I've always wondered what the glass treatment would have been though. Probably that reflective bronze glass like on Rocky Mountain Plaza. The whole tower would act like a huge mirror to the south, superheating the asphalt in the roads during the summer.
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"The only thing that gets me through our winters is the knowledge that they're the only thing keeping us free of giant ass spiders." -MonkeyRonin
Edmonton and Calgary had some doosies that were scrapped....both skylines would be significantly different if they had come to pass.
At one point the Ghermezian brothers were talking about building an 85 storey tower in Edmonton. I've never seen the rendering, but the initial concept drawing was something along the lines of the Sunlife building in Calgary.
^correct...it was to be part of the city centre mall...4 x 50 storey and then an 85 storey. But there is a lot more to the storey than meets the eye. The city gave massive tax concessions to the Ghermezian's to get the city centre mall going with the "promise" of these towers...and yet to the best of my knowledge, there were no structural considerings for any of them.
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"The destructive effects of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building" - Jane Jacobs 1961ish
^as it would in calgary...but recall that these were all thoughts during the 70's and 80's and at the time in alberta "nothing was out of the question"
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"The destructive effects of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building" - Jane Jacobs 1961ish
85 would be crazy in Calgary, but it would look much more out of place in Edmonton since it would be 200m taller than the next tallest, it would only be a little more than 100m taller than the Bow (which is still huge of course).
^but think of when it would have been built...however they also completely disregarded that we had a municipal airport overlay
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"The destructive effects of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building" - Jane Jacobs 1961ish
I'm slightly bummed Edmonton never did get it's 85 floor, 1000' tall tower at the NW corner of 101 St. and 102 Ave directly across the street from Manulife Place that would have been sweet!
And you are right, there are no structural considerations for the towers above Eaton Centre aka City Centre West, because the final draft scrapped the planned office towers for just a hotel tower and condo buildings I believe, though the latter would be built where the parkade would be, so that could in theory anyway, be easily demolished and rebuilt for towers... if a new parkade was built on the empty lot to the north...
The Airport Overlay is another issue entirely. The height limit in downtown seems to be rather abitrary because it already is exempt from the vicinity limit the rest of the city within this zone is limited to... So in theory the city could lobby Transport Canada for an exemption to raise the figure, right?
To me, this is one of the most painful never-builts ever. I love these KPF 80's designs, and this was one of the better ones IMO.
__________________ "There's two kinds of men in the world. Those who have a crush on Linda Ronstadt, and those who never heard of her." - Willie Nelson