Toronto will have to wait another few years for the new Ontario Line's planned 2031 opening, but things are already heating up at the 15 future station sites of the upcoming 15.6-kilometre subway route.

Many of these stations are well into their early construction works, including the future site of the King-Bathurst Station, where a flurry of activity is ongoing at the intersection's northeast and southeast corners.

The future Ontario Line station at this location will incorporate the heritage facades of a 1902 Toronto Dominion Bank building (formerly The Banknote Restaurant) and a 1904-built commercial office building at the north site, as well as a pair of properties dating to 1900 at the south site.

Heritage structures on-site have been reduced to their facades and supported with steel bracing, similar to the process used at other Ontario Line station sites.

Behind the preserved facades, construction crews are hard at work on the station's shoring process, where piles are driven deep into the ground to form below-grade retaining walls.

These shoring walls will stabilize the surrounding soil and allow the upcoming excavation stage to progress safely.

For the time being, the only visible sign of these shoring walls is a network of steel I-beams emerging from the ground.

As with many new stations along the Ontario Line, Infrastructure Ontario is capitalizing on its newly acquired land assets by adding density above and around planned transit stations.

A similar plan is in the cards for the King-Bathurst site, where the province envisions a pair of 17- and 25-storey residential towers atop the station buildings, containing a mix of affordable and market-rate units.

Though still early on in development, Metrolinx's latest images of the station include conceptual designs for these planned towers from architects SvN.

Metrolinx.

In the spirit of transit-oriented development, there is no parking proposed for these two new buildings — which would result in no additional traffic for the area and encourage building residents to make use of public transit.