http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto/story.html?id=2457341
Skyline unlimited
Recession can't slow city's big-tower boom
Adam McDowell, National Post
A crane was assembled at the corner of Bay and Harbour streets in recent weeks, and Scott Dickson rejoiced.
Tower geeks such as Mr. Dickson had feared that the fourth tower of the Pinnacle Centre development, kitty-corner from the Air Canada Centre, had been felled by the recession. Its name, which seemed ironic at the time, was Success Tower II.
Like virtually the entire complement of Toronto's planned mega-skyscrapers, which includes 18,400-metre-plus monoliths under construction at the moment, Success II survived the rough winds of the recession without its financing toppling over.
"I think Toronto's been largely immune [to the recession],'' Mr. Dickson said yesterday. ''Look at house prices; bidding wars are happening again. I don't know what's going to happen, I just know we're going to have cranes in the air for the next five, six, seven years."
Whereas the early 1990s recession killed off many high-rise projects both commercial and residential -- memorably leaving behind the famous Bay and Adelaide stump in the core for years -- observers are emerging from the most recent one, and noticing that the skyline of a few years from now remains as tall and shiny as ever.
"Toronto looks like a boom city," said Mr. Dickson, the owner of a boutique firm called Upside Down Marketing & Design, who used Photoshop to cook up a rendering of Toronto's skyline as of 2014, as seen from Marina Del Rey, next to Etobicoke's Humber Bay Park.
"It's kind of an exciting time to be a skyscraper geek. Everything is getting bigger in Toronto. I remember when 30 storeys was a big deal. Now 50 storeys is the norm."
Twenty-three of Toronto's 65 buildings standing 122 metres (400 feet) or taller have been completed during the past five years, and at least another 15 are scheduled to be added to the total by 2014.
The city's collection of skyscrapers, in other words, will have almost doubled from 42 to 80 in the space of a decade.
Mr. Dickson said the coming 75-storey Aura condo tower at Yonge and College, now at the excavation stage, is the one to watch for. "It's a big boy. That's going to change the skyline the most, I think. There's still a chance they're going to ask for another 10 floors, too."
Shawn Micallef, a senior editor at Spacing magazine, managing editor of the new online magazine Yonge Street and a pioneer "psychogeographer," observed that the mad building boom will not truly be felt until the buildings are actually built.
"Skyscrapers just sort of seem to appear," he said.
"In our peripheral vision, we see all these cranes and towers going up but they don't register until someone moves in and flicks on a light switch. All of a sudden there's a light where it doesn't belong. That's why I'm always struck by the sight of them. 'Oh, there are more people in the sky.' "
One tower that will need to be removed from Mr. Dickson's future sky is One Bloor East, a project that got as far as clearing the southeast corner of Yonge and Bloor before shutting down. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers erased developer Bazis International's financing arrangement. Now the site belongs to Great Gulf Homes, but no tower design has been released.
"All the geeks are sitting on their hands waiting for something," said Mr. Dickson. "There was a rumour that it was going to be in the 65-storey range."
Success Tower II, in the meantime, simply changed names and is now being marketed as 33 Bay. It will rise up to 46 storeys; tall, but not colossal by the standards of 2010s Toronto. If all goes well, the lights will go on in October of next year.
This spring, its developer, Pinnacle International, will open a sales centre for its next project, a 46-storey condo tower at Adelaide and John, said sales and marketing director Anson Kwok yesterday.
It will be one of several major Entertainment District projects to come in a localized mini-boom over the next decade. As Mr. Kwok said, "Stay tuned."
amcdowell@nationalpost.com---------
