Look up… look waaaaay up

The parking lot next to the Canadian Broadcasting Centre is about to cast two very long shadows.

Next week, construction begins on the RBC Centre, a 31-storey office tower (apparently the first to be built in downtown Toronto in a decade.)

Soon after: the 53-storey Ritz-Carlton, boasting obscenely expensive condos and hotel rooms.

Of course, TBC’s measley 12 storeys are already tucked in below the 181-storey CN Tower. (See image, left - I scaled each building to three pixels per storey.)

I hope nobody here has this:

Batophobia

An abnormal fear of being near an object of great height, such as a skyscraper or mountain.

Now, I enjoyed watching the cranes at work during the Simcoe Tower construction during my internship at CBC way back. And during my first year of work at the TBC, I made a point of looking up at the CN Tower and trying to imagine the guy who first pitched the idea:

“I have this idea… What this city needs is an Enormous Pointy Thing! In fact, the enormousest in the world! It’ll be really huge. And it’ll have glass floors, and a spinning restaurant, and a… um… a radio antenna at the top! Are you in, or are you out?”

Still, though I hate to admit it, ever since working under the thing on September 11th, I look up at these landmarks with a little less amusement.

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 07-27-2006 | 02:07 PM
Posted in: CBC | Toronto