On January 15,
Menkes broke ground on the one hectare site that will house the commercial portion of 1 York and ultimately extend the undergound PATH system south of Front Street.
The 35-storey, 800,000 square foot office building, which will include three levels and 200,000 square feet of retail, will cost about $500 million, including $375 million for construction, according to president Peter Menkes.
"We did it in conjunction with Oxford Properties," Menkes says, "who are building
the new HQ of RBC to the south of us. They committed to do that and they came to us. It’s a big deal for everybody." Menkes says including the PATH extension was, for this project, equivalent to including elevators and a parking lot. "The real issue is that you wouldn’t be able to get companies like RBC to go there if you didn’t have it. Just like if you had stairs and no elevators in the building."
In conjunction with this construction, the city is eliminating the Gardiner ramps at York and replacing them with ramps to and from Simcoe Street, leaving a one-acre park adjacent to 1 York.
Menkes expects the tower to be complete by June, 2016, by which time two residential towers on the larger site, known as
1 York/90 Harbour and designed in its entirely by Architects Alliance and &Co., will be well underway.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Menkes
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