Toronto’s most troubled tower is about to become Canada’s tallest building

The title of Canada’s tallest building has gone unchallenged for almost a half-century, but a rising condo tower in Toronto will soon take over the reign as the country’s tallest, even if only to lose its claim to fame months down the road.

Despite massive debts and mounting legal challenges, construction continues to press forward at the site of the enormous luxury condo tower rising from the southwest corner of Yonge and Bloor known as The One.

With an approved 91-storey/328-metre height (though recent evidence suggests it will more likely rise to its previously planned 85-storey/308.6-metre height), the tower is primed to overtake First Canadian Place as Canada’s tallest building in the coming months.

A long-established record

The current title holder, First Canadian Place, rises just over 298 metres (978 feet) and has reigned as the country’s tallest building since it opened almost 50 years ago (the CN Tower is not classified as a building, though it will hold onto its title of the tallest freestanding structure in the Western Hemisphere for the foreseeable future).

The title within sight

Most recently, The One surpassed its neighbour across Yonge Street to the east. The One now stands just a bit taller than the 2018-completed One Bloor East, a 78-storey, 257-metre tower, which ranks as the city’s sixth-tallest completed building.

If The One is indeed being built to the lesser 85-storey mark that was planned before a mid-construction height increase was approved, the building is now just under 50 metres from its peak, and even closer to a place in the record books.

Even at its reduced height, The One will clear the roof height of Canada’s current tallest building and (briefly) take the title of the country’s tallest building.

Records come and go

However, The One’s reign as Canada’s tallest building will be quite short-lived, as its successor to the throne is already racing towards an even taller height a few kilometres to the south on Yonge Street.

The One has been embroiled in a skyscraper pissing contest of the ages against the enormous SkyTower project now rising at Pinnacle International’s One Yonge complex.

Though construction at The One had a whopping three-year head start with a 2017 ground breaking, the complexity of the tower’s hybrid exoskeleton structural system, construction stoppages, and legal challenges have all added to the project’s timeline.

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Construction, legal, and financing headaches have been problematic enough to gain international attention, but have not put a damper on recent construction progress.

Thanks to all of these setbacks, the gargantuan 105-storey SkyTower project has actually managed to catch up with The One, despite starting construction in 2020.

When will the record change hands again next?

SkyTower is now quickly ascending to an eventual height of 345 metres — roughly equivalent in height to the CN Tower’s observation deck.

At the current rate of construction, SkyTower should overtake The One’s height at some point later in 2025.

History repeats

A similar race for Canada’s tallest occurred in Montreal during the city’s boom days in the 1960s. 

The 45-storey Tour CIBC office tower opened its doors in 1962 as the tallest building in not just Canada, but also the entire Commonwealth. However, it only held this title for a few months, dethroned when the nearby Place Ville-Marie had a penthouse level added purely as a giant middle finger by the tower’s competing owner, Royal Bank.

Could this be it?

A building boom that has surged for the last decade and a half appears to finally be reaching its final years, but The One and SkyTower are just a couple of the ambitious mega-builds now under construction in what could be the last gasp of this building cycle which will forever alter the look of Toronto’s skyline.