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Day 4 of the recent Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat/Council on Vertical Urbanism Conference in Toronto included a tour of the construction progress on SkyTower at Pinnacle One Yonge for some conference participants. The future tallest building in Canada, the 106 storey tower is designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects for Pinnacle International, and will deliver more than 950 condominium suites above a podium containing retail, a pedestrian connection, rooftop amenities, and a 220-room Meridien hotel.
With its glazed, twelve-sided form tapering upward with chamfered corners, the tower has been engineered to reduce wind-induced loads.
Starting in the sales centre, the tour offered updates on the soon-to-be ‘supertall' tower. The development is progressing toward its projected early 2026 topping off and subsequent beginning of occupancy late next year.
The tour’s first stops focused on the podium, where construction has advanced on a mix of back-of-house and public-facing spaces. At grade, the group moved through the retail and hotel spaces, currently with unfinished concrete walls and service installations underway.
On the second floor, crews are building out the hotel kitchen operations and property management areas, with exposed framing and ductwork giving a clear view of the infrastructure that will support the hotel suites on the floors above.
Podium levels 2 though 13 are dedicated to hotel use (other than the 7th floor where many amenity spaces for the condo residents will be located). As part of the tour, attendees stepped inside a fully furnished mocked-up Meridien hotel suite, complete with double beds, accent lighting, and a wall mural inspired by Toronto’s grid, offering a preview of the guest experience. Alongside the rooms, the hotel program will include ballrooms and event facilities, tying into the podium’s mix of restaurants and public spaces.
The building’s vertical systems were another highlight of the tour, with visitors peering into the unfinished elevator shafts that will soon house one of the fastest lift networks in Canada, capable of travelling from bottom to top in just a minute, a requirement of fire safety standards. The core is supported by a combination of steel reinforced concrete and post-tensioned walls, while mechanical runs and piping are being threaded through the structure as construction advances.
To feed the rapid vertical rise, concrete is pumped continuously through a line system running the full height of the tower, a process that allows crews to maintain steady progress even as the structure surpasses 90 storeys. Construction methods such as this continuous line pumping along with external positioning of the crane have allowed work to rapid progress with limited disruption.
On the 50th floor, attendees stepped into one of the tower’s residential suites.
From here, balconies extended outward. Expansive views from these levels reinforced the project’s stature, looking directly across to the glass towers of the Financial District…
…while higher levels, up to the 80th floor, opened up panoramic outlooks over Lake Ontario and Downtown Toronto.
As of this month, SkyTower has advanced well into its upper reaches, with concrete poured to the 92nd floor and the structure on track to surpass the 300m mark —the ‘supertall’ threshold — once it hits 97 storeys. Following topping off, attention will shift fully to completing the facade and fitting out the interiors, a process that has already started, ahead of final occupancy.
The tower’s vertical rise has also relied on high-density rebar and specialized climbing systems. More than 16,500 tonnes of reinforcement have been installed, giving the concrete a density of about 230 kilograms per cubic metre, nearly double that of a conventional high-rise. Construction is supported by two self-climbing systems: the Rail Climbing System (RCS-G) platform wrapping around the exterior for wind and fall protection while enclosing multiple floors at a time, and the Automatic Climbing System inside the core, which hydraulically raises the elevator shaft formwork independently of crane operations.
With topping off targeted for early 2026, SkyTower is entering its final stages of construction. Once finished, the 106-storey tower will add more than 950 condominium suites and 220 hotel rooms to Toronto’s waterfront as the tallest building in Canada.
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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