From the Post:
'Urban plaza' to be built over Adelaide 'stump'
Zosia Bielski, National Post
Published: Thursday, July 20, 2006
A park will replace the infamous "stump," a six-storey elevator shaft that has been an eyesore on Adelaide Street for 15 years.
The park, or "urban plaza" as it's being called, will be the focal point of the 2.6-million-square-foot Bay Adelaide Centre launched yesterday. The centre will take up two city blocks between Yonge and Bay streets and include three mixed-use towers -- office, hotel and maybe residential.
Serving as a courtyard for the towers, the park will run from Adelaide to Temperance streets. "It's intended to be an urban oasis," said Ric Clark, chief executive of Brookfield Properties, which owns the site.
Although the park is still in the early stages of design, Mr. Clark likens it to Zuccotti Park, which Brookfield built recently in Lower Manhattan. The park, which is next to the World Trade Centre, features ground lighting and 20-foot trees.
The blueprint for the new park on Adelaide shows a linear design that includes rectangular lawns and urns bordered by trees. The park will be a privately funded public space.
It will take the place of the enormous stump, which appeared as part of an unfinished office tower in 1991 and has grown in the civic imagination.
"The stump was a symbol of Toronto stagnating," Mayor David Miller said at yesterday's launch.
Along with Mr. Clark, Mr. Miller donned a hard hat and took a sledgehammer to the stump.
The Mayor said the Bay Adelaide Centre heralds new growth in the financial core, which hasn't seen a significant development since BCE Place went up in 1992.
The first tower will measure 50 storeys, with the top 10 floors rented to KPMG, a global accounting firm. The building will incorporate the historic, 11-storey facade of the National Building on Bay Street. Construction is to be completed by 2009.
The park will be across the street from "Cloud Gardens," a woodland garden built in 1993 on land that was subdivided for lots by Methodist philanthropist Jesse Ketchum.
Mr. Miller said the "urban fabric will be linked" throughout the centre by access to the PATH system and the urban park.
© National Post 2006
AoD
