Construction begins on CIBC Square

The area around the Air Canada Centre will look completely different in three years.

A multi-billion dollar project is in the works to build a new GO bus terminal, two highrise buildings and a park.

The groundbreaking ceremony took place on Wednesday to mark the start of construction on CIBC Square — formerly known as Bay Park Centre. The project by global real estate developers Ivanhoé Cambridge and Hines, which received funding from all three levels of government, was first announced in 2014.

Ontario Transportation Minister Stephen Del Duca was on hand for the ceremony and celebrated the successful collaboration.

“(This) really is a testament to how important it is for partners to work together, to collaborate together to build these kinds or transformational opportunities,” he said.

Del Duca noted that although the project is fundamental to the city of Toronto, it’s also important to the hundreds of commuters who come in and out of the city every day from other parts of the GTA.

“When I think of the commuters who use the GO bus system, for example, who come into our bus terminal downtown … I know that this is extremely exciting for them,” he said.

The brand new, $100-million GO Transit bus terminal will have three times the capacity of the current terminal.

Mayor John Tory called the project a shining example of transit-oriented development in the city.

“We make it not only possible, we make it desirable for people to use public transportation, which we’re building together to get to work and to get home because that is the future of cities,” he explained.

Tory said Toronto has been getting global attention for its environmental measures, its technology sector, its financial centre, as well as its expanding transportation.

“We’re at a moment in time where the eyes of the world are on Toronto … looking at the way we live together here, and that relates to things like how we use public transportation,” he said.

“Also how we live together in terms of us having our arms open and our hearts and our minds open, where the rest of the world sometimes seems to be turning inward and turning away from each other.”

CIBC Square will sit on a three-million-square-foot plot of land east of the Air Canada Centre. It will become to new home to CIBC’s head office and also have a one-acre elevated park over the rail corridor.

“I love the towers. I love the transit connection. I love the jobs that CIBC and other tenants are going to bring here … but I’m particularly interested in the park that is going to be built here,” Tory said.

He added the creation of the park will prove that this kind of project can be done and will be the gathering place that connects parts of the city — much like the proposed Rail Deck Park.

“We must not let hand-ringing get in the way of moving forward with ambitious projects that are going to build a great city going forward,” said Tory.

The first of the project’s two buildings, 81 Bay St., is scheduled to be completed in 2020. The second building, at 141 Bay St., and the elevated park over the railway will be completed in 2023.

See an artist’s rendition of CIBC Square in our photo gallery below.