The Globe and Mail

The dismal little parking lot at 66 Temperance St., at the heart of Toronto's financial district, occupies one of the most desirable building sites in Canada. It's got location galore, with centres of corporate power, entertainment and government just steps away. It's also got strong architectural context: The tall buildings in the neighbourhood demand that whatever is put up there be grand and urbane, and a visible sign of Toronto's large ambitions. Yet the place has long suffered under a kind of jinx. Developers have come and gone, building nothing. Several tall-building schemes have been proposed for the site in the past several years, but all were scuttled for one reason or another. After acquiring the property in 2003, high-profile Toronto developer Harry Stinson toyed with a skyscraper condo-hotel project for about a year, then withdrew it because, he told me, "It was not sufficiently sexy [in concept] to carry the sales." Mr. Stinson's next design -- Sapphire Tower, a daring blue glass cylinder soaring 81 storeys from grade and joined to a 62-storey building -- was shot down by city council.