5.9K 
This week's Throwback Thursday takes us back approximately eight years, comparing two very different views across Spadina and Front in Downtown Toronto. In February, 2012, the intersection's northwest corner was home to the Toyota on Front auto dealership, with the then-headquarters of news giant The Globe and Mail located to the immediate west on Front Street. At the time, the site was the planned home of a replacement headquarters for the newspaper, a plan which was never realized, with the whole block being sold off to a team of developers in November 2012.
The Globe and Mail eventually moved in a new head office in 2017, a few kilometres to the east at King and Parliament. Now, the site of their former headquarters and adjacent auto dealership is the largest construction site in Toronto. Known as The Well, it is being developed by RioCan REIT, Allied Properties REIT, Diamond Corp, Tridel, and Woodbourne Canada Management, the seven-building complex features its most prominent building—a 36-storey office tower—right at the intersection where the dealership once stood. A view captured in late March, 2020, shows the rising office tower's prominent impact on the intersection.
Once the development is complete, the Hariri Pontarini Architects-designed office tower for Allied and RioCan will be accompanied by other buildings and spaces in the massive complex. Other architects working on portions of the 3.2 hectare site include architectsAlliance, Wallman Architects, and BDP. Adamson Associates Architects are Architect of Record for the whole site.
We will return next week with another look at the changing face of Toronto. In the meantime, you can submit your own Throwback Thursday comparisons in our dedicated Forum thread for your chance to be featured in next week's edition.
* * *
UrbanToronto has a new way you can track projects through the planning process on a daily basis. Sign up for a free trial of our New Development Insider here.
