Dive Brief:

• Toronto's domination of the North American real estate market shows no sign of slowing. According to Curbed, the city's construction industry continues to pick up momentum, with demand for housing and work space pushing development in the downtown core and other areas of the city.
• Data from the most recent Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) Crane Index showed that Toronto had 120 active construction cranes in July, more than twice the second most active city of Seattle.
• One of the most prominent examples of the city's development supremacy is the $2.7 billion ($3.5 billion Canadian dollars) Union Park project. In progress from Oxford Properties Group, a partner in New York’s Hudson Yards, the project is scheduled to open in 2023. Encompassing twin 58- and 48-story office towers and apartments surrounded by public parkland, it will bring 4.3 million square feet of new mixed-use office, residential and retail spaces to the downtown area.

Dive Insight:

Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects with Toronto-based Adamson Associates Architects, Union Park will be one of the largest mixed-use projects in the city's history but many other megaprojects are in the works as well. They include:

• The 12-acre smart city project from Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Google subsidiary Alphabet. The plan includes 10 new mixed-used buildings, all made from mass timber, streets designed to reduce car use and a proposal to extend Toronto's light-rail system.
• The Well seven-building development of 1,800 residential units and more than 400,000 square feet of office, retail and dining space.
• CIBC SQUARE, a multi-phase development of two towers that will add 3 million square feet of office space, including a Microsoft office. The building is targeted to meet LEED Platinum and WELL Building standards.
• 160 Front Street West, set to open in the fall of 2022, is 100% leased. Major tenants are TD Bank and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. The 46-story office tower features 1.2 million square feet of office space and 12,290 square feet of retail space. It is designed to achieve LEED Platinum and WELL Building Standard certifications. 

Toronto's construction boom is in part due to an influx of residents, drawn to the city on Lake Ontario by a robust job market. A recent Ryerson University analysis found that it's the fastest-growing region of North America after Dallas/Ft. Worth.

“I don’t think most Americans understand the scale of what’s going on in Toronto,” one of the report's authors, Frank Clayton, told The Buffalo News.

Many large U.S.-based construction firms do business in Canada, including Balfour Beatty, Turner and Gray Construction.