Trump Tower Toronto

[PVC King]

The Trump Hotel & Tower are being marketed with much fanfare : http://www.trumptoronto.ca/main_nav.html

Architecturally it looks very 1980's to me but is there a market for this type of property in Toronto or has time moved on into a more European style of architecture?

[phil]

'80s is right. The music on the web-page really takes the biscuit!

[Paul Clerkin]

Just looks like a corporation office tower - the corner detail is awful

[Ranger Josh]

that is one awful looking RESIDENTIAL (???) building. i could see maybe as an entirely office building but i think id hate to live there.

[zerokarma]

I don't think it looks that bad, thake a look at some of the skyline rendering pictures on this page:



I think it looks fairly decent.

[PVC King]

Just looks like a corporation office tower - the corner detail is awful

The original intention probably was offices but if you look at Global vacancy rates (flashing across the top of the page)

http://www.cbre.com/index

The market intervened post site acquisition.

[LandBaron]

I find this tower design (by Zeidler) to be rather weak.

Does anyone else remember the universally-panned original scheme (by Kirkor I believe) proposed for this site back in '99?

[PVC King]

Any signs of its completion?

[Paul Clerkin]

It hasn't started as far as I know.

[PVC King]

Read a piece in the Sunday business post about a development where some Irish investors got badly stung due to a collapse in the Montreal market the irish agents involved appeared to behave very badly and just pointed to the 'cyclical nature of the market'

Is Toronto as cyclical?

[helloinsane]

All markets are cyclical. Toronto residential looks to have peaked last fall, not sure what the commerical market is like.

[PVC King]

Agreed particularly office and industrial markets.

But you rarely see residential projects axed or significantly deferred in Ireland or the UK wjilst it seems to be much more common in Canada. I suppose it is nothing that localised tax breaks couldn't fix.

[helloinsane]

I've never understood the logic of providing tax breaks to speculative development in the midst of a runaway construction boom.

I also suspect anyone who worked in Ireland or the UK through the late eighties and early nineties would be able to list more than a few axed residential projects. The last decade has been quite an anomaly in development terms.

[PVC King]

Agreed on the tax breaks when you introduce them in a sound market you not only undesireably inflate demand but if it goes wrong you remove one of the most powerful tools to restimulate the market if it goes horribly wrong.

They are one of the most powerful Keynsian tools available to a government in a recession as it is impossible to lose revenue when there are very limited income streams in the first instance.

Re the UK / Ireland 1993 seems like a long time ago now and I would say that economic regulators have matured greatly since the demise of Reganomics. When you actually analyse the late 1980's housing boom in London it is one of the most ridiculous booms in history as its backdrop were double digit mortgage rates.

I think the backdrop in Canada sounds very different.

[helloinsane]

Every construction boom is different, but there's yet to be one anywhere which can sustain itself indefinitely.

[rocktheboat]

worst ever project to be built in Toronto; a disgusting pathwork of anything, exhaling nothing. Ho well, why being surprised?... it is just another Zeidler project that pollutes our architectural environment... new in-house partners at Zeidler seem to get worse and worse in their architectural practice, Mr Zeidler should dissociate himself from them... as they clearly have no talent whatsoever... how disappointing...it is not even built and we already hate it. Dear Trump Tower's architects, "You embarrass me".

[rocktheboat]

The city of Toronto, like any other Canadian cities (by the way, I am Canadian), is SO eager to look and/or to be international, that means: to have also "its Trump Tower", that it accepts to build just a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. How come Mr Trump always ends up with the wrong guys (architects), he had the chance to "build' a new sparkling image of his empire by choosing avant-garde architects that will bring his coporative image FINALLY to the 21st century, no instead he chooses the worst ever coporate architects from Canada, architects that all they can do is "click-copy-click-paste-click-crop-click-copy-click-paste-click-print". The result is an empty shell with an empty content that exhale an empty image...

[Xoote]

I dont like it.. Trump could have done something completely different this time and didnt. I think i was kind of expecting a little more