If you’ve gone east on either King or Queen to cross the bridge into Riverside, you can’t help but to have noticed the enormous development going on between the two streets. It’s called
River City, and few Toronto condos have been more aptly named.
The pilings are just now being put into the ground for River City 2, the second of what will ultimately be four phases of this massive addition to the city, one that may just make that Don River of ours into something people occasionally remember exists.
"We started construction in the beginning of February," says Jeff Geldart,
Urban Capital’s development manager in charge of River City. "We’re currently drilling for
caissons and piles -- the foundation system -- because we don’t have any program underground. We’re not allowed to build down."
Geldart explains that they’re not allowed to dig out a foundation of the sort we’ve become used to around the city because they’re building on a
flood protection landform built by Infrastructure Ontario to protect the city’s core from the sort of flooding New Orleans experienced after Hurricane Katrina. Geldart describes the landform as "an extremely large berm," and says that the first three phases of the project are all being built on it.
River City 2, designed by the Montreal firm of
Saucier and Perrotte with 249 units in three 12-storey mini-towers, will be completed in two years, with the entire project is expected to be done sometime between 2018 and 2020.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jeff Geldart
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