TORONTO | Trump Tower Toronto | 282m | 924ft | 60 fl | U/C

[CharlotteJ]

is it me or is there really some sort of a slight curve on the 5th or 6th floor? in the concrete? is that normal?

oh no I am sorry, a closer look and I see that that has to do with the shape/design of the building itself. Hey, that is gorgeous, not too boxy after all.

[Patrick Highrise]

offcourse i do have some pics of my visit... (date 9 september 2009)

[HipHopCanada]

Does anyone have updated pictures?... what floor are they currently on?

[Taller, Better]

from yesterday. Apparently they are almost done the trickiest, most intricate floors and now it should start to rise faster!

[sieradzanin1]

uptade:

Originally Posted by Taller, Better

Originally Posted by sammo

redroom studios @ ut is a genius with a camera!

[PortoNuts]

An excellent addition to Toronto's skyline!

[TheCanadianEuro]

I never realized it was in progress.

[Chadoh25]

Beautiful photos TB.

[Looking/Up]

Originally Posted by PortoNuts

An excellent addition to Toronto's skyline!

An excellent addition to the city, to be sure!

However, I'm not so sure how much of an impact it will have on the city's skyline, considering it's position. This building may be most exciting at street level!

[chinarulez]

wow, didn't check this thread for a while and there is huge progress here. trump tower is coming aling just fine. congrats toronto. all this city need is at least one supertall! (~ 350m - 400m), just smaller than CN tower.

[CharlotteJ]

Originally Posted by chinarulez

wow, didn't check this thread for a while and there is huge progress here. trump tower is coming aling just fine. congrats toronto. all this city need is at least one supertall! (~ 350m - 400m), just smaller than CN tower.

totally agree if smaller than CN Tower... make it two or three then.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by CharlotteJ

totally agree if smaller than CN Tower... make it two or three then.

Three in the 350m - 500m range please!

[CharlotteJ]

and one with a big beautiful glooming, glittering, brightly illuminated spike or crown on top!

[Man_in_the_mirror]

Can't wait it will be finished!!

[CanadianSkyScraper]

[PortoNuts]

Originally Posted by Looking/Up

An excellent addition to the city, to be sure!

However, I'm not so sure how much of an impact it will have on the city's skyline, considering it's position. This building may be most exciting at street level!

Well I heard that it may hide CN Tower from certain angles. However it's amazing how many big projects are going ahead in TO nowadays. And with the Pan Am 2015 it'll be hard to give coverage to so much stuff going on in TO at the same time .

[Skybean]

Trump tower gets squeezed
Trump International Hotel & Tower, Toronto, under construction.



The builders of the new Trump tower in Toronto are dealing with pressure from powerful neighbours and a cramped downtown site

CAROLYN IRELAND

From Friday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009 12:16PM EST Last updated on Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009 3:00AM EST

Val Levitan is peering out the window of a helicopter circling above Toronto's financial district.

The Toronto-based entrepreneur has spent a lot of time on the ground-level construction site of Trump International Hotel & Tower, but this is the first time he has surveyed the rising spire from the sky.

As chief executive officer of Talon International Development Inc., Mr. Levitan is teaming with the Trump organization to fit a five-star hotel, luxury condominiums and multilevel garage onto the site of a former Woolworths store.

His guide on this trip is Mark Garland, a seemingly unflappable engineer who is making plain the challenge of erecting a slender 60-storey tower on a patch of land at Bay and Adelaide.

“It's unheard of in North America,” Mr. Levitan says in comparing the density of the building to its lot size. “Logistically it's a nightmare to deal with.”

Trump International Hotel & Tower

Trump Tower, street level rendering.

From the helicopter, it's easier to see how the parts fit into this puzzle: Looming over the construction site is Scotia Plaza, the 60-storey head office of Bank of Nova Scotia.

No small part of Mr. Levitan's task has been placating the bankers next door.

“The building is worth probably a billion dollars and we're going to be swinging a crane around,” he says. “I understand them. They have prime real estate. They don't want it compromised.”

With each swivel of the crane, there is 45 centimetres of clearance between the tip of the boom and the historic National Club on one side and the Bay-Adelaide Centre on the other, says Mr. Garland, the project director for construction management firm Lewis Builds Corp.

“This is the most complicated building structure I've ever worked on,” he says.

Now, two years into construction on the 15,000-square-foot site, the hotel lobby and seven floors of corkscrew parking garage are complete. Work has begun on the first floor of the luxury hotel, which will rise 22 stories. Above that, 27 floors of residential units and a titanium-clad onion dome will take the building to its full height of 281 metres by the time it is finished in 2011.

Getting the building to completion has been a Sisyphean task.

The flamboyant U.S. real estate mogul Donald Trump unveiled his plans for a Trump Tower in Toronto in the spring of 2001 with a 70-storey building designed by Zeidler Partnership Architects.

But the Trump organization's development partner was revealed to be a convicted embezzler and things pretty much fell apart after that.

Talon's chairman, Alex Shnaider, is a Russian-born magnate who lives in Toronto and has built a fortune trading in steel. Talon struck a deal with Trump in 2004 and the principals set about to revive the project.

While the Zeidler design remained largely intact, many other aspects changed.

Trump International Hotel & Tower

Trump Tower, Toronto. artist's rendering.

Ten stories were lopped off the building and suites were redesigned.

From the start, Mr. Levitan envisioned a three-storey penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows, 51/2 metres of clear glass and a 360-degree view of the city.

“It's never been done before. This will set our building apart.”

Not everyone in self-effacing Toronto so easily feels an affinity for the vision of Donald Trump and the project has been controversial all along, Mr. Levitan acknowledges.

But the developer, who was born in Minsk and travels the world, says Toronto stands out for its lack of opulent hotels that know how to cosset the business traveller.

He's not worried that Four Seasons, Shangri-La, Ritz-Carlton and the Hazelton are all aiming to create that ethereal atmosphere in the city.

All told, Toronto will have about 1,000 luxury rooms, he points out, which is relatively few for a financial capital of Toronto's size.

“The city needs something like this.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Levitan has been working to assuage the tetchy neighbours and wrangle with zoning regulations, city planners and politicians, traffic gridlock and deliveries on a construction site that goes from property line to property line.

He has commissioned traffic studies, wind studies and parking studies. Security on the job site is biometric. The way that all delivery trucks will arrive at the hotel had to be negotiated.

“You have to be very focused, very diligent,” says Mr. Levitan. “We made sure what we promised, we delivered.”

Mr. Garland had photographs taken of the heritage building that houses the National Club and its illustrious Bay Street membership so that any existing cracks in the walls are documented.

During building, Lewis had nowhere to put the concrete trucks, so they found a way to get six at once inside the ground floor.

“It's very rare to open a 60-storey building with no adjunct property available,” says Mr. Garland. “We actually redesigned the lobby.”

Then they had the crane supplier tinker with the boom – “like a guy with a '57 Chevy” – until they finessed the whole contraption into place.

“We got that hammerhead crane to fit in there. I never thought it would happen.”

There was a period, when the Bay-Adelaide Centre was also under construction, that two curb lanes on Adelaide were closed down.

“Traffic became very bad on Adelaide,” says Mr. Garland. “And we didn't even get to close the sidewalk.” The Bay-Adelaide builders had been allowed to close the sidewalk; Trump's builders were denied that advantage.

Trump International Hotel & Tower

Val Levitan, CEO Talon.

One at a time, Mr. Levitan says, Talon addressed its neighbours' concerns. Scotiabank eventually gave Talon permission to use their driveway as the staging location for construction. And the National Club has now become a friendly home base where the developers mark milestones along the way to completion.

With units ranging from about $1-million in price to upward of $15-million for the penthouse, the building may rank as the most expensive residential real estate per square foot in Canada.

About 75 per cent of units have been sold, with many going to British and South African purchasers, says Mr. Levitan.

“Torontonians are very conservative people,” he says. “They need to see a building” before they buy.

Building a five-star building in the midst of a ground-shaking recession has been unnerving, he acknowledges, and sales have been slow at times.

“Right now, we see it as a good investment. In the beginning, it was a challenge,” he says. “Of course we are hoping to make a profit. We are capitalists.”

As the helicopter's pilot swings around and heads back to a landing site on the edge of Lake Ontario, Mr. Levitan is transfixed by the view below.

“I'm very proud to see this building rising from the ground,” says Mr. Levitan. “It's an incredible feeling.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-...rticle1352310/

[CharlotteJ]

I just got this vision: let's set up a Helicopter tour business over TO 's future skyline.
It will specially be looking dazzling when sky turns amber on clear days and the lights will be switched on. WOW!

[721irnwrkr]

Originally Posted by CULWULLA

great, what is the use of tower? units? office?
what is roof height?
am i right in saying the spire is still lower then one canadian place antenna?

to be hotel/condo...i was on BMO roof last week Trump antena will not be taller

[CharlotteJ]

Originally Posted by 721irnwrkr

to be hotel/condo...i was on BMO roof last week Trump antena will not be taller

what? whoaha!!!! take us with you next time too please...