A substantial height boom is coming to Toronto's Yonge and St. Clair area, one that will see a new skyscraper canyon take shape in the years to come thanks to a procession of towering proposals that continue to trickle in.

Adding to this future skyline, City Council just approved yet another tower that would rise far taller than anything else that exists along St. Clair Avenue today, granting zoning and Official Plan amendments to a developer seeking to build 51 storeys at 45 St. Clair Avenue West.

Insurance giant Manulife Investment Management first filed plans back in 2022 to bring a 50-storey tower to the site that would see the current 14-storey office building torn down. 

Google Street View

Manulife presented an updated plan this past fall featuring a reimagined design from Sweeny &Co Architects, calling for 51 storeys and 461 rental units.

Aside from changes to the exterior design and massing, the updated plan eliminates office space from the proposal entirely following a City review of mandatory commercial space inclusions in a waning office market.

Other changes include a reduction in unit count, an increase in residential amenity spaces, and perhaps most notably, a taller overall building.

Toronto and East York Community Councill recommended the project's rezoning and Official Plan amendment ask for approval in November, sending it off to City Council where it has since been approved with amendments.

Among the amendments, Councillor Josh Matlow requested that City Planning report back on "the feasibility of conducting an area-based microclimate study for the Yonge-St. Clair planning area that examines the impacts of existing, approved and proposed future developments on local microclimate conditions such as wind, heat and pollution, and ways to improve these conditions."

Matlow requested that the developer work with the City on mitigating wind issues, such as "the creation of a building canopy," and asked the applicant to meet with the Calvin Presbyterian Church to discuss the shadowing impact the project would have on the property.

The now-approved zoning and amendments to the City's Official Plan would allow a building to rise to Manulife's proposed height of 169 metres.

Aside from minor wind and shadowing concerns to be worked out during the project's later stages of planning progression, the City has essentially greenlit the development's proposed height and more or less closed the book on any future pushback about a tall building at this location.

This may feel like cause for alarm for some area residents, but the reality is that Yonge and St. Clair's metamorphosis into an even taller point on the midtown skyline has already begun in earnest.

Just around the corner on Yonge north of St. Clair, the long-awaited One Delisle project is already ascending toward an eventual height of 44 storeys/155 metres, just 14 metres shorter than the 51 storeys proposed at 45 St. Clair West.

Other tall towers of similar heights are being proposed all along the thoroughfare, the most recent calling for a 49-storey residential tower to replace an existing office building at Avenue Road and St. Clair.