This week's Throwback Thursday takes us all the way back to June, 2010, when Toronto's Bloor-Yorkville neighbourhood was in the early days of what would become a frenzied boom surrounding one of the city's most important intersections. Over a decade ago, the view southwest across the intersection of Yonge and Bloor showed the ongoing construction of a pair of new condominium towers on Balmuto Street; the topped-out and enclosed CrystalBlu Condos tower on the left, and the almost topped-out Uptown Residences on the right. In the foreground at the lower left, hoarding surrounded the One Bloor East site, where a previously-planned tower was scrapped in the wake of a global recession, and branding for a re-started plan was visible.
Catching up to today, CrystalBlu and Uptown Residences are both long-complete, as well as the One Bloor East development, which rises 76 storeys from the southeast corner of Yonge and Bloor and has laid claim to the title of the tallest building north of the Downtown Core since it was completed in 2018. This title, along with the crown of tallest building in all of Canada, is now being challenged across the street, where the former block of retail seen in the 2010 photo above is now the construction site of The One, a mixed-use skyscraper that will be the first in Canada to break the 300-metre mark. Approved at 85 storeys, a recent application is seeking a height increase that would bring The One to 94 storeys, rising just over 338 metres.
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.