Plan to transform Toronto hotel into 71-storey skyscraper is officially dead

A bold vision to plop new levels onto a downtown Toronto hotel and turn it into a soaring 71-storey skyscraper is the latest casualty of a gutted real estate market, as the plan joins a growing list of scrapped development schemes in the city.

A 2022 plan to redevelop the existing Cambridge Suites Hotel at 15 Richmond St. E. into a new mixed-use condo tower turned heads with its design by WZMH Architects for Centennial Hotels Limited.

The plan sought to strip away the 231-suite hotel's 1990s Postmodern-style aesthetic, leaving just a 21-storey structural shell, which was to be reinforced to support 50 new levels above, combining for what would have ranked among Toronto's tallest if completed today.

However, after the plan went silent for three years, it was revealed that Manga Hotels had purchased the property for over $110 million in the fall of 2025.

While such a purchase wouldn't rule out the future skyscraper transformation, Manga's plan to embark on a floor-by-floor renovation of the dated property is a pretty good indication that the hotel operator has no plans to strip the building down to its shell any time soon.

The Cambridge Suites Hotel redevelopment joins other high-profile cancellations, such as a now-scrapped scheme to build a high-rise condo planned along Toronto's Don River that failed to generate enough buyer interest. 

In a report released last month, real estate analytics firm Urbanation cited only 319 new condo apartment sales across the entire Greater Toronto Area in the third quarter of this year, the lowest quarterly total since 1990.

During that disastrous third quarter, Urbanation reported 10 projects with a total of 2,499 units cancelled, for a combined year-to-date total of 18 projects and 4,040 units cancelled.

This figure shattered the previous record high for cancellations recorded in 2018, when 15 major projects were cancelled with a total of almost 3,600 units.