Toronto Scotiabank North Tower at Bay Adelaide Centre | 140.2m | 32s | Brookfield | KPMB

maestro said:
Mixed use for the site is ancient history. Does Brookfield even have hotel properties?
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It is ancient history, but one that I wish Brookfield would revisit. There are many potential office buildings chasing tenants… so why not try the accommodations route? Or even a condo. I would like to see more after-hours use in the core, one way or another.

Brookfield, meanwhile, shot themselves in the foot, at least knocking a toe off, when they allowed Bruce Kuwabara to talk them into not using the same design for the east tower that they had used on the west one. Now for a third tower, they have to ask themselves "are we going to make the third slightly different again, so that all three are mismatched" or "do we replicate the east tower design in the north one and just have one mismatched one"? Either way, the BA Centre simply will never cohere architecturally. If, however, the third tower ends up being at least partly hotel or condo (or both), then they have a perfect reason for the building to look different, no questions asked.

So, making BA North a condotel would positively address many challenges. As @khristopher mentioned, it would reclaim Cloud Gardens for the public at large, it would solve the Centre's architectural inconsistency problem, it would not further overload the food court below (and would actually allow the merchants to lengthen their hours a bit), it would further enliven the area (Brookfield has a plan for occasionally shutting down Temperance Street for festivals, which would be enhanced by a population living and/or staying on the street), and it would be one more tower going up without having to fight for the same tenants that every other downtown landlord is fighting for. Bring it on!

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If the north tower were significantly different from the other two, it would look fine. Nobody would think it was supposed to be a complex, and it would look like three buildings from different developers.

Last I read, Brookfield was planning the north tower to be a replica of the east tower.
 
interchange42 said:
It is ancient history, but one that I wish Brookfield would revisit. There are many potential office buildings chasing tenants… so why not try the accommodations route? Or even a condo. I would like to see more after-hours use in the core, one way or another.

Brookfield, meanwhile, shot themselves in the foot, at least knocking a toe off, when they allowed Bruce Kuwabara to talk them into not using the same design for the east tower that they had used on the west one. Now for a third tower, they have to ask themselves "are we going to make the third slightly different again, so that all three are mismatched" or "do we replicate the east tower design in the north one and just have one mismatched one"? Either way, the BA Centre simply will never cohere architecturally. If, however, the third tower ends up being at least partly hotel or condo (or both), then they have a perfect reason for the building to look different, no questions asked.

So, making BA North a condotel would positively address many challenges. As @khristopher mentioned, it would reclaim Cloud Gardens for the public at large, it would solve the Centre's architectural inconsistency problem, it would not further overload the food court below (and would actually allow the merchants to lengthen their hours a bit), it would further enliven the area (Brookfield has a plan for occasionally shutting down Temperance Street for festivals, which would be enhanced by a population living and/or staying on the street), and it would be one more tower going up without having to fight for the same tenants that every other downtown landlord is fighting for. Bring it on!

42
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The East Tower is much nicer than the West tower but, yeah, it is unfortunate the towers aren't twins. At this point, it probably would be good to go different with BA North. A version of Dallas' Bank of America Plaza with BA 2's glass could bring the complex together. (i.e. multiple indentations in the corners)

Condos are a one time payout. Unfortunately, that would probably be a waste of the site's ROI for a company like Brookfield.
 
I'm clearly in the minority here, but I'm not sure that I agree with most of the sentiments being bandied about. I actually think the Bay Adelaide Centre is coherent architecturally, particularly at grade where the population almost entirely experiences it. In my opinion, the towers are different yet complement one another and form part of a recognizable larger whole. It isn't my favourite piece of architecture in the city, but I do believe it's a success. As for the north parcel, I think as a city we'd be nuts to root against an office building. There are literally thousands of hotel rooms within a quick walk of the site - a hundred+ more is not going to play any huge role in animating this area, nor will a handful of luxury condos (any more than the 350+ suites and hotel rooms in the Trump Tower a few dozen metres away did). There are so many condo sites in the downtown core - sites unlike this one that would never accommodate the floorplate required for a top tier office building - and the economic and financial benefits of an office tower far outweigh the benefits of a condo tower (not that I think we need to choose). If we want to animate Temperance and the surrounding area, we need to make it and Cloud Gardens attractive and connect them to the rest of the downtown. Right now, Cloud Gardens suffers from tired and worn out fixtures and lack of connectivity to the north (Richmond effectively being a highway along this stretch, with little to attract pedestrians). A pedestrianized Temperance (ideally with some programming), some sort of ground floor animation in Bay Adelaide North facing the park (such as a restaurant), more interesting uses at the base of the Aikenheads and General Accident Insurance buildings (goodbye Hong Kong Tourism bureau, at least in current form), and even a pedestrian connection to the Hudson's Bay building to the north - these are all relatively easily accomplished and will do more for the area that any Trump-redux.
 
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The different designs magnifies the uninteresting architecture more than if they were just twins. Don't take this the wrong way. The quality is there so I'm more than satisfied with that.
 
interchange42 said:
Brookfield, meanwhile, shot themselves in the foot, at least knocking a toe off, when they allowed Bruce Kuwabara to talk them into not using the same design for the east tower that they had used on the west one. Now for a third tower, they have to ask themselves "are we going to make the third slightly different again, so that all three are mismatched" or "do we replicate the east tower design in the north one and just have one mismatched one"? Either way, the BA Centre simply will never cohere architecturally. If, however, the third tower ends up being at least partly hotel or condo (or both), then they have a perfect reason for the building to look different, no questions asked.
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I'm curious as to whether it was deliberately mismatched, or rather simply an evolutionary design progression in the time between the completion of the two towers. Similar to the X1 and X2 Condo roofline effect, perhaps if both had been designed in unison and went up at the same time, this details would be coherent. I for one, like the cleaner lines on the cladding of BA2, but prefer the corners and roof fins on BA1.

Skeezix said:
I As for the north parcel, I think as a city we'd be nuts to root against an office building........ There are so many condo sites in the downtown core - sites that would never accommodate the floorplate required for a top tier office building - and the economic and financial benefits of an office tower far outweigh the benefits of a condo tower (not that I think we need to choose).
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No doubt that it will contain office space regardless. The notion of including hotel/residential is included as attracting tenants, the main difference is the type of course is the type tenant. Sometimes, hotel/residential might require spaces like terraces, sky-lobby's, balconies, etc, that open the door for design variation, especially in amongst the BA towers, as i42 alluded to. An example, but not the prettiest, of this is Liberty Suites hotel north of Yonge-Steeles, where there is a distinct visual break between the two functions:

liberty-suites-hotel.jpg

Source: https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-p/08/1f/2c/57/liberty-suites-hotel.jpg

As for residential in the near future, I hope to see some super-slim towers go up in the Financial District in the nature of 125 Greenwich.
 
Most people don't have a clue the ugly Hyatt on King sits above 9 or so floors of office.

I like super skinny towers but, not as the tallest. 432 Park, for example, looks awful in the New York skyline. Unfortunately, We don't have a market for a tall skinny tower.
 
Miscreant said:
Personally, my order of interest is: Bay Park > Union Center > 160 Front W > 16 York > Bay Adelaide North. I'd be happy if any of them popped up sooner rather than later, but I'd love to see Bay Park and Union Center break ground asap.
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Don't forget Oxford has a deal to develop the land around the Harbour Commission building....that'll be directly connected to the PATH running through Harbour Plaza. I think that might pre-empt 16 York, no?
 
jcam said:
Don't forget Oxford has a deal to develop the land around the Harbour Commission building....that'll be directly connected to the PATH running through Harbour Plaza. I think that might pre-empt 16 York, no?
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I'm not sure if it'll preempt 16 York, but I did forget about that one, and yeah, I'd love to see that lot filled.
 
It will be all office. They are not going to even start significant preleasing efforts until BA East is past the head-lease lease-up point nothing will happen. Brookfield Canada Office Properties owns the building, its parent Brookfield Property Partners sold it to them on an "as if leased" basis so basically until the building is past about 95% leased BPY is making up the difference in payments to offset the difference in net income from the building.

Once that happens they will look at more aggressive pre-leasing. Around that time the development in Calgary will also be finishing up and they will have a development team with no project to work on.

The thing that will really rile people is that they will use the Cloud Garden as a staging area. It is built on a waterproof membrane which has a finite life and will need to eventually get replaced. They will tear it out, use it for staging and then rebuild a new park once the BANorth is done.
 
Mithras said:
It will be all office. They are not going to even start significant preleasing efforts until BA East is past the head-lease lease-up point nothing will happen. Brookfield Canada Office Properties owns the building, its parent Brookfield Property Partners sold it to them on an "as if leased" basis so basically until the building is past about 95% leased BPY is making up the difference in payments to offset the difference in net income from the building.

Once that happens they will look at more aggressive pre-leasing. Around that time the development in Calgary will also be finishing up and they will have a development team with no project to work on.

The thing that will really rile people is that they will use the Cloud Garden as a staging area. It is built on a waterproof membrane which has a finite life and will need to eventually get replaced. They will tear it out, use it for staging and then rebuild a new park once the BANorth is done.
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Brookfield says otherwise. They stated that they will look at pre-leasing the north tower when the east tower is 70% full. This is yet another article I wish I had bookmarked.
 
It's 76% leased now. They wouldn't turn down unsolicited interest but they aren't beating the bushes hard as far as I know. And I talk to the CFO on a fairly regular basis.
 
Mithras said:
The thing that will really rile people is that they will use the Cloud Garden as a staging area. It is built on a waterproof membrane which has a finite life and will need to eventually get replaced. They will tear it out, use it for staging and then rebuild a new park once the BANorth is done.
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Interesting, I just got an email from the Financial District BIA with a survey on the Cloud Garden and how I would like to see it improved. See: http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=9b474bd2771aed196561e4d42&id=be33a05424&e=00885a750b
 
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