The Bow tower right on track

CALGARY- The Bow tower will utterly dominate the Calgary downtown skyline by next September, when all 58 storeys of its gargantuan steel frame will be erected.

The project is still on schedule and on its $1.3-billion budget, project developer Michael Brown said as he gave reporters and TV cameras a site tour.

Last December, he had predicted the Bow’s frame would stand at 30 floors. It does, and crews have begun installing the giant glass walls of its exterior.

"By the end of next year – and this is unbelievable – we’ll be at 58 storeys of steel, but also in terms of curtain wall we’ll have much of the building enclosed," Brown told reporters.

Only about one-tenth or fewer of the 13-foot-high glass panels that form the building’s skin will be left uninstalled by the end of next year, he added.

Then, by mid-2011, EnCana workers will begin the first phase of their move-in, four years after construction began.

The Bow will by next year replace the Suncor Energy Centre’s west tower (formerly the Petro-Canada tower) as the tallest Canadian office building west of Toronto.