The Globe and Mail

Torontonians have known that the Royal Ontario Museum planned to give its sagging south end an architectural lift since early 2002, when our town's grandest cultural palace picked Daniel Libeskind to furnish it with a suitably spectacular Bloor Street address. In remarks to journalists last week, however, museum director and CEO William Thorsell finally gave us a glimpse of what the ROM has in mind: a condominium stack rising 40 storeys from the demolition rubble of the McLaughlin Planetarium. The tower, Mr. Thorsell told Globe reporter James Adams, will feature "very high, very beautiful apartments. It's going to be the most beautiful residential building in the city -- and the most expensive, I would think." He expects the road from here to there to be rocky, with opposition to the project coming from city planners, citizens who think Toronto already has too many residential skyscrapers in the works, and people who dislike the whole idea of public-private partnerships.