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Despite the cold and recent snow, the drone of mechanical equipment continues at the Front and Spadina site of The Well, Toronto's largest construction site. The enormous project from Diamond Corp, Allied Properties REIT, Rio Can REIT, Tridel, and Woodbourne is bringing a 36-storey office tower, 6 residential buildings, and 432,000 ft² of retail space to a site that recently was home to the Globe and Mail and car dealerships.
Seven cranes now form a miniature skyline hinting at the future tower arrangement. Work is currently furthest along for the site's Hariri Pontarini Architects-designed office tower, directly fronting the Front and Spadina intersection, where forming of the tower's ground floor is in progress. This building will eventually be the complex's tallest, reaching a height of 174 metres.
To the west of the office tower, garage levels are progressing at the 46-storey architectsAlliance-designed residential rental tower, with progress following behind for two more Front Street residential buildings with complementary designs. At the site's southwest corner, the last of an earthen ramp is being removed to free up space for forming of the shortest residential building.
At the north side of the site along Wellington Street, forming is underway at the eastern two of three Wallman Architects-designed residential buildings in the complex. Construction has pressed on through an unexpected hurdle earlier in the month, when the tower crane for the central tower was damaged and needed to be replaced. While being quickly dealt with, construction continued relatively unhindered across the rest of the site.
Below the footprint of the future west-most residential tower, work has begun on excavating a massive underground water cistern. This tank—previously planned as two smaller tanks, they have been consolidated into one—is part of an energy-efficient Enwave district air conditioning expansion that we covered in greater detail in a previous article. The cistern is being excavated down from the base of the pit, with the walls of the tank to follow using slipform construction, the same method of quickly forming concrete used to build the nearby CN Tower. A thick transfer slab will cap the cistern, with walls and columns of The Well's garage structure to rise above.
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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