Toronto Union Park | 303.33m | 71s | Oxford Properties | Hariri Pontarini

Tulse said:
Does it deserve a bigger portion than other Ontario casino cities get? That was the issue: Ford was asking for a special deal, one better than existing cities get.
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YES it does. No other location in Ontario will accomodate the number of guests the city of Toronto can period ( simple formula of number of hotel rooms, restaurants, population, tourists, conventions, other attarctions, location next to a major transit hub etc. etc.). They would have to build two or thee or more casinos to generate the same benefit to the Province and therefore it is the Province that is the biggest loser in this decision.

Too bad - it was Kathllen Wynns's one real chance to make up for the $500,000,000 (thats half a billion) dollars the Liberals squandered on unbuilt gas plants - So I guess we all suffer from Wynn's horrendous decion making.
 
Lansdude said:
A giant casino complex is neither necessary nor sufficient to do that or even significantly constitutive.
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I make no reference to the casino, nor to a presumed necessity or requirement for a city to have one to be constituted as "World-Class". The project had a multitude of positive qualities outside the fact that a casino was included in the plan.
Sadly, the fact that the casino idea was in question, is ultimately the factor that scuttled this great project.
 
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Mind you that it was stated that the convention centre is still set to be rebuilt at some point in time, as stated earlier in the thread.

I'm fairly confident that the Foster plan will go forward in some form, just not every part of it (and no one knew if all of it was going to go ahead anyways)

My guesses on what will be built from 'most likely' to 'not likely':
- New Convention Centre
- Offices/ Residential Towers
- New Mall
- Park
- Casino Resort
 
To all those people who are rehashing the death of this proposal: you know that hot-air-driven mega-proposals die all of the time, and not just in Toronto? And sometimes it's better for them to die - Toronto's had a few mega-proposals that should probably have gone unbuilt, and some that were thankfully unbuilt.

Wait a few months and you can get jazzed about something else.
 
I think there's still a chance this goes through without the casino. The need is there, and so is the profit potential for Oxford.
 
Not sure this means anything but the firm I mentioned earlier in the thread is no longer involved in the project. They were supposed to be Norman Foster's Toronto liaison.
 
In all (likely) reality, the beautiful Foster buildings and railway deck parkland were just render candy to push forward the casino agenda. A project of the proposed scale doesn't exclusively need a casino component to move forward, yet that's what we were being told; that without the casino component nothing could be built.

Hopefully the rest of the project goes through in some form (MTCC renovation, public spaces, increased density), but I've got a sinking feeling that we won't get anything nearly as striking in the end; perhaps as some sort of middle finger to Toronto for quashing the whole casino bit. But hey, I'm used to disappointment now, and frankly I've discounted this part of downtown from ever getting anything worth looking at.
 
Too bad this wont get built without the casino. But the majority Torontonians have shown they don't want a casino, so they probably don't care whether or not this project get's built.
 
This stage in the cycle there may never have been enough demand to support three mega projects like Mirvish, 1-7 Yonge and Oxford anyway.
 
MetroMan said:
Not sure this means anything but the firm I mentioned earlier in the thread is no longer involved in the project. They were supposed to be Norman Foster's Toronto liaison.
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Unfortunate. It seems like this may indeed be dead.

I don't understand why they can't proceed with a modified version of the project; it's not like a MTCC overhaul isn't needed.
 
In a way, I hope the Foster Twins don't go ahead as planned. It's absurd to be boxing in the CN Tower from every vantage point. It wouldn't be so bad if the towers were significantly shorter, but as proposed, they'd forever take away one of the last, largely uninterrupted views of the CN Tower and one of it's greatest viewing angles (from the North East). We need to preserve what views we have left of the tower. I hate to make such comparisons, but New York City wouldn't be negligent enough to kill every last view of the Empire State Building--in most of its entirety--ditto Paris and the Eiffel Tower, etc...The limit in this area should go no higher than the Ritz.
 
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