They weren't allowed to because it would have cast a shadow on Nathan Phillips Square.

Cool! Top office floor. It'll be interesting to see how much further up the core goes, I would imagine they'll probably do at least 2 more form raisings. Then a few more months to top out the steel. This building is really flying up. They are well on track for the planned July 2009 completion.

Nice pics guys, nice to see the stone facade, it's looking good. The webcam has been re-aimed, can now see the top of the core again, looks like they're working on the 50th floor:

Ha ha, maybe. The guy was working away with a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench, and the camera was moving all over the place for a good hour. I thought he might be re-positioning the camera, but it ended up at its original position again.

Funny activity on the webcam right now

They're going to dismantle the whole building, then excavate, build underground parking, then re-construct the heritage building. Similar to what was done with the Bay-Adelaide heritage facade. It's described in these documents:

Sounds like they're starting the heritage de-construction

They should hang garlic over the door to ward off the evil spirits.

There never was a 13th floor, they did actually add a floor at one point in the planning. I agree that skipping the 13th floor is silly.

I think it's in the pipeline for 2010, it's mentioned in this document, which has dates for various waterfront projects (page 21): http://www.waterfronttoronto.ca/dbdocs//4703a8ea7e764.pdf

I don't think it's mechanical, I think it's just a screw-up on their part in making the stacking plan. All the floors have about 25,000 square feet of office space according to the floor plans and earlier stacking plans. If you look at the two previous iterations, you can see that they were...

New stacking plan, looks like they leased a couple of the lower floors: source: http://www.bayadelaidecentre.com/upload/dynamicpagepdfdocumentpdf/238-BAC%20Stack%20-%20KPMG%20(July%2008).pdf

Thanks for the pics Geekaroo! I just counted up in your photos and got to 42, the same count as Caltrane (skipping 13). They're getting close! Should be topping out by late summer!

Yes, it is quite literally a "pyramid scheme"! Complete with an actual pyramid!

It's pretty funny how they put an umlaut on the name. I guess "Ice" wasn't ridiculous-sounding enough without one.

There was an interesting program about the Pugs on TVO. It was a panel discussion with Christopher Hume, Lisa Rochon, Adam Vaughan, and a few architecture profs. You can watch it ontline here: http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779219&ts=2008-05-26%2020:00:45.0 I...

They raised the forms this morning? That would mean they're on the 41st floor now. The core narrowing was the 40th. I may have to divest myself of my floor-counting duties as I can't see the top of the core on the webcam anymore.

Heh heh...so I'm Mr. know-it-all eh? I'm afraid I can't help you with this one. I've seen no indication that the floor height is changing, and they don't look any taller to me. The building specifications list the floor height as 9 feet and don't mention any changes at different levels. My...

The top office floor is 51, and Caltrane analyzed one of their diagrams to deduce that there'll be about 3 storeys of mechanical above that...So about 14 more floors total.

Yup, that's the core narrowing happening. You can see that the upper part of the forms, which will form the 40th floor core wall, is narrowing. The north bank of elevators ends here. The bottom wooden stuff is just shielding and scaffolding for the workers, it's not really formwork...