Tall & Urban News

Downtown Toronto’s Front and Spadina intersection is a hive of construction activity as work progresses for a mixed-use megaproject on a 7.8-acre (3.2-hectare) site. Known as The Well, the project from Diamond Corp, Allied Properties REIT, RioCan REIT, Tridel, and Woodbourne, will include an office tower, multiple condominium and rental buildings, pedestrian plazas, and a retail galleria carving through the site.

Construction-wise, furthest along is the 36-story office tower at the site’s southeast corner, designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects. The office tower—the tallest building on the site—reached grade at the end of 2018, and has been steadily rising.

To the west of the office tower, work is moving along below ground level. To rise above the parking and retail levels here will be six residential towers, including three buildings facing Front Street designed by architectsAlliance, and three buildings fronting Wellington designed by Wallman Architects. These include rental buildings of 44 stories on Front and a pair at 16 stories on Wellington, while two condo towers on Front will be 38 and 22 stories, and one on Wellington will be 14 stories. From Tridel, these will be known simply as The Well Condominiums.

The residential and office components of The Well will be tied together via a 432,772-square-foot (40,206-square-meter) retail galleria, with BDP in charge of design for the retail spaces. The entire project has Adamson Associates Architects serving as architect of record.

At the west end of the site, excavation continues for a large underground water cistern by Enwave Energy Corporation—a deep lake water cooling (DLWC) system. The sustainable energy project draws cold water from Lake Ontario to cool hospitals, educational campuses, government, commercial and residential buildings in Toronto’s downtown core. DLWC will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce strain on the electricity and water systems, help support new development, and make the city more resilient. The tank’s walls are being formed with the same slip-form construction used to build the CN Tower, and will then be capped by a thick transfer slab before new levels are constructed above.

At the site’s southwest corner, the final bits of excavation are wrapping up on an area of the pit that was home to the earthen access ramp that connected the base of the pit with Front Street above. Due to the depth of this section of the site, a pair of excavators work in tandem to clear away the remaining debris. It is a painstaking process, with the material transferred from shovel at the base of the pit to another at ground level, and then into a truck waiting above.

For more on this story go to Urban Toronto and Enwave Energy.