Pinnacle SkyTower officially has become the tallest building in Canada as its construction height just surpassed 100 floors.
“We’re at the 101st floor at the moment and already the tallest building in Canada,” Anson Kwok, a Pinnacle International vice president, told CoStar News. “It’s a bit of a newer concept in Toronto, and in Canada, though it’s pretty common around the world.”
When SkyTower's outer frame is completed and the high-rise tops out at 106 floors and 351.85 metres, or about 1,154 feet tall, the mixed-use tower will be in line with the CN Tower’s main observation level, Kwok said. CN Tower, at 1,815 feet, or about 553 metres, doesn't count because the city classifies it as a broadcasting tower.
The Pinnacle SkyTower is the second of five phases planned at One Yonge at the site of the former Toronto Star building. The first 65-floor tower has been completed, and plans call for the third high-rise to be 95 floors. Pinnacle has also tendered applications for an office building and a second hotel on the site.
Pinnacle is a major developer in Canada, having built towers its hometown of Vancouver and in Toronto and Mississauga. It also developed the Pinnacle Tower, a multifamily high-rise on Front Street in San Diego that at 36 stories ranks as one of the tallest buildings in the Southern California city.
The first planned hotel, Le Meridien Toronto Pinnacle Hotel, is set to be part of SkyTower and have 225 boutique suites on the first 12 floors. Plans call for the project to contain 958 luxury condominiums from the 13th to 105th floors. The hotel portion will be operated under the Marriott umbrella.
Toronto's condo market is a tale of two cities, according to Ben Haythornthwaite, director of CoStar Market Analytics for greater Toronto and the greater Golden Horseshoe.
“The widening wealth gap appears to be creating two distinct markets for pre-construction condo sales,” he said. “Anecdotally, I heard of a recent deal exceeding $10 million for a pre-con unit. I’ve also heard of some projects shifting toward custom-built, larger units for end users as opposed to the target market of first-time real estate investors that the market was focused on for the last decade. This reflects a ‘K-shaped’ economy where liquidity remains strong at the top while the middle and lower segments struggle.
Toronto’s once-hot preconstruction condo market has cooled dramatically, with sales hitting their worst numbers since the Great Recession in 2008. Things do not appear to be on the brink of improving in what is by far Canada’s largest real estate market, according to a recent report from RBC.
“The dramatic downturn represents more than a cyclical adjustment — it could reshape Toronto’s housing landscape for years to come,” Robert Hogue, assistant chief economist at RBC, said in the bank's "Navigating Toronto’s Frozen Pre-Construction Condo Market" report.
Pinnacle expects to open SkyTower in 2026.
“We’re in that sweet spot of being about a year out,” Kwok said. “I’m dealing with a handful of clients right now who are combining units and doing more customized suites that meet their families’ needs.”