DSC
Superstar
Be patient.
You do know you are talking to Urban Toronto don't you?
Be patient.
The info about OMNI studios being the priority now, came from a second hand source. Just now, I confirmed it with somebody else... so the wait is official for the Torch work.
The race is on to complete OMNI's studios while the exterior will continually be worked on, but at a slower pace.
Keep in mind though that all the infrastructure for the operation of a tv station was already installed for Citytv and is fully functional. The nature of OMNI's studio work is more about building the sets, testing them and training staff to use the new spaces, setting up offices and desks, interior design, and so forth.
Also, keep in mind, only one floor is being worked on for OMNI while Citytv had several. Hence: work should be substantially quicker than City's.
I don't know of a schedule for OMNI's move but I'd expect it to happen this fall with the exterior being completed by the end of the year.
As for patience: I'm very excited as everyone else to see the work done on the torch base and tower... but I understand the priorities and a few more months isn't much to wait to see everything complete.
I wonder if Rogers will be interested in buying up space in the square for the channels remaining at their Lakeshore & Bathurst studios.
There's room in Toronto Life Square for this or even in the upper floors of the HNR tower.
^ Well, if Rogers were to build studios for their other stations in Toronto Life Sq. they would sign a long term lease.
Although it sounds enticing, I don't think I'd want Rogers to buy TLS. They would dominate the square too much. I want to see a diversity of owners and uses for the buildings surrounding the square.
They can, keep existing business in there and reserve a floor or two for Rogers only. The building it self is pretty much a deal. Penex Metropolis owes $24 million on the place(strangely to its parent company and some tenants in the building), $1million dollars cheaper than the Rogers Center.![]()
Citytv had another year to move out of 299 Queen West. The building could have started renovation on the exterior first, then moved on to the studios (construction and move in of which were completed in impressive time). Rogers chose to focus on completing the studios so that the move could happen much earlier.
The exterior of the building is important, but Citytv and OMNI operations are much more.
There are priorities and the exterior falls below those above. It's being worked on and will be finished. Be patient.
What other channels? I don't think there's anything else in there save US feeds of MSNBC, G4TechTV and Biography being piped in.I wonder if Rogers will be interested in buying up space in the square for the channels remaining at their Lakeshore & Bathurst studios There's room in Toronto Life Square for this or even in the upper floors of the HNR tower.
There's a budget. It allows for so many people working on this project. Getting the station up and running in a year by turning the Olympic Spirit Centre into something completely unrecognizable inside -- a brand new, state of the art television station -- is far from taking too long.
In an ideal world, they'd have a construction workforce exclusively for the outside while they worked on the interior.
Or to fulfill your wishes, they could have completed the inside, waited, worked on the outside and launched the building 100% complete in a few months from now. Rogers was contemplating that but they decided to go with kicking off the Fall season in the new HQ.
Their headquarters just looks very half-hazard.