Postponement for Toronto L-tower design as crunch means investors are slow to pay
“The doors have closed on Toronto’s Sony Centre this week to make way for a revamp due to bring the building into the 21st century. Studio Daniel Libeskind has designed an L shaped tower that will envelope the 50-year-old Sony Centre for the Performing Arts – formerly the Hummingbird centre – at the corner of Yonge and Front in Toronto, Canada.
The redevelopment of the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts has been designed to boast the new L Tower Condominiums, an arts and cultural facility dubbed the Arts and Heritage Awareness Centre (AHA) and the revamped existing theater structure.
However, while the commercially viable L-tower residential block will continue without hesitation, local Canadian publication, the Globe and Mail reports that the AHA, which was to be the justifying centre of the development, is getting to grips with the credit crunch as it faces further financing delays. The AHA, costing C$75 million, was due to receive C$60 million of senior government funding and private donation by December last year but the funds are yet to be seen. Despite an extention until September 2008 there is little hope that the funds will be received and there is talk that the centre could transform from a cultural hub to a retail haunt.”
(Source: World Architecture News Newsletter of July 1st 2008)