http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1110627273933&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

http://www.thestar.com/images/thestar/img/050313_stinson_harry_225.jpg

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Hippihop6/sppage.jpg

yeah he is adding another eight stories then it will be a real 88 plus the
globe on top of that!

Eureka is still taller

Dam you guys in toronto are lucky! I wish we could get a building war going on in boston. The nimby's would never allow it though. :(

Eureka is still taller
You never know Stinson though, he could go into an ego trip and trump Eureka.:D

Great news though, I wonder if Trump will also apply for a new height increase.

Can someone post the Star article?

Nevermind. I found it on UT.

From the Star:

Mar. 13, 2005. 08:29 AM


KENNETH KIDD
STAFF REPORTER

"What floor, please?" said the elevator man.

"Any floor," said Mr. In.

"Top floor," said Mr. Out.

"This is the top floor," said the elevator man.

"Have another floor put on," said Mr. Out.

"Higher," said Mr. In.

"Heaven," said Mr. Out

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, "May Day."

Harry Stinson is darting around the construction office in the bowels of One King West like a subterranean ghost — black corduroy pants, black turtle-neck sweater and a black bomber jacket that seems unseasonably slight. With his salt and pepper hair pressed against his forehead, in a style best described as toque-head, he has the harried, jaundiced look of someone who sleeps little and worries much. And now he can't find the keys to the chairman's office.

That would be the chairman of what was once the Dominion Bank, whose wood-panelled lair once occupied a requisite corner of the original, 1912 building, 12 floors up. It's now a featured stop on any Harry tour of One King West, above and beside which Harry has somehow brought forth a 51-storey residential tower, pencil-thin in sympathy with his own physique. If only, that is, he could find the keys. "I usually have a wad of them but it slipped my mind," he says. An assistant starts making calls while Harry doubles back around the office.

As Harry propels himself towards the stairs (for it seems an act of will) he recalls another incident of wayward keys, the one a few months ago. It was an open house at One King West — his marriage of hotel-size suites and residential condos on a tiny slip of land at Yonge and King. Potential buyers were filing past his father-in-law, who was manning the sign-in desk. "I think we have a problem," said the father-in-law. Water was pouring from the ceiling. A frantic race finally found the source: burst pipes way up in the fifth-floor model suite. Which was locked. So down Harry & Co. ran, to kick in the door of the outdoor storage hut (also locked) to grab a crowbar, and thence back upstairs.

These days find Harry, restaurateur-cum-condo-salesman-cum-developer, in the stretch run at One King West. Every night, he wanders the building, marking progress and, just maybe, pinching himself that what began years ago as a dreamy vision is now nearly finished. This, in itself, is a departure for Harry: so many of his past projects have either come to naught or gone ahead after partners pushed him out. Even at One King West, Harry needed the Mirvish clan to come to his financial rescue. But it's now almost complete and Harry's still in the picture. ``It's pretty exciting,'' he says, `` but it's been quite traumatic the number of times that people have tried to ease me out of this one, too.''

The same 52-year old Harry Stinson now proposes to build Canada's tallest residential tower — and maybe the world's — just a few blocks away on Richmond Street. All that stands between him and the title, apart from, say, financing, is one Donald J. Trump, a.k.a. The Donald. The man whose own coiffure is a marvel of structural engineering also has plans to build the loftiest residential spire, barely a block from Harry's site. Or, more precisely, Trump is combining his own notoriety with the serious financial backing of one Alex Schnaider, the Russian-born industrialist now resident in North York.

Neither one, safe to say, ever has to worry about things like keys. And while Trump may be better acquainted than most with the bankruptcy laws south of the border (his real estate in the early 1990s, his casino business of late), he's always had a way of getting the financiers to line up behind him for big, brash ventures like this one. Even the Trump on-site sales office, a two-storey glass affair next to the National Club on Bay Street, exudes swish — the hardwood floors, the wall-mounted flat-screen TVs showing, alternately, the Trump vision and the runway models of fashion television.

Does Harry have a hope?


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There are those in the industry who would love to see Harry win out over Trump, if only because the former's career to date has had so many star-crossed moments. "There's a certain fascination to watching him," admits Nestor Repetski, senior partner at Winick Repetski & Associates, which markets condos. "He takes on these quixotic ventures and tries to make a go of them, no matter how many realities he hits, and at the end of the day always ends up somehow being the poor guy that everybody took advantage of, even though he was the only one with the brilliance to see what could be done. I think that's how he styles himself."

The Harry narrative has not been one of uninterrupted success. There was The Groaning Board restaurant, which flourished on Jarvis Street until Harry shifted operations to the SkyDome neighbourhood, just in time for the baseball strike. But by then Harry had a well-developed parallel life as one of the first real-estate brokers in the city to specialize in the nascent field of condos. The firm had nearly 30 people by the early 1990s, yet Harry was bored. "He was really sick of selling real estate," says condo realtor Brad Lamb, who partnered with Harry in 1987. "Just the way people treat you and the sort of lying and deceit that takes place among buyers and sellers."

Harry wanted to build things ("He's also got a big ego," says Lamb) and started dreaming: lofts next to the King Edward Hotel, a revamping of the Westbury Hotel on Yonge. Neither attracted enough financing to get off the ground. "This was all while I was working with him, and it was starting to piss me off because he was spending more and more time on this stuff that wasn't generating any revenue," says Lamb. "Then he told me about the candy factory and I was like, `I'm outta here.' "

The Candy Factory Lofts on Queen Street, just along from the mental institute, had been the signature event of Harry's career until One King West. And not in any good way: For years afterward, he says, he avoided driving anywhere near the place. In what had been an ancient factory (making that Halloween staple, "Rockets";) Harry imagined New York-style lofts (think Demi Moore in Ghost). He lined up a partner in suburban developer Metrontario. But despite pre-selling 100 of the 125 units, in Harry's telling, he couldn't get the banks to pony up the funds to start construction.

So Harry was out; Metrontario went ahead on its own. Lamb ended up as the selling agent for the site. He says Harry just sold the lofts at too low a price to make the numbers dance. "He got the arrows in the back and somebody else picked it up and made it happen," Lamb says. "But he was early to the game in the whole loft idea. He was certainly early to the game in that region. The whole stretch of Queen Street West is a renaissance area now."

With One King West, Harry has similarly done something new: bringing a dense, residential tower to a part of town not previously known for human excitement after office hours. Sapphire was to be the next step, but prescience eventually draws a crowd, and for months now, Harry has been in a race with Trump to dream up not just the next residential project in the financial core but the tallest. This has involved, inevitably, no small amount of stealth.

Last December, in the latest bit of one-upmanship, the Trump group added two storeys to their planned Trump International Hotel and Tower, for a new total of 70. Add the antennae, and the resulting 324.9 metres from sidewalk to clouds became enough to give Trump the "tallest" honours.

So Harry has, in recent weeks, quietly forked over the down payment on a $4.5 million deal to add a small adjacent property to his site. He's wrapping up a deal to buy the rest of the land on which Sapphire would sit for something ``in the mid-teens'' from the Sheppard Group, another developer. And he's got the architects busy adding another eight storeys, which would take the Sapphire (including antennae) to a league-leading 337.5 metres. The building's 88 floors would be "a good, sexy number," says Harry. "It's a Chinese lucky number."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Architect Peter Turner is holding his arms in the air in front of him, forming a kind of teepee, but without the two sides actually meeting at the top. This was Harry's idea, inspired by Chicago's John Hancock building. He'd sketched it out on paper and faxed it off to Turner's firm. That was in January 2004. Harry sent a lot of faxes then, at any hour. ``The guy works 48 hours a day,'' says Turner.

Harry had initially hired Turner Fleischer Architects Inc. to tweak the original design for a different building on the Sapphire site. But it still wasn't working out to be the icon Harry wanted. Hence the fax, and multiple rounds of back-and-forth between Harry and Turner Fleischer's Hoordod Ghandehari. In time, Harry's idea morphed into a structure that had these fins running from top-to-bottom, except the actual building inside the fins would resemble steppes — with a terrace every 10 storeys or so. But you'd have to change the floor plans for each 10-storey chunk, and they'd be getting progressively smaller in a hurry. The teepee was scrapped.

There followed twin cylinders but, as Turner puts it, "his site's too small to have two of anything." So it became two attached cylinders with one taller than the other, clad in a smooth curtain wall of blue glass. Harry called it the Sapphire. "He wants the building to look like a jewel in the city," says Ghandehari.

Then came the engineers. Every tall building in the world moves in the face of high winds. It's just a matter of how much. The Empire State Building in New York sways nearly two metres. But you can't have that much sway in a building where people are going to sleep, unless you're catering to retired mariners. The Sapphire's round shape helps — it deflects the wind around it — but not enough. So the engineers needed an additional method of subduing the sway.

This is where the big Faberge egg on the top of Sapphire comes in. It would be home to a huge "mechanical damper" that works against sway. Think of a giant steel or concrete ball, hanging like a pendulum. Angled shock absorbers, looking a bit like golf tees, then run from the bottom of the ball to the building itself. It would be the first mechanical damper to ever grace a Toronto skyscraper.

It also speaks to the Harry quintessence. The guy loves novelty, the never-tried-here-before. Like the geo-thermal heating system he wants to install at another small project, High Park Lofts. Or the "living wall," a kind of Indiana Jones jungle for the atrium at One King West, topped with a glass-bottom swimming pool, which David Mirvish eventually nixed as too expensive.

"Well, not just the cost," says Mirvish. "Aesthetically, I opposed it." He was also worried about fungi getting into the air-conditioning system. The atrium will now be filled with art. "I think the atrium is the only place where I actually put my foot down and said, you know, this is what I'd like to see."

This was scarcely the only change, though, as Harry's plans (in Sapphire fashion) took on new twists. The main banking hall, for instance, was once going to be a theatre; now it's The Dominion Club, a members-only affair. One King West, in fact, had itself started life as another project, at neighbouring Five King West, but the engineering challenge of building a tower over what used to be the very narrow Nag's Head Tavern proved too great. Solution: Bring in Mirvish, buy the bank building next door, and start again. Every developer adapts to the winds of the market, but Harry, says one industry player, "is off the charts."

This Harry has heard. "It's just a cliché, Stinson and all the changes," he says. "I'm a cost, and I'm disruptive. I'm accused of changing things because I go around and say, `Wait a second. That wasn't the tub we promised. That's dinky. You can't get your knees into that thing.'"

Here Harry drops his voice to a monotone, alternating with his own, so he can reimagine both sides of a typical conversation.

"Well, yeah, but the other tub was very expensive."

"But that's the one we sold."

"Well, it's already installed. It's too late."

"I object, take it out."

"Well, that's a change."

"No, no, you changed it. I want the right tub in there, the one we sold."

"Well, it will cost $40,000 to replace it now. This is a big cost."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The curious thing about putting up any building in downtown Toronto is that, what with all the other skyscrapers, there's not much of a view until you start packing on the floors. The first 30 storeys or so will always look out on, well, somebody else's 30 storeys just across the street. This is not a selling point. So how to make a go of it downtown?

Others have certainly tried. In recent memory, a half-dozen owners had dreamed up projects for Harry's location — among them Frank Stronach's Magna International (a tower with the Austrian consulate on top) and Mark Valentine's Thomson Kernaghan (before the brokerage collapsed and Valentine did time for securities fraud). The Sheppard group then had plans for condos, but didn't like the numbers and optioned the land to Harry instead.

The Trump site has been no less fitful, starting with a proposed 60-storey Ritz-Carlton, in which Trump was to be a minor investor. Then the lead developer, Leib Waldman, turned out to be a convicted embezzler fighting extradition to the United States. Ritz-Carlton fled in a heartbeat, as did Trump, until one of the original investors, Val Levitan, managed to line up Schnaider's chequebook. Not long afterward, they ditched the architectural plans for the Ritz-Carlton and hired Eberhard Zeidler's firm to come up with something more dramatic.

"The building was totally redesigned, larger suites, higher ceilings," says Barry Landsberg, the Trump project's director of marketing. But they retained one aspect of the original plans, the one that would get them over the problem of the first 30 storeys: graft luxe condos (those would be the ones with a view) on top of a hotel, on top of the parking. Then sell the hotel suites as condominium-style investments, whose owners can either use them or rent them out as hotel rooms, depending on their schedules.

It's a formula used around the world, but a rarity here until Harry did it with One King West. He now proposes to replicate it at the Sapphire.

But here's the thing about the real-estate business: Behind all that dreamy, romantic allure beats a cold, mathematical heart. If the numbers don't work — as in sales, construction financing and foreseeable profits — nothing gets built.

At Trump's proposed tower, the basic hotel units start selling at $666,000 for a mere 570 square feet, about the size of a typical mid-market hotel room with a queen-size bed. That means the hotel units are selling for $1,000 a square foot, give or take. According to the industry rule of thumb, those rooms would then have to rent out for at least $1,000 a night. Otherwise, it's a losing proposition for investors. Is there a market for $1,000-a-night hotel rooms in Toronto? If there is, says Lamb, "it's not deep."

So the Trump people like to talk tax advantages — deductibility of interest costs, depreciation etc. They also lean, especially with the pricier residential units ($1.6 million through $4.8 million) on the appreciation angle. Put 20 per cent down now, says Landsberg, "and let that real estate appreciate." This was, by several accounts, just what happened at Trump's New York tower across from the United Nations. Landsberg tells of an initial rush of buyers from the United Kingdom and Asia. Also, "the response has been fantastic in terms of the Persian market." But how all that translates into a specific, total number of units sold is a mystery, at least to Landsberg: "I'm not allowed to know, so I can't answer those kinds of questions."

Harry knows a bit about luxury. His initial plans for One King West included much more lavish condos than he ended up building, victims, he says, of the city's "Calvinistic reluctance to do anything to show off — the Ken-Thomson-stand-in-line-for-a sandwich thing." The Sapphire, in consequence, may have a handful of full-floor suites at $7 million, but most of it's far more modest: Residential apartments under $1-million, and hotel suites around the $200,000 mark. So far, Harry has sold about 200 of the 819 smaller suites and is just starting to flog the larger condos that start on the 52nd floor. "Toe to toe on sales," says Lamb, "Harry's gonna win."

But this is the other big mathematical cruelty faced by developers: You have to pre-sell roughly 70 per cent of the units at a goodly price before the banks will come out to play with the construction financing. Does Harry, being Harry, have any hope of nailing that?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One day last year, corporate gadfly Bob Verdun wandered by One King West and ended up buying a 600-square foot place on the 47th floor for about $330,000. He plans to use it as his Toronto pied-a-terre maybe 30 nights a year, and throw it into the pool of hotel rooms the rest of the time. "It's a fabulous business model," says Verdun, who's bought another unit at the Sapphire.

Formerly a crusading publisher of the Elmira Independent, Verdun has in recent years fashioned a career as a thorny shareholder activist who once held the floor at a Nortel Networks annual meeting for a staggering four hours. Inevitably, he and Harry fell into animated conversation, being, as Verdun puts it, "very similar thinkers."

They've since teamed up to launch a little condo project in Stratford (for which Verdun is busy raising $15 million). Oh, and Verdun is scouting the Barbados in search of other sites in need of the Harry vision. Small projects, small money: How to get the serious stuff? Harry had an idea.

"If you look at the financial structure of the world right now, so much of the business is just money business," says Harry, as opposed to, say, people like him who actually build things. "It's just money managers, pension funds." And they have not, historically, been any fonder of Harry than he of them. Looking beyond them, though, Harry sees a vast army of little investors — doctors, dentists, car-assembly-line workers. In the wake of the tech bust and the doggy returns of mutual funds, Harry figures "there's a lot of money sitting on the sidelines right now."

This Harry proposed to tap, with something called the Stinson Property Fund. Individual investors would put up a minimum $10,000 for a promised 8 per cent return. The fund's board of directors, including Verdun, would then re-invest the money in worthy real-estate projects that traditional lenders might not touch. Any particular projects? Well, there's the Sapphire. Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest?

Verdun didn't think so: "That's the whole point. It is an inside deal. You're getting in on the inside. In the average investment, you have no idea to what extent there's inside dealing going on. You don't really know who's helping out whom. We're being really upfront about it."

There was just one problem: No stock brokerage would recommend a fund like that to its clients. It looked too much like a fundraiser for Harry masquerading as a general real-estate fund. So Harry has, in the last couple of weeks, retooled it as two entities: a Stinson Property Fund just for Harry's projects; and a still-nameless other fund for everything else. "Like a lot of things that are different," says Harry, "they need to get polished a bit before they really click."

And, no, says Harry, it's not that he couldn't line up the money elsewhere. "It's a time factor," he says. "When you look at 11 months to build the Empire State Building and now it's been, like, eight years to do One King. You reach a stage where you really start to resent time."

He hopes to break ground on Sapphire this fall and, fate willing, open for business sometime in early 2008. And if Trump goes higher? "I don't really care," says Harry. It's the civic bravura that counts. "To have the two tallest residential buildings in the world in Toronto, you know, why don't we try doing things that actually stand out."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OMG.

"Eureka is still taller"

You mean as far as highest occupied floor? As far as absolute height goes, 337 metres still beats out Eureka's 297m, or Q1's 322 metres.

That's a good story on Harry though...warts and all.




KGB

So Harry's around 25% sold... Trump is 20%.

"Toe to toe on sales," says Lamb, "Harry's gonna win."

I loved that front page pic, I couldn't believe it when I first opened it up. It was such a huge article and very informative.

"Water was pouring from the ceiling. A frantic race finally found the source: burst pipes way up in the fifth-floor model suite. Which was locked. So down Harry & Co. ran, to kick in the door of the outdoor storage hut (also locked) to grab a crowbar, and thence back upstairs."

Toronto's new super hero!

Does Stinson pay the Toronto Star to run these articles? They seem to come up every second month or so.

Sorry, but aside from 1 King Stinson hasn't done shit for Toronto. I fail to see why the Toronto Star keeps stroking his ego.

Perhaps because 1 King is the tallest building we've seen in 15 years and he's working on one that could be the tallest ever see in Canada.

Taken from SSP
http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/3063/17to_star_031305.jpg

Sketches
http://www.thestar.com/images/thestar/img/050313_stinson_sketch_250.jpg



84th tallest residential in the world.
84. 1 King West Toronto 176 m 578 ft 51 2005

Not only is 1 King W. the tallest building we've seen in a while, it's also pretty damn nice and looks as if it has always been there. Good job Harry.

So what? Point is the Star seems to focus more on Stinson that other Toronto developers. I would love to hear about the guy who runs Context or Great Gulf. IMO, they are changing the urban landspace a lot more than him.

Do you know he still has the orginal "First Toronto Tower" banner ad on the Graphic Arts building. Doesn't even bother to change it or the price for that matter. Everything he does is wishy-washy. If it wasn't for Mirvish, 1 King would still be a pipe dream. But so what? He got it up right? Well, Viagara can do the same thing. Let me tell you.

I think Stinson has finnally lost it. Whats next for him, invasion of the Sudaten Lands?

Someone coined the phrase "Bar-gain Harr-olds"... look close, there's investment clues.

I wish he'd just raise the height to 6 or 7 thousand metres so when it is inevitably cancelled we can atleast take solace that the tallest ever proposed/cancelled was right here.


BTW, His Roncesvalles project looks like it has stalled (no changes in last 3 to 4 months)

I enjoy Stinson's amateurish approach to development. He's clearly not in it for the money, and he's done much more for Toronto than Trump has and ever will.

I wish he'd just raise the height to 6 or 7 thousand metres so when it is inevitably cancelled we can atleast take solace that the tallest ever proposed/cancelled was right here.

That's hilarious.

So what? Point is the Star seems to focus more on Stinson that other Toronto developers. I would love to hear about the guy who runs Context or Great Gulf. IMO, they are changing the urban landspace a lot more than him.
.

Height wins. I like Great Gulf myself, but there is more excitement around harry and his high ambitions.

According to the link below, Sapphire is a 24.53m x 45.95m
http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/legdocs/2004/agendas/committees/ts/ts041116/it031.pdf

24.53m width, 337.5m tall = 13.76 height-width ratio.

World Record?

^It seems to be Stinson's MO.

Sapphire Tower website is being updated, soon, maybe, don’t hold your breath. :)

http://www.sapphiretower.com/

I enjoy Stinson's amateurish approach to development. He's clearly not in it for the money, and he's done much more for Toronto than Trump has and ever will.


Of course he's in it for the money...that's the primary reason every businessman is in business.

OK, maybe he is in it for the money, but no as much as Trump is

OK, maybe he is in it for the money, but no as much as Trump is

Im sure it's about the same. But he also cares about adding something interesting to the city, which is a nice bonus.

"OK, maybe he is in it for the money, but no as much as Trump is"

LOL, And that is why so many of his projects fail

lol @ Poor Harry. The rumour is now that he lacks the funds to operate 1 King as a hotel. He's gonna use the first deposits in the Stinson Venture Fund (not to be confused with the Stinson Property Fund) to get the hotel portion up and running. The SVF guarantees a 15% annual return*

*Except when the fund is unable to achieve a 15% return. In which case you don't earn anything as it's not cumulative (I believe) and I believe the wording exists that you can't even withdraw your money until the contract terms are up. But it's very vague. Who knows what it means.

Word on the street from realtors is NOT to buy in Sapphire - citing the ongoing delays with 1 King and Harry's inability to bring this product to market. Anyone notice how Ed Mirvish dissapeared from the scene too? You'd think he'd be teaming up with Harry again on Sapphire but something must of happened.

1 King should be turned into a W hotel. That would be cool. Enough of Stinson and his kindergarden antics.

!!!

[img]http://www.sapphiretower.ca/Toronto1_2A.jpg[./img]

WTF is Harry doing?

!!!

http://www.sapphiretower.ca/Toronto1_2A.jpg

WTF is Harry doing?

Does it look short? Does to me.... And what happened to the spire? Holy freak, this shit is confusing...:eek:

The render looks normal but WTF is wrong with the ball? Why is it black, is that where the building's sewage goes to? :eek:

Anyone notice the design modification on Sapphire about half way up?

Don't put too much stock in this rendering.

According to Ed007 at UrbanToronto, the building is undergoing yet another design...the east cylinder is gone, being replaced by something rectangular. The height to the spire/flagpole is supposed to be 340m +.

Thank you SD!!

This is starting to get out of hand. I wonder if Trump Toronto will respond?

"STINSON HINTS AT WORLD'S TALLEST RESIDENTIAL BUILDING"

Maybe Stinson is serious about this World Tallest thing? Do we have any reason to believe this will be the last height increase/re-design?

After visiting emporis, it seems that they only have a residential or hotel categories (excluding office). According to them, the tallest residence is 21st Century Tower in Dubai at a hieght of 269m/883ft and Burj Al Arab in Dubai also at 321m/1053ft (I chose to exclude the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang because it's poor construction quality makes it uninhabitable). They do not have any category for mixed use and I'm to lazy to research it.

Eureka ius now around 350m with the addition of a spire/observation deck thingy.

Ed's post at UT also mention demolition of the office building is proposed to start in September - time to create a pool!

Demolition means shit. They demolished buildings to make way for the Bay/Adelaide Centre what, 15 years ago now? I'll get excited when I see a crane go up.

But now Sapphire has been redesigned somewhat? WOW. I'm shocked :|
This would be the 4th redesign now? What a joke.

Does it look short? Does to me.... And what happened to the spire? Holy freak, this shit is confusing...:eek:
ive been looking at it really closely and there actually is a spire its just really hard to see! lol. Ive enlarged the image using simple paint brush and have confirmed this

I'm pretty sure that Stinson is serious about getting the title of Toronto's and Canada's tallest building but I doubt that he'll get the title for world's tallest residential building, there's resi towers in Dubai that are to be 380 m and more...

True. Dubai is so out there they'll just have to label all the tall skyscapers "not real buildings," just like our CN tower when it was first built. :lol:

Why doesn't Stinson stop worrying about redesigns and height increases and get a sound financial plan for this building

I don't think a thin little attenae at the top should count for a height count. All someone would have to do is build 20metres with a 500metre piece of steel on the top and get a worlds record. If the actually attenae is not part of an INTRICAL pice of the building, it shouldn't be included. I think its deceptive.

^A building in that situation is a spire cheater. It really is a grey area.

^Yeah, like the Freedom tower.:rant:

"Demolition means shit. They demolished buildings to make way for the Bay/Adelaide Centre what, 15 years ago now? I'll get excited when I see a crane go up."

Things change - the city now includes conditions on most demolition permits that re-development must happen within a certain time frame or face penalty

BTW, A crane means shit as well as I can still recall the 2 cranes hovering over Bay Adelaide site

Things change - the city now includes conditions on most demolition permits that re-development must happen within a certain time frame or face penalty


Yeah ... tell that to PenEquity.

^PenEquity didn't demolish a thing at metropolis - the city did

^PenEquity didn't demolish a thing at metropolis - the city did

But you can't deny that PenEquity's been a tad sluggish on getting things rolling.

Penequity is evil but I can't place blame on them for not meeting their pre-lease target (why metropolis remains in limbo) without more information

We have a winner !!!

The new reigning champion, "the" master of understatement.

"tad sluggish on getting things rolling."


NOTE TO FILE: Never let mall developers anywhere near important downtown real estate.

It's not PenEquity I blame, but the city for rushing to demolition then giving the land to PenEquity.

Even with the constant delays I was confident that Metropolis, when built, would be great. But given how the Torch came out, all confidence has been lost. The best we can hope for is that Yonge and Dundas will be forever remembered as a prime example of how not to do things.

I also hate to say this but if our current zoning and planning laws allowed a structure such as the Torch to be built, maybe Ontario and Toronto better take a second look at Vancouver and implement our own urban design board to review such projects.

Because the Torch is utterly criminal!

As far as I am concerned something should not be considered part of the height unless it is enclosed. For example the CN tower although thin at the top is enclosed so would be included but if anything above that is not enclosed, like an attenae it should not be included.
It would incluse building with intersting spires at the top but not the antenae on top of it.
I think this is the only way to TRULY decide the height of a building.
Thoughts?????

I have thoughts, why are you bringing the CN tower into this? The spire on the CN tower is there for a reason, and it does its job quite effectively, end of story. You should not relate it to an 88 story project that might not even get off the ground or any other building, only other telecommunication towers.

And about Yonge and Dundas, upon first seeing the first renderings I hoped that I would walk into the square and go into sensory overload. I would stand in the middle of the square and just be bombarded with bright lights and flashy advertisements. Hardly what happenend, the city really screwed this one up. I appologize to the Eaton Centre and LG for that.

"It would incluse building with intersting spires at the top but not the antenae on top of it.
I think this is the only way to TRULY decide the height of a building.
Thoughts?????"

It's not an antennae - it has no function other than as an architectural feature of the building's design - why should it not be included?

I also hate to say this but if our current zoning and planning laws allowed a structure such as the Torch to be built, maybe Ontario and Toronto better take a second look at Vancouver and implement our own urban design board to review such projects.

Because the Torch is utterly criminal!

I agree. The LEAST the city could have done was have some sort of review board for Torch, Metropolis, Hard Rock etc. For such an important intersection, it's risky to leave it entierly up to the developer. Besides, why isn't Torch complete anyway? It opened last summer for god's sake and they're still not done! That's rediculous.

This BS from PenEquity too about changing contractors for the second phase is a load of crap. Who does that? Sounds like a really lame excuse to cover up a larger issue that they don't want to talk about.

"This BS from PenEquity too about changing contractors for the second phase is a load of crap"

Why?

VALENTINO.........
That's what I just said. The tower at the top of the CNtower is enclosed and therefore is included!!!!!
If they decided to stick some atenae on the top that would NOT be included.
If you start adding atenae into all the buildings then I'm going to build the worst tallest tower in my backyard, I knew those extra coat hangers would be good for something.

^dude - no

reread my post

"If you start adding atenae into all the buildings then I'm going to build the worst tallest tower in my backyard, I knew those extra coat hangers would be good for something."

Okay then... go for it

I don't get this anti spire shouldn't be part of the height arguement.

If it exists than... it exists, so it is part of the height of the tower.

Has anyone seen the rendering Stinson is using on his website.

WTF IS THIS?

http://www.sapphiretower.com/Toronto1_2A.jpg

Can it get any more amateur? LOL! What a joke. He is very arrogant to think he's even close to being in the same boat as Trump or the Ritz!

And yes, I realize the website is being 'redesigned' again but come on. That's just pathetic.

It's mine, 416. No worries as it was never approved by them anyways. Though that begs the question as to why they're using it ;) I hope you approve of the ones I actually released a while back a bit more than this one. heheh. :)

Are you kidding me? Those other renderings you did were awesome!
Sorry, I didn't mean to knock the above rendering but for a developer to use that in their marketing is pretty bad. Clearly it's not representative of what you do and Stinson is doing his whole project a disservice by using such images.

BTW, what happened in the middle there? Looks like there's a chunck of building that's leaning outward and ready to fall off.

Don't worry, 416. It's not like I'm taking offence. I don't recall what happened there with the building. This rendering was never completed (was an early sample rendering) and it was produced nearly a year ago now.