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428 Pinnacle Advances Interim Hotel Conversion for Former Toronto Star Building at One Yonge
Pinnacle International, which just in October this year submitted completely revised plans for the southern half of its site at 1 through 7 Yonge Street, then announced in November that they were pausing demolition plans for the former Toronto Star Building which currently dominates the property, so that it could be turned into a hotel for an unspecified number of years. Eventually, the company would restart the full development plans advanced in October. Now, Pinnacle has advanced the interim strategy for the former Toronto Star Building with a technical Zoning By-law Amendment application for the 25-storey tower’s conversion to hotel space. The amendment is narrow enough in scope to avoid triggering (H) Holding provisions tied to the initial office-heavy plan for the site.
The site is bound by Yonge Street on the west, Queens Quay East to the south, Freeland Street to the east, and a new street, Downes Street, to the north. Downes is an easterly extension of Harbour Street with a section already open, and this section now being worked on. The mostly rectangular parcel spans roughly 11,237m², and besides the 25-storey tower, former Toronto Star Building also includes a five-storey office block podium that runs east along Queens Quay, and the paper’s former printing plant space on the north side of the site, with the same height as the five-storey office block.
The building was completed in 1971 as the Toronto Star’s new headquarters following move out of the Financial District. While printing of the papers moved to a new plant in Vaughan in 1992, the administrative offices and newsroom remained in the building until moving to The Well in 2022, long after Pinnacle’s acquisition of the property in 2012. Pinnacle’s earliest One Yonge phases have all been on the portion of the site north of Downes Street. Recently, the second phase, dubbed SkyTower, surpassed ‘supertall’ height, on its way to becoming Canada’s tallest building. The third residential tower on the north site is not yet in sales, but tweaks to the plans for it have been ongoing.
As post-pandemic shifts reduced demand for major employment space, industry scuttlebutt in 2024 had it that Pinnacle were planning to apply to switch the plans for the south site to predominantly residential as well. Despite not having submitted those revised plans, Pinnacle secured a demolition permit for the Toronto Star Building in 2024, which currently sits 87% vacant, even while the condo market was starting to tank too.
Now, with the condo market still lifeless for the moment, Bousfields has now submitted the latest Zoning By-law Amendment application on behalf of the developer regarding hotel conversion, pausing demolition. The retrofit would reconfigure roughly 49,240m² of the building’s interior into 41,255m² of 468 new hotel suites plus some retail space at ground level. Of the suites, 308 would function as typical rooms on floors 2 to 14, while 160 larger extended-stay suites would occupy levels 15 to 25.
The plan by Hariri Pontarini Architects updates 296m² of existing street-facing retail along Yonge Street and retains the building’s eight elevators. No exterior alterations are planned aside from a new outdoor amenity area, allowing the conversion to proceed without triggering Site Plan Approval. At grade, plans include a new hotel entrance, reception area, lounge, bar, and ballroom. Floors 2 through 4 incorporate meeting rooms, while level 5 would be dedicated to indoor amenities, including a spa. Level 6 would introduce a fitness centre, with rooftop tennis and pickleball courts on the southwest podium, and the remainder of the five-storey podium left outside the scope of this application for potential future submissions.
Below grade, the hotel would use 20 of the building’s 51 existing parking spaces in its basement level, supplemented by a 10-space surface lot at the northwest corner. When Downes Street’s full right-of-way is delivered, that lot would drop to 8 spaces. The application notes that additional parking demand could be absorbed into adjacent commercial garages in the north parcel and at 16 Yonge Street.
The proposal acts as a bridge to a much larger transformation planned for the South Block, also designed by Hariri Pontarini. Pinnacle anticipates a minimum five-year window before it would advance its residential-focused vision for the site, which contemplates two mixed-use towers of 80 and 85 storeys replacing the Star Building entirely.
The tower is roughly 250m southeast of Union Station. The Waterfront LRT currently has a station at Queens Quay West and Bay Street, while the planned Waterfront East LRT would introduce a stop at Freeland Street directly beside the site. The Martin Goodman Trail provides protected cycling lanes along Queens Quay.
There is other development activity in the area. To the west, The HUB is planned as a 59-storey office tower, while to the east, Sugar Wharf Phase 2 proposes three residential towers rising between 70 and 85 storeys. South across Queens Quay, Pier 27 Phase 3 would introduce new residential buildings of 11 and 45 storeys. To the north, Pinnacle’s earlier phases at One Yonge include the completed 65-storey Prestige, the under-construction 106-storey SkyTower, and the not-yet-started third phase tower approved at 95 storeys.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on these developments, but in the meantime, you can learn more about them from our Database files, linked below. If you’d like, you can join in on the conversations in the associated Project Forum threads or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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