Carys Mills and Julien Rus­sell Brunet – Globe and Mail

Wor­ries about shat­ter­ing glass and exactly whom res­i­dents of Toronto con­do­mini­ums should turn to when any struc­tural issues arise kept the phones ring­ing at one city councillor’s office Thursday.

“It’s brought peo­ple out of the wood­work,” said down­town coun­cil­lor Kristyn Wong-Tam.

Her ward con­tains some of the five con­dos that have recently show­ered some city streets with glass. She called for a broad inves­ti­ga­tion ear­lier this week after a woman was injured by bal­cony glass that fell from the 31^st floor of one building.

Since then, Ms. Wong-Tam (Toronto Cen­tre–Rosedale) said res­i­dents from inside and out­side her ward have alerted her to pre­vi­ously unre­ported instances of glass break­ing and other condo problems.

She and her staff fielded about 50 calls Thurs­day, many of them con­cern­ing the glass issue. Some instances of shat­ter­ing glass had gone unre­ported because there’s no stream­lined process or con­tact at the city, she said.

“There’s a sense of con­fu­sion. When your bal­cony glass breaks, who do you con­tact?” she said.

Provin­cially, Trinity-Spadina MPP Rosario March­ese is call­ing for stricter condo leg­is­la­tion overall.

“There is a lack of pro­tec­tion for the more than one mil­lion condo own­ers in Ontario,” he said in a state­ment late Thursday.

The falling glass has sent rever­ber­a­tions through the condo and glass industries.

Barry Fen­ton, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Lanterra Devel­op­ments, said the com­pany is tak­ing steps to imme­di­ately remove tem­pered glass from its three build­ings on Bed­ford Road, Grenville and Grosvenor streets. Seven of nine balcony-glass inci­dents that have occurred since last Decem­ber were at those build­ings, accord­ing to city officials.

Fur­ther­more, Mr. Fen­ton said Lanterra would replace the glass with lam­i­nated glass, “a bet­ter prod­uct,” and will use it for all future projects.

All the falling glass inci­dents involved tem­pered glass rather than the more expen­sive lam­i­nated glass, which is sim­i­lar to the kind used in car windshields.

“We’re react­ing to an indus­try issue that has arisen,” Mr. Fen­ton explained. “We had two ways to deal with it. One was to replace the tem­pered glass with tem­pered glass. And the other was to step up … even at our cost.”

While Mr. Fen­ton said he had yet to receive cost esti­mates, accord­ing to Doug Per­ovic, a pro­fes­sor of mate­ri­als sci­ence and engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, lam­i­nated glass is 50 to 200 per cent more expen­sive than tem­pered glass.

Mr. Fen­ton said Lanterra would be using Toro Alu­minum Rail­ings Inc., the same com­pany that sup­plied the orig­i­nal glass, to carry out the replacements.

And although the prob­lem of falling bal­cony glass from Lanterra build­ings is “a Toro issue,” he said, “we haven’t lost con­fi­dence in Toro as a company.”

The peo­ple who sup­ply glass to devel­op­ers are also grap­pling with the problem.

“It’s big news around every­body in the indus­try,” said Frank Ful­ton, board pres­i­dent of the Ontario Glass and Metal Asso­ci­a­tion. He said it’s unlikely there would be so many inci­dents unless the glass was attached improp­erly – with too much pres­sure on the edges, where tem­pered glass is weakest.

Glass experts say impu­ri­ties in the glass can also lead to spon­ta­neous breakage.

Still, Mr. Ful­ton said it’s “scary” because tem­pered glass is used so widely due to its low cost. “I would ven­ture to say they’re 98 per cent tem­pered glass,” he said of bal­conies and other parts of Toronto build­ing exte­ri­ors such as slid­ing doors. “There’s mil­lions of pieces of them.”

On Thurs­day, the city ordered that engi­neer­ing reports from Lanterra and the other devel­op­ers with falling glass be sub­mit­ted to the city by Aug. 31, accord­ing to Ms. Wong-Tam. Once they’re in, the devel­op­ers will have 10 days to come up with an action plan, she said, while city staff pore over the reports.

She said there’s still a need to dis­cuss updat­ing the province’s build­ing code and other issues with upper lev­els of gov­ern­ment. On the local level, she said, a cen­tral report­ing phone line for condo issues should be considered.

While anx­i­eties mount, Prof. Per­ovic cau­tions against blow­ing the prob­lem out of proportion.

“In terms of sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance of fail­ure, this is minus­cule com­pared to the num­ber of win­dows that are made and installed.”

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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