraces ranging from 678 ft² to 4,600 ft². Tenants will also have access to in-house amenities that include locker rooms and shower facilities. The project is targeting LEED Gold certification, WELL Ready standards, and Wired Gold certified status—a commercial real estate rating system for a building's digital infrastructure.
Additional information and images can be found in our database file for the project, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out the associated Forum thread, or leave a comment in the field provided at the bottom of this page.
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