Do you believe it?  Could this actually happen?

It’s actually an old story, but I figured a nice follow-up to yesterday’s post about the CN Tower would involve a residential tower three times the size…

I know what you’re thinking: “Is that REALLY the best photo you could find of the ‘Mile High Tower’ that is going to be built in Saudi Arabia?”

Yes.  Yes, it is…

If you Google “mile high condo,” most of the results will feature The Burj Khalifa, which is actually a paltry half-mile high.

A half-mile?  I don’t even get out of bed unless it’s three-quarters of a mile!  Don’t bother me with a silly 160-storey tower…

After yesterday’s blog post about the CN Tower, a colleague of mine asked, “Can you imagine if there was a condo that size?  What would it be like going up the elevator every night to the 110th floor?”

The CN Tower is 1,815 feet, or roughly the equivalent of 126 storeys.

Every day in Toronto, the definition of “high-rise” and “mid-rise” condos change as buildings get taller and taller.

Most of the condominiums built in the last 2-3 years top out around 50-storeys.

For illustration purposes, here’s a random selection of well-known condominiums built in the last couple years and the corresponding heights:

Maple Leaf Square – 54 Storeys
Festival Tower – 42 Storeys
Montage – 47 Storeys
Casa – 46 Storeys
M5V Life – 35 Storeys
X-Condos – 45 Storeys

The “large” condos used to be 40-50 storeys, but the condos under development right now are pushing that bar even further.

Here’s a random selection of downtown condos currently under construction:

Trump International Hotel & Condo – 57 Storeys
Ice Condominiums – 67 Storeys
Burano – 50 Storeys
Shangri-La – 65 Storeys
X-2 – 49 Storeys

Take notice of X-Condos versus X2.  The former is 45-Storeys; the latter is 49.  That’s a 9% increase in only a couple years, since X2 began selling before X-Condos was even occupied!

Slowly but surely, condominiums in the downtown core are getting larger!

Aura at College Park is scheduled to be 75 storeys and the building is already under construction.

120 Harbour is only in the “proposed” stage, but it’s scheduled to be 75 storeys as well.

However, as far as the world stage is concerned, we’re still way, way behind!

While the CN Tower was proposed to help with the distribution of radio and television signals, there’s no doubting that the tower was constructed to put Toronto on the world’s map.  At least we can say that the original idea wasn’t simply to stroke our egos!  The same simply cannot be said for those developers overseas, however!

It’s as if the middle-east and Asian are constantly trying to one-up each other in terms of the design and height of both residential condominium towers as well as office spaces.

In January 2010, “Dubai Tower” (later changed to “Burj Khalifa”) opened after six years of construction, costing $1.5 Billion.

The tower had 900 condominium units, which cost upwards of $3,500 per square foot for the “Armani Residences.”

Within ten months of the opening of the building, however, 825 of the 900 condos were vacant.

The building is 163-storeys with another 46 levels in the Spire of the tower which are being used for maintenance.

But the incredible part is – only a few months after the Burj Khalifa was completed, rumours already began to circulate that a neighbouring country would be constructing an even larger tower!  In August of 2011, Kingdom Holding officially announced plans to construct the “Mile High Tower” in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is scheduled to be 5,250 feet tall – or almost three times the height of the CN Tower.

Here’s how the three towers stack up:

The “Kingdom Tower” will cost $30 Billion to construct and will rise some 360-Storeys, which will be serviced by 59 elevators.

The most notable feature of the tower is the “Sky Terrace” which will overlook the Red Sea from 2,000 feet.

The floor of the terrace will be made of glass, meaning that vertigo claims will jump 3,000% in the years following the launch of the building – scheduled for 2016.

Here’s how the Sky Terrace will look:

I have to be honest, as soon as I saw this picture, I had flashbacks of this:

God, there’s two hours of my life I’d love to have back!

But I guess it’s a window into all of our futures!

Try and tell me that the artists renderings for some cities in the Middle East don’t make you think that Jeff Bridges is going to fly down Dubai Avenue on one of these:

Is it really that far off?

A word to Toronto developers: if you want to be noticed by the rest of the world, enough with these “simple” 75-storey towers!  At least make the tower rotate or something!  Throw in a series of lazer-beam windows, or at least a paltry five-storey aquarium for monkeys that breathe underwater!

Geez.  Come to think of it – we don’t have a single floating condominium in the entire city!  Not one elephant-shaped tower.

I guess we’ll just have to go back to staring at the CN Tower as it changes colours every night.

Soooooo pretty….