Anson Kwok was on the 106th floor of Pinnacle SkyTower the day before we met. He goes up regularly, but this particular view still gets him.
“Everyone has seen the CN Tower from the outside,” he said. “It’s something completely different being eye-level with it — looking directly at it from across the skyline. That perspective is going to be something genuinely remarkable for the people who experience it. It’s not just a restaurant at the top of a building. It’s a new way of seeing Toronto.”
Kwok is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Pinnacle International. He has worked on Pinnacle One Yonge for 14 years — first from a city planning perspective, through every design iteration, every approval, every phase of construction, and now, finally, through the months immediately preceding occupancy. SkyTower topped off this month at 106 storeys, making it the tallest building in Canada and the first residential tower in North America to reach that height. Residents will begin arriving this fall.
For Kwok, the milestone is personal in a way that goes beyond professional accomplishment. “Some of these buildings that define this city were built before I was born,” he said. “You don’t get to do this every day. To be able to contribute something like this to Toronto — to make all of it real after 14 years of work — is not something I take lightly.”
The site at 1 Yonge Street has been a long time coming. Before Pinnacle International acquired it, the address — the foot of Canada’s most iconic street, where Yonge meets Lake Ontario — was occupied by the Toronto Star building and, later, a surface parking lot. It was the kind of location that made developers and architects restless for decades: enormous potential, no execution.
What Pinnacle has built in its place represents one of the most ambitious mixed-use developments in Canadian history. The Prestige, the development’s completed 65-storey first tower, was finished in 2022. It is fully occupied. BMO, Tim Hortons, Tahinis, and SKN Beauty Bar are operating at grade. The 50,000 sq. ft. community recreation centre — the first city-run facility inside a private Toronto development — is open to the neighbourhood, with a six-lane pool and full gymnasium. The park adjacent to the site is complete. A planned PATH connection will eventually link residents to Union Station’s climate-controlled underground network.
SkyTower is the second chapter, and by almost every measure, the larger one. Nine hundred and fifty-eight residential units. Eighty thousand square feet of amenities. Le Méridien Toronto Pinnacle, 223 rooms across the building’s first 12 floors, opening this summer as the brand’s only Canadian property. Three in-house dining concepts for the hotel, details of which have not yet been announced. And confirmed by Pinnacle CEO Michael De Cotiis, a restaurant on the 106th floor — a dining room eye-level with the CN Tower’s observation deck, the operator of which has not yet been named.
“Seeing all of these components come to life — the community centre, the Prestige, the SkyTower, the hotel, the restaurants, the public realm we’ve rebuilt around it — this is city building at its best,” Kwok said. “And we’re doing it right on Yonge Street.”
The neighbourhood around Pinnacle One Yonge is moving in step with the development. For most of Toronto’s history, the waterfront south of the Gardiner Expressway existed in a kind of seasonal rhythm — active in summer, quiet the rest of the year, separated from the downtown it borders by an elevated highway that functions as both a physical and psychological barrier. The retail businesses that set up here did so knowing the limits of that equation.
That equation is changing. Since 2010, the residential population along Queens Quay has grown from roughly 10,000 to over 30,000, according to the Toronto Waterfront BIA, with job locations in the area expanding at a similar rate. Three levels of government committed $975 million last year to the next phase of waterfront revitalization, targeting 14,000 new homes and projecting a $13.2 billion economic contribution. Biidaasige Park opened its first 50 acres in July 2025. And this week, Billy Bishop Airport officially opened U.S. Customs pre-clearance, with Air Canada launching direct flights to New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington starting this spring. YTZ is a ten-minute drive from 1 Yonge Street.
Kwok has been making the year-round retail argument for years. The infrastructure to back it up is now in place. “Before this, there were retailers that only survived in the summer months when tourists visited,” he said. “The residential density we’re delivering changes that permanently. This neighbourhood will support businesses in a way it never has before.”
The numbers behind that statement are significant. Scotiabank Arena, one minute away, hosts roughly 200 events a year. The Jack Layton Ferry Terminal brings hundreds of thousands of visitors through the waterfront annually. Union Station — the country’s busiest transit hub, serving GO Transit, VIA Rail, the TTC, and the UP Express — is nine minutes on foot. The walk score is 97. The transit score is 100.
What the industry needs to understand, Kwok said, is that the retail leasing window at SkyTower is open right now — and it will not stay that way. Beyond the hotel’s in-house concepts and the 106th floor restaurant, the retail slate for the development remains largely available. He was candid about where things stand: there are no external tenant names ready to be announced yet. But that, he argued, is precisely the point.
“We’re in that moment right now where something real can get done,” he said. “Where a brand can still be part of the opening story, rather than arriving after it’s already been written. That’s a very different opportunity — and it doesn’t come around very often.”
When Kwok talks about what kinds of brands belong here, he doesn’t prescribe categories. Instead he asks a question that cuts closer to brand identity. “Look at what you’re building,” he said. “Ask yourself — does it fit with Canada’s tallest building? Does it fit with a hotel that’s bringing an international brand back to this country for the first time in over 30 years? Does it fit with a neighbourhood being built from the ground up at the foot of the most famous street in Canada? There aren’t many addresses in this city that can ask those questions. This one can.”
The opportunity, he continued, is one that is specific to this moment in the community’s development. Brands that arrive now will help define what this address becomes. Brands that arrive later will be joining something already established. “On most streets in Toronto, every corner has already been claimed,” he said. “Here, you can still be the first of your kind. You can be the destination. That’s rare.”
The community itself is far from finished. Phase 3 of Pinnacle One Yonge is already approved at 320 metres — another supertall, set to join SkyTower on the skyline. The South Block will add two more residential towers of 80 and 85 storeys, a second hotel, childcare facilities, and a tree-lined promenade along Yonge Street anchored by a 14,500 sq. ft. corner plaza. At full build-out, approximately 5,000 residences on site — one of the largest urban communities in Toronto.
For Kwok, whose investment in this project spans nearly the entirety of the last decade and a half, the moment of occupancy is less a finish line than a starting point.
“It’s not about the next five years anymore,” he said. “It’s about right now. The building is here. The hotel is opening. The residents are moving in this fall. We’ve turned the corner — and we’re only going to keep adding to something that’s already exceptional. Someone is going to look at their brand and realize this is the right fit. The brands that figure that out first are the ones who will define what this address becomes.”
Dustin Fuhs is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 6ix Retail, Toronto’s premier source for retail and hospitality industry news. As the former Editor-in-Chief of Retail Insider, Canada’s most-read retail trade publication, Dustin brings over two decades of expertise spanning retail, marketing, entertainment and hospitality sectors. His experience includes roles with industry giants such as The Walt Disney Company, The Hockey Hall of Fame, The Canadian Opera Company, Starbucks Canada and Blockbuster.
Recognized as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Dustin delivers insider perspectives on Toronto’s evolving retail landscape, from emerging brands to established players reshaping the city’s commercial districts.