If the planning dept and certain people weren't so uptight about a couple additional floors, this thing would have been finished ages ago
Seriously???
When a development has zoning, height and density issues it takes longer. I challenge you to find a more complex development application in this city than Bazis EmeraldPark,... with all the zoning changes, density transfer from Lansing United Church, church rebuild, section 37 developer contribution, land swap with city, height change, etc,... oh and add the fact that the developer added additional floors while under construction (while keeping the same overall height by chopping height clearance per floor),...
Meanwhile, Tridel Hullmark Centre has been in various stages of negotiation with the city since the mid-1990s for their development. Parts of Tridel Hullmark Centre (south tower) has already opened a few months ago,... the entire Tridel Hullmark Centre will likely be completed by year end. Basically 10-15 years from initial negotiation to completion.
Bazis, started marketing EmeraldPark in summer of 2008,... they didn't even put in an application to the city yet. And since Bazis EmeraldPark will likely be completed in a year from now,... I would argue, city planning bent over backward to accommodate Bazis EmeraldPark!
Furthermore, Bazis NEVER even put in an application for the 50 or so floors represented in their original rendering,... that's all smoke and mirror,... it's called Marketing,... how close does the current building even resemble their rendering??? The original rendering had 5-6 shades of translucent green,... currently green glass and Dollarama green! Their original development application to the city came in fall 2008 and only had 30 storey for west tower and 39 storey for east tower. Here's the preliminary report from October 2008!
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/ny/bgrd/backgroundfile-16855.pdf
And that's basically what they got from the city 30 storey west tower and 40! for east tower,.... then Bazis started chopping height clearance on each floor to squeeze in two more floor into each tower,... city planning granted their request,... so they got 32 storey on west tower and 42 storey on east tower (all within the same overall height allowed). When podium was basically finished, they realize they messed up on basic math for west tower and they're about 5 feet short in overall height clearance. Their solution was to add another floor to west tower by chopping height clearance on each floor AGAIN to squeeze in one more floor,... once again, city planning agreed,... thus West Tower is now 33 storey. I don't ever recall other developers doing this sort of stuff,... but once again, city planning bent over backwards to accommodate this developer!