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Toronto's Financial District is expanding in all directions as new office towers advance beyond the area's traditional boundaries, with 65 King Street East rising east of the core, CIBC SQUARE rising to the south, Scotiabank North Tower at Bay Adelaide Centre to the north, as here to the west a new landmark tower for banking giant TD at 160 Front Street West. As work on the first three projects continue, the latter is now just beginning its above-grade ascent at the northeast corner of Simcoe and Front.
The 46-storey Cadillac Fairview development—designed by AS+GG Architecture of Chicago working with Toronto-based B+H Architects—will stand out from the pack with a curved massing and textured exterior envelope, while housing 134,766 m² (1.2 million ft²) of new office and retail space. Under construction since mid-2019, the project has been advancing quickly through its early stages.
We last checked in on the site about three months ago, when the majority of the four underground parking levels and a mezzanine level with bicycle parking had been formed, and the first at-grade forming was proceeding for the main tower core. In the months since, forming for the tower core has advanced four floors above street level, and is partially surrounded by climbing formwork. The fully-formed core sections below the climbing formwork are marked by openings for stairwell and elevator doors.
A tower crane that previously operated just north of the core footprint has been relocated to the core itself, and will now rise in step with the core. The main tower core will house shafts for 28 elevators divided into banks serving low-, mid-, and high-rise sections of the tower. On lower levels, the elevator core will take up a significant share of the building's footprint, tapering down as the building rises, with fewer elevators reaching upper floors.
While the core is being formed with concrete, structural steel will be used to assemble the surrounding tower. Steel fabricators and constructors Walters Group will soon begin the installation process for the first elements of the 9500 tons of structural steel and 1.07 million ft² of metal decking that will form the tower.
North of the rising tower core, a second shorter elevator core is taking shape which will serve just podium levels.
As UrbanToronto Forum contributor Contra has done with other high-profile projects like CIBC SQUARE and The One, he has begun tracking construction progress with a diagram superimposing a coloured visualization of current work over a greyscale elevation diagram of the final product. The image of the tower's south elevation currently places focus on the retained heritage wall on Front Street and the rising core behind.
160 Front West will rise to a height of approximately 240 metres. We'll return with updates as milestones are reached.
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 below.
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