MetroMan said:
I'm not sure it's improved but at least the tower portion is getting built.

Not only was the podium beautiful, it made the new building publicly accessible. What's being built is a private condo in a part of the city that needs all the public spaces that it can get.

We haven't seen any details as to what's going on the first floor of the L tower but what I can guess from the information that was made available is that it's just a lobby for the condo.
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The city backed-out of it's "Artscape" space (original podium) due to a lack of funds. I don't know much about this space other than it would have been space for Toronto to "celebrate the arts". Now they're spending $42 million on Nathan Phillips Square.
 
^ It's not one in spite of the other. Nathan Philips Square improvements have been in the pipe for several years now.

While the original use for the podium didn't go through, the developers could have turned it into commercial space.
 
MetroMan said:
^ It's not one in spite of the other. Nathan Philips Square improvements have been in the pipe for several years now.

While the original use for the podium didn't go through, the developers could have turned it into commercial space.
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The point is that public art space for local artists and enthusiasts has become less of a priority in Toronto. A competitive city is the creative city and as a creative city, the arts need to be nurtured.

It was always the intention for the city to put up the money to build Artscape so I'm assuming it was never in the developers' budget.

On the contrary, as we sluggishly exit the recession, it's understood why Libeskind's original design didn't pan-out (looks expensive doesn't it?). Regardless, L Tower will certainly be unique and a beautiful landmark of Toronto.
 
dcc008 said:
The point is that public art space for local artists and enthusiasts has become less of a priority in Toronto. A competitive city is the creative city and as a creative city, the arts need to be nurtured.
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I don't know...what they were proposing looked more Olympic-Spirit-gimmicky than arts-nurturing-space to me.
 
some of the more creative people never benefit from these publicly sanctioned artist spaces....often the well-connected benefit the most. There are some great rental spaces that artists can stiil find in the downtown area. For example, I know a couple of artists who live and work in the decrepit industrial loft building at Ossington and Dupont.
 
Look to the Design Exchange to see how another ill-defined yet well intentioned cultural space can go horribly wrong.
 
The reason why Artscape got pulled was never the city. It was because there was no funding from the provincial and federal governments. The city was very supportive of ArtScape.
 
I would LOVE this tower if it didn't have the weird crystal podium which is a completely unbaked idea and makes no sense next to the tower and Sony Centre.
 
It's unfortunate that the podium could not have been retained and reconfigured for office or retail space.
 
It looks more like an I tower now :/ Was waiting relentlessly for it to be built, but now when half of the amazing design is gone, it's just... naked.
 
As one of the condo owners, I do like the new L (or I, if you want to say it that way) tower design without the Arts Center or restaurant at the bottom of the tower. Will see if the pool and the public square look nice once it's built.
 
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Kraylin said:
any recent updates? It's been just over 3 weeks now.
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A lot of mechanical thingys with pipes and junk like that, going into the newly framed floors on the east side of the Sony's rear podium.
Boring stuff really, unless you are really into heavy duty industrial air conditioning.
I suspect this stuff is for the Sony structure and probably has very little to do with the condo tower. I'll submit a couple of pics as they finish up, before the cladding goes on the framework. Now that should be interesting.
 
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