Particularly cold winter weather recently got in the way of construction progress of Mizrahi Developments' The One in Downtown Toronto, but this past Saturday temperatures increased enough for crews to facilitate the concrete pour of the walls and columns of the building's 7th floor.
Early on Saturday morning, cement trucks began to gather along both Bloor and Balmuto Streets, closed for the occasion, getting ready for the day's work. The Bloor trucks fed concrete through a street-side mobile concrete pump up to the 6th floor, while the trucks parked on Balmuto sent concrete up to the concrete pump, affixed atop the same level.
With the walls and columns on the 6th floor wrapped in orange plastic tarp, it's difficult to see the work accomplished, but now the major walls of the 6th floor are in curing, and the next step will be to have the floor slab of the 6th level poured.
The 6th level will house amenities for both residents and hotel guests. Above it, the 7th will be the first of the repeating hotel suite levels, meaning that construction should pick up pace once it is finished, as its forms will be reused floor after floor. New forms will be needed again for the mechanical levels at 17 and 18, and the condo levels which start at 19.
In the image above shows how impressively high a truck mounted boom pump can stretch. Its outriggers splayed to give the equipment stability, its unfolded, red-painted steel boom reaches all the way up to the 6th level to deliver the concrete for the pour. Surrounded by no less than ten cement trucks, the spidery contraption was used to deliver liquid concrete to the north hlaf of the site. The second concrete pump sitting atop the south side of the 6th level was there to pour the rest.
An overhead view of the site gives hints of the plywood floor forms still sitting rebar free on the 6th level, suggesting that the 6th level slab must wait for that level's major walls and columns to be completed first.
An image created by UrbanToronto Forum contributor Contra shows the construction progress between November 15th and this past weekend, with the orange area of the more recent image representing the portion of the building that is currently covered with tarp, with the bare 7th level of the columns poking out above. The image shows only a portion of how much more there is left to go – with currently only seven of the 85 approved storeys, and 94 proposed storeys, built.
Designed by UK-based architects Foster + Partners with Toronto's Core Architects, The One was approved at a height of 85 storeys, 308.6 metres. The building is among the pair of projects currently contending for the title of Canada's tallest building, along with the 312.5-metre SkyTower at Pinnacle One Yonge, which is now in the early stages of construction only a couple of kilometres to the south. Mizrahi Developments has applied for an increase in height and density for The One to rise to 94 storeys and 338.3 metres high. If the increase is permitted, The One would take the record as the tallest building in the country.
More information on the development will come soon, but in the meantime, you can learn more from our Database file for the project, linked below. If you'd like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story included incorrect floor numbers.
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