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As the year draws to a close, the vertical climb of The Saint continues; the 47-storey condominium tower-to-be is rising at 89 Church Street in Downtown Toronto. The structure, intended by Minto Communities GTA and Wallman Architects to meld modern residential living with the area's heritage context, has made notable progress since our last update seven months ago and is more than two-thirds of its way to topping off.
A recent image looking southeast across Church Street shows the podium fully sealed in, but with finishing touches still to come. Looking up from the 9th storey slab, glazing is complete on two levels of the north elevation and four levels of the west, with the work on the rest of the tower's facade clearly underway. Above the glazing, the west elevation also displays its extended white balconies. Higher up, platforms cantilevered from the building provide a place to store construction materials until they are needed elsewhere.
A view facing northeast from a few floors up across the street captures the completed brown fins that add some colour to the podium levels. The podium's southern elevation stands out for its angling to hug the street, compared the tower floors above that turn 90° from the Church Street face. At the transition, a gradually widening terrace in created atop the podium. On the west elevation, a notch in the balconies that rises up the building provides articulation to what would otherwise be a more monolithic wall.
Below, we step back for a view looking north from St James Church, the reference for which 'The Saint' is named. Behind the tree, The Saint shows a noticeable step-back its east side. To the right of The Saint, the white-cladded 88 Queen is rising a couple blocks to the north, on its way to 52 storeys.
At night, gazing southwestwards across Richmond Street, the tower's north and east elevations are both visible, with the latter’s glazing further along by four storeys. This angle provides a clearer view of the east elevation's extended volume and the stepback that adds depth to the building's profile. This perspective further highlights the black cladding that frames the windows.
Looking south from Shuter and Dalhousie streets, the more distant view illustrates The Saint's addition to the Downtown East neighbourhood, with its glass and cladding reflecting its surroundings.
The Saint still has a third of its vertical climb to complete as we move into 2024, to end up standing 151m tall and bringing with 418 residential units to the area.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, 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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