A five-storey wood building in Liberty Village is the first among several timber-based projects planned or on the go in Toronto to be completed.

Construction on the outside of the $60-million project at 80 Atlantic Ave., near King Street West and Dufferin Avenue, is done and interior finishes are expected to be complete in time for occupancy this summer for commercial and retail tenants.

The Star was recently granted a tour of 80 Atlantic, a 90,000-square-foot building that is fully leased to three tenants including Universal Music.

While the ground floor, parking garage and elevator core at 80 Atlantic are made of concrete, the second floor upward is primarily wood — wood ceilings, beams and support columns. The floors and roof panels are made of nail-laminated timber, while the columns and beams are made of glulam, a process by which lumber is bonded together with a water-resistant adhesive.

The nail-laminated wood is all spruce — a combination of white spruce and Engelmann spruce from B.C. and Alberta and black spruce from Ontario. The glulam is all black spruce grown in northern Quebec and harvested near Chibougamau, Que.

The wood provides a wide, open-air esthetic and a fresh aroma.

“The smell is very appealing for our clients,” Kosei Masutani, an asset manager for Hullmark, the developer of the 90,000-square-foot building, said during the tour.

The building was designed by Toronto architectural firm Quadrangle.

“Compared to the average office building downtown this has a warmer feel to it,” Masutani added.

Wood buildings are becoming popular in Toronto. Sidewalk Labs, a Google sister firm, wants its proposed city of the future on the waterfront to be condos and apartment buildings made of wood.

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And 80 Atlantic is among several “mass timber” buildings set for Toronto in the coming months and years, including an office building coming to Wade Avenue in the Junction Triangle area, the Scoop condominium well underway on St. Clair Avenue West near Keele Street, and George Brown College’s planned Arbour building on Queens Quay, along Toronto’s waterfront.

Aside from the esthetic appeal, wood buildings’ popularity is also due to its environmental benefits — wood sequesters or “locks in” CO2 taking it out of the atmosphere, therefore mitigating greenhouse gases, as opposed to the burning of fossil fuels used in the making of concrete, a common component in most buildings.

In addition, the popularity of wood buildings has been buoyed by Ontario revising its building code limits in 2015, allowing wood buildings to be up to six storeys high, as opposed to the previous four storeys.

There’s proposed legislation to change the Ontario Building Code again to allow 14 storeys.

And last summer the province announced it is investing $5 million in Ontario’s first cross-laminated timber facility. It’s located in St. Thomas.