I was walking in the area this past weekend and glanced over at 660 Quayside to see how its coming along. Of course I thought of this forum and took a few quick photos to document.
The small building furthest West looks to be topped out now. The West tower is just starting to get above ground (or I guess I should say water!) with the parking structure below clearly visible. You can see the foundation for the East tower made of the pilings. The second to last photo is located on the far East side of the site, directly next to Pier Park. My assumption is that they are going to start building up the parkade on that side of the site and eventually meet up with the East tower as it starts to rise. I'm presuming that the last area of the underground parking to be completed will be the large ramp being used to access the site. Note that I know next to nothing about construction, just a simple observation based on where I see active construction.
Having followed this for years, I find myself getting very excited about this stage. We're just about at the point where you can get a very real feeling of the tower placement and how it will interact with the surroundings (height aside). The tower spacing feels further apart than I would have thought, with the East tower just a bit further East that I would have imagined. Still lots of room for open park space surrounding.
I think you can see angled rebar for the columns on the river side of the tower.
I think you're right. The towers do look closer to the river than I initially would have thought. However this makes sense given that a pedestrian promenade will be added, extending beyond the current edge of the site directly over the river. I've found the renders to be inconsistent in this. I hope that Bosa and the city don't cheap out and opt for a promenade that is wide and extends further at key locations such as the foot of Begbie. See the difference between these two renders for what I'm talking about.
Version 1 (promenade extends out over river at key points):
Version 2 (promenade is narrower and completely straight):
That's too bad about the promenade being quite a but more boring. I also don't have high hopes of these being particularly beautiful towers, as the use of spandrel and glass is going to make these two pretty drab looking. It looks bland already on the renderings and is not going to look better once built.
I was at Pier Park this weekend so I took a moment to take update photos.
These towers are going to have a huge impact. Even the podium feels tall given that the first 4 or so floors are have high ceilings (compare with Trapp and Holbrook across the street on Front). Presumably the V columns on the first tower will meet a transfer slab soon and then we will start to see the standard floors start to rise more quickly.
Another brief observation is the height of the decking. At present the decking is lower than Pier Park beside but I could see that they are still building higher at the edges. My presumption is that this is to allow a solid 3+ feet of soil to be loaded on top for the park space.
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