The two tallest towers of the Oxford Place redevelopment planned for the existing Metro Toronto Convention Centre would be the tallest buildings in the City. They would far outpace even the tallest bank towers of the Toronto Financial District, taking them past the 1000 foot mark. The current tallest tower of the Toronto Financial District is the First Canadian Place Tower (BMO) that rises to a height of 298 meters or 978 feet. However if you include the antenaee the tower is close to 1150 feet. Oxford is planning on demolishing the existing Metro Convention Centre, but not before building a new complex south of the railway lands to handle the overflow the demolition would cause to Toronto's Convention Space market. In addition to the two office-residential towers with a slated height of 1070 feet each, there is also the hotel component, of which the taller tower comes in at 255 meters.
This project has the potential to change Toronto in the most major of ways, making it more like Tokyo, Soeul or New York, bringing us to a high capacity high residency urban core, unlike anything else in North America. In combination with the Gehry proposals Toronto has been home to the release of 5 towers over 80 storeys of 270 meters in the past 3 weeks. This is happening at the same time the federally applied brakes to the Toronto Condo Market are kicking in, and condo sales are slowing down. However to the federal government's regret, office demand is picking up, and so the Harper Conservatives will have to find some other way to slowdown Toronto's rebounding constructing economy, so Calgary can get some development action going on, as a reward to their loyal electorate out there.
In Toronto, amoung the representatives here, Adam Vaughan has become the most outspoken critic of this project, indicating that Toronto doesn't have the transit infactructure to deal with the coming crush load of proposals in the core. As a carrot Oxford has proposed, building a railway deck of the railway lands with a park so that the North and South Convention Centre buildings can be linked together. In addition to the public park over the railway tracks, Oxford is promising to build a state-of-the-art tunnel to allow the new property to be serviced underground for Truck and Delivery Service. This building project is so ground breaking I'm sure there will be developers in the United States that will take a keen interest in what is going on here. Toronto is finally moving into the big leagues....Here is a link to the Globe and Mail Article
Casino Complex to be Tallest in Canada
They are only the latest in a string of increasingly tall towers planned across downtown and towards the city’s waterfront, raising fears that development and population growth are outpacing already strained infrastructure.
On Thursday, Oxford said the building heights are only “thoughts,” and the company isn’t wedded to the size.
“The height isn’t really a major factor,” said Michael Kitt, an executive vice-president at Oxford, in an interview. “We see these as preliminary numbers that would change.”
Office space, which would take up 40 storeys in each tower, would be the buildings’ core component, Mr. Kitt said. The upper floors would be made up of apartments, and the final height would be determined by market demand.
The revelation comes just weeks after theatre impresario David Mirvish unveiled plans for three 80-storey towers in the Entertainment District on King Street West, designed by the world-renowned Mr. Gehry. By comparison, First Canadian Place, the country’s tallest office tower, is 72 storeys. Its roof is 298 metres up.
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