Toronto condo developer to replace balcony glass

Date: 22 August 2011
Source: http://www.cbc.ca
The Toronto condominium developer at the centre of a controversy over glass falling on the city's streets, has announced it is replacing all of the glass in the balconies of three of its buildings.

The buildings, all in downtown Toronto, will have the existing tempered glass used in their balconies replaced with laminated glass.



The company, Lanterra Developments, said in a statement the new glass "loosely resembles the type of safety glass utilized in automobile windshields. The advantage of utilizing laminated glass is that in combination with using the latest available railing technologies, these laminated panels retain their structure in the event of a fracture and stay in place on the balcony should any breakage occur."



On three separate occasions since Saturday, glass fell from condo towers built by Lanterra.



A condo near Bloor Street West and Bedford Road, lost glass on two occasions.



In the third incident a tower on Grosvenor Street also lost a pane of glass. A woman walking along Bay Street was slightly injured in that incident.



Earlier in the year a condominium on Grosvenor Street and another on Grenville Street lost panes of glass from their balconies.



Since the weekend the condo at 1 Bedford Road has been blocked off by police tape and workers are erecting "protective hoarding at all locations to continually ensure the safety of pedestrians and vehicles in proximity to the buildings," the company said.



Lanterra also said that effective immediately, all of its construction projects will use laminated instead of tempered glass.

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