Development News

Just as Billy Bishop Airport is in the news again, with a proposal from Porter to expand the island airport’s repertoire to jets, the Toronto Port Authority has released a video highlighting the airport’s economic contributions to the city.

The video, which was released on Thursday, is based on an economic impact study done last October, and it’s the first new video the TPA, which runs the airport, has done in more than two years.

"The impact study really is about what the airport contributes to the city and how we want to work with the city in partnership," says TPA president Geoff Wilson. "It’s a very important theme: successful cities embrace their airport infrastructure and understand its role in stabilizing and growing, in our case, the downtown core and bring prosperity in the form of business, commerce and tourism."

He says this airport embrace is a form of natural civic evolution.

"Great cities embrace their ports, then their railroads, then build their highway systems, and the ones that did it well prospered and had strong economies." Airports, he says, are the next historical step.

According to the study, the airport creates 5,700 jobs, of which 1,700 are directly linked to airport operations, handling the 2 million passengers that came through in 2012, a figure that's expected to rise in 2013. The airport has also been calculated to add $640 million in gross domestic product, and $2 billion in total economic activity.

Though Wilson did not want to comment directly on Porter's proposal, the TPA has agreed to fund the first phase of a feasibility study. Wilson would go so far as to say that if Porter's projections of increased passenger traffic are correct, it would increase the airport’s overall economic contribution to the city.

Wilson says the timing of the video has nothing to do with Porter's proposal.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Geoff Wilson

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You may wonder, reading about all the public consultations covered in this space week after week, what it's all for.

On Friday, we found out.

Metrolinx, which has been holding consultations on its LRT line, announced Friday that it was changing gears based entirely on the public’s reaction to its revised Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown line plan.

After initially proposing to include stations at Leslie and Laird, Metrolinx proposed beginning to tunnel at Brentcliffe Road and ending at Don Mills Road, a plan that would have eliminated those two stops.

"Metrolinx had identified some potential issues with the Brentcliffe Road launch site," says Metrolinx’s director of community relaitons and communications Jamie Robinson. "It investigated different options and engaged the community, including convening three public meeting. We believed that our proposals would result in significant improvements to construction staging, schedule and traffic impacts. However, in discussions with the local community and with local community organizations it was clear that there was a strong preference for a stop at Leslie Street and for a station at Laird."

Asked if there were other reasons, perhaps economic, to revert back to the original scheme, Robinson says that "There’s no economic advantage either way," and that the decision was made entirely as the result of the public's expressed preference.

The Eglinton-Crosstown LRT will run from Black Creek to Kennedy station and is expected to be completed by 2020.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jamie Robinson

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Diamond and Schmitt--the architecture firm behind such diverse buildings as Toronto's Four Seasons Centre, the New Marinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Montreal’s La Maison Symphonique and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs--has won three awards from the Ontario Association of Architects.

"They just did a lot of great work this year," says OAA president Bill Birdsell of the firm, which won more OAA Awards than any other this year.

They firm took home design awards for the Centre for Green Cities at the Evergreen Brickworks and the Ryerson Image Centre, and Jack Diamond was recognized for his lifetime's achievement.

"The Evergreen Brickworks is just an amazing re-use," Birdsell says. “It hits all the good things: good design, good business, it’s sustainable, it’s very clear. It’s a legacy building, it celebrates the past. It just hits the things the profession is trying to highlight."

Both Evergreen Brickworks and the Ryerson Image Centre, he says, also have "the ability to invite and engage the public."

The OAA awards are decided by juries made up mostly of community members, though they include architects.

Though there were awards given out to residential projects this year, it may be read as significant to some that, unlike past years, no condominium tower was recognized.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Bill Birdsell

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Three small buildings opened on Leslie Spit last week, giving an air of permanence and purpose to what’s been called an accidental urban wilderness.

According to James Roche, director of parks, design and construction at Waterfront Toronto, the spit was created as a breakwater for the outer harbour, part of a shipping plan for the Port of Toronto that was made obsolete before it was completed by the development of container ships.

Since the 1950s, it has been a dumping ground for building materials, and has grown into a multi-armed agglomeration that over the years has cultivated its own ecosystem.

"A lot of different species of animals live there now," Roche says, "and it’s a very important flyover stop for birds going to South America."

The three buildings -- a staff booth, an environmental shelter and a bird-banding hut -- are an attempt to make official the casual uses it's been put to. The staff booth will serve as a monitored entryway, enforcing the park's hours. The environmental hut will be a sort of interpretive centre, with information about the spit and its species, that also serves as a way to get out of the sun, rain or snow. The bird-banding hut will centralize the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority’s efforts in that area, just in time for the Tommy Thompson Spring Bird Festival on Saturday.

Work started on the project in the fall of 2010, and Roche says the entire project, including a spiffing up of several kilometres of walking and bike paths, cost $8 million.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: James Roche

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Tridel has won the Home Builder of the Year award for the second time.

The award, handed out by the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), is the result of professional adjudication as well as a survey BILD conducts among homebuyers.

"Home Builder of the Year is an all-encompassing award," says BILD’s vice president of membership, Helen Batista. "It includes charitable work, the professional development of staff, and it very much takes into account the opinion of their actual clients, the people who buy and live in their homes."

Batista also cites the developer, which sold 1,109 condos in 2012, for its green building practices, its youth program, known as BOLT, particularly as conducted through Northview Heights Secondary School.

Tridel won the award once before, in 2004, when there were separate awards for high-rise and low-rise builders. This year's prize covers all homebuilders.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Helen Batista

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One of the most significant development projects in the city was announced on Monday when it was revealed that developer Context and builder Metropia will be working with Toronto Community Housing to overhaul Lawrence Heights.

The 100-acre neighbourhood, completed in 1962, is a suburban version of Regent Park tucked just south of Yorkdale Mall, and all three partners have expressed the intention of making the revitalization at least as successful as the much-lauded downtown Regent Park project.

"At this point in my career, it’s very important to do something that has social significance," says 30-year veteran and Metropia president Howard Sokolowski.

The entire project is expected to take 20 years, encompassing more than 1,000 low-cost units and more than 4,000 market-price units. Context and Metropia have been given the contract for the first phase, 25 acres on which they will build 225 rental homes and 950 condos and townhouses. Construction will begin next spring.

Sokolowski emphasizes the importance of community consultation as the project moves forward, sensitive perhaps to the initial opposition from residents.

"We’re not about to do anything until people know exactly what’s happening and have input into acceptable architecture, acceptable street furniture," he says. "That’s number one."

The plan has been a long time coming. It was first announced in 2007 by then city councilor Howard Moscoe.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Howard Sokolowski

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Artscape has a novel way of getting artists into studio spaces.

With its latest project, Young Place, 80 per cent of the 75,000 square feet of disused schoolhouse will be rented, and 20 per cent of it will be sold according to a scheme based on the Options for Homes model.

"The spaces were valued at $430 a square foot by an appraiser, and we provide prospective owners with a 25 per cent down payment interest- and payment-free," says Tim Jones, Artscape’s president and CEO. But unlike Options for Homes, Artscape retains that 25 per cent ownership, so when the original buyer sells, the next buyer will get the same deal.

When it opens in September, Young Place, located at 180 Shaw Street between Dundas and Queen, will be Artscape’s biggest, though at $16 million to renovate that old Givens Shaw Public School, it is only roughly half as expensive as the Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park.

Young Place, named for funder the Michael Young Family Foundation, will open on the old school’s centenary. Getting such an old building into shape to be a modern arts space has been difficult.

"It really is an overhaul of the building," Jones says, "bringing it up to building code, with all its mechanical, electrical and structural issues. It’s an old school, and there’s a reason the school board has such a challenge with all this aging infrastructure."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Tim Jones

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The École élémentaire Charles-Sauriol officially opened last week, the latest in the expanding French-language shool board.

The school will be the 14th elementary school in Toronto for the Conseil scolaire Viamonde, which also operates four secondary schools in the city.

"The school board started working on this project a little more than three years ago," says Claire Francoeur, the board’s director of communications. Francoeur says that the École Pierre-Elliot-Trudeau is operating at capacity, which is what necessitated Viamonde’s purchase of the disused Catholic school formerly known as St. Josaphat at 55 Pelham Avenue in the Junction Triangle.

The school was shared this year with students from St. John the Evangelist school, some of whom learned in portables outside, until places could be found for them. There were 175 French students at Charles-Sauriol this year, and Francoeur expects that number to rise to 200 in September, and to get up to 400 within four years.

After some general clean-up before opening last September, the school is now beginning some renovations for a daycare space, to be completed before the beginning of the next school year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Claire Francoeur

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Live Green Toronto gave out its annual awards on Monday, and the Corporate Award went to the Simpson’s Tower for its near-perfect recycling record.

"Last year, we had an audited rate of 97 per cent," says building manager Arlena Hebert, explaining the success of the waste diversion program administered by property manager Ivanhoé Cambridge, for whom she works.

The program started a little more than five years ago when each of the building’s garbage cans was replaced with three recycling bins. The building’s average diversion over the last five years has been above 90 per cent, according to Hebert.

Hebert credits all parties with the success of the program, including the building’s owner, Hudson Bay Co., the tenants and the cleaning staff.

"The evening cleaning team is really important," she says. "They’re the ones who empty the recycling bins. If people don’t recycle properly, they don’t empty the bins, and the tenant is left with a note on their desk.”

Getting tenants in on it has been a big part of her work, she says, and she’s organized two field trips to the recycling facility that handles their stuff, GFL (formerly known as Turtle Island).

The Simpson's Tower wasn't the only winner.

Justin Nadeau won the individual award, Gordie Warnoff and his A Higher Plane got the small business award, the group award when to James Davis and the Toronto Bicycle Music Festival, and the youth winner was Thezyrie Amarouche. Each of the winners received a $2,500 prize. The Simpson's Tower is donating its prize to Cycle Toronto to help in its efforts to establish secure bike parking around the city.  

Live Green Toronto, funded by the city's Environment and Energy sector of the Toronto Environment Office and various sponsors, has been giving out awards recognizing the city's greenest companies and individuals since 2005.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Arlena Hebert

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If you abandoned your bike on an unexpectedly cold or snowy November night and have been putting off picking it up, now might be the time.

The city has started collecting obviously orphaned bikes in a concerted effort to free up ring-and-posts and clean up the streets.

"We’re in the middle of the mayor’s clean-up program," says Steve Buckley, the city’s general manager of transportation services. "We’ll be taking the bike carcasses over to Evergreen, where there’s a Bike Works program. They’re going to sort through al the pieces we’ve collected, determine which are salvageable, and anything that’s not will be taken for scrap."

Buckley says the city collects about a thousand dead bikes a year and expects to harvest about a hundred over the next couple of weeks. Standard procedure involves tagging the bikes to warn owners of their bike’s impending collection, and giving them about a week to bring them home.

If you find your bike missing and think it may have been picked up by the city, Buckley recommends you call the city at 416-392-7877.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Steve Buckley

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Jump, known in the pre-Plenty of Fish-and-Grindr world as the premier spot for business people to meet each other, has just re-opened after its most extensive renovation in the landmark bar and restaurant’s 20-year history.

The first in the now ubiquitous Oliver and Bonacini chain, Jump opened in 1993 as a hopeful investment in a financial district still smarting from the 1989-90 crash.

"This was one of our smoothest construction jobs," says Theresa Suraci, O&B’s director of marketing and communications. "We shut for a month, which is always a very challenging schedule when you’re doing as much work as we did but I think they ran into very few hiccoughs."

The renovation cost $1 million, which Suraci takes some pleasure in pointing out is what it cost to build the establishment in the first place.

The press release announcing the re-opening describes the new interior as "intimate" with "Cognac-coloured leathers, tones of charcoal grey and warm amber woods."

"We are celebrating 20 years in business," says co-owner Michael Bonacini, who left his job at Centro to join Peter Oliver in the new venture, "and there are certainly times in a restaurant’s life when it needs a little TLC. That said, it’s still the solid bones of Jump. It just needed a facelift to make it feel more current and vibrant. That’s essential in the restaurant industry, especially in the very competitive downtown core.

"Whenever you renovate in a building in the downtown core, you’re dealing with one of the most challenging projects imaginable, given that it directly affects an asset worth millions of dollars.  In this case we’re working around say 5,000 occupants of the building, all affected by things like deliveries, offloading, noise, vibrations and general safety factors. For instance, we needed to core through a concrete slab in order to move a fire hose cabinet, requiring us to x-ray the concrete to assess issues of structural rebar or electrical conduit. The problem is that no one can be within 150 feet at the time the x-ray is taken, which means that due to the close proximity of the escalators and subway below, we had only a couple of hours in the middle of the night to possibly schedule the procedure.  It took us seven days just to coordinate the scheduling. These types of renovations are infinitely complicated."

Jump is located at 18 Wellington Street, just west of Yonge. 

Writer: Bert Archer
Sources: Theresa Suraci, Michael Bonacini

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"This year is actually going to be the largest amalgamation of pending road reconstruction, resurfacing and bridges."

The words, spoken by the city’s general manager of transportation services Steve Buckley, should be enough to strike terror into any Toronto driver.

Road construction means detours and delays, and starting now, we’re in for $155 million worth.

"Basically, we have a lot of aging infrastructure," Buckley says, "and at this point, our roads are not in great condition.” He blames in on a "backlog of deferred maintenance" saying that there’s going to be an extra $285 million spent on major roads over the next 10 years to get the major arteries in shape.

Last week, crews were on Kingston Road, which is being reconstructed and resurfaced from Birchmount to Queen. Other major jobs this spring include Keele from Falstaff to Arrowsmith, Bloor from Lansdowne to Bathurst, Dufferin from Dundas to Keele and Albion Road from Steeles to Highway 27.

Drivers who want to keep on top of what’s going on so they can pre-plan (or just pre-fume) can check out both scheduled and emergency roadworks here.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Steve Buckley

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Extending the reach of a neighbourhood has long been an urban technique for paying tribute to a popular neighbourhood, and trying to make a little money off properties that are almost-but-not-quite there. In Toronto, we’ve got spots like the Upper Beach and West Annex.

Now Markham’s picking up the ball with its Upper Unionville development by TACC developments.

Built on the old Beckett Farm at Kennedy and 16th Avenue (which sold for $100 million), Upper Unionville is the 1,600-unit result of a consortium of four builders: Arista Homes, Fieldgate Homes, Paradise Homes and Starlane Home Corporation.

The homes, a combination of townhouses, semi-detached and detached houses, started to go up in September. Paradise just closed on between 30 and 35 of them between late March and early this month.

"We’ve all designed our own houses," says Daniel Salerno, director of sales and marketing for Paradise, "but we all have the exact same lot types, which fell under the same architectural control."

The control architect -- the one responsible for lending the new development the feel of a cohesive neighbourhood -- was Williams and Stewart.

Salerno figures most of the houses will be occupied by 2015. There is also what Salerno calls a live-work area, an area along the south end of the site that will be a combination of homes and businesses, which should be finished by 2016.

Prices range from about half a million to just under a million. Upper Unionville is about a 20-mintue walk to Main Street, Unionville.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Daniel Salerno

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As of last week, there are eight cranes up and running at the future Canary District, the second major neighbourhood to be attempted south of Front Street in the last decade.

Unlike City Place, however, the Canary District is incorporating several layers into its planned community in the hopes of creating a sustainable neighbourhood. 

The cranes are stretched out over 35 acres, the simultaneous erections a reminder of a tight deadline. The district will be used at first as an athletes village for the Pan/Parapan American Games, to be staged across the GTA in the summer of 2015.

"We’re building out the entire athletes village," says Michelle Cain, project manager for developer Dundee Kilmer. "There are two cranes for the YMCA attached to the George Brown campus, two for the two buildings that will be affordable housing, and four cranes for the Canary District condos."

Ground was broken last May on the $514-million project designed by four architecture firms: KPMB, Architects Alliance, Daoust Lestage and MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michelle Cain

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The Remington Group has applied to almost double the number of condos they’re hoping to build in the third phase of their Queensway project, and Councillor Peter Milczyn thinks there may be some problems.

"I’m sure residents will have a variety of concerns," he says, referring to the April 15 public hearing the city is hosting in Etobicoke. "The height, at 50 storeys, is too high. I think that’s not supportable given that there are no other tall buildings around there, that they’re not adjacent to a subway station and so on. The density itself? We’ll have to look at the traffic studies. I’m not so concerned about the number of units as I am about the built form, the height and the massing of the buildings."

Remington is proposing to up the unit count from 1,000 to 1,819.

Milczyn, a graduate of U of T’s architecture school and once head of his own design firm, worries that Richmond may be going for too much too quickly in a spot that has, up until now, been a one-side-of-the-street neighbourhood, with the industrial lands currently being built of having had no residents at all.

The land IQ condos are being built on used to belong to G. H. Wood, the corporation that was responsible, among other things, for public bathroom hand-dryers with their once ubiquitous motto, "Sanitation for the nation." After moving about 20 years ago, the land was held up for about a decade, the result of a protracted divorce between its new Chinese owners.

Milczyn has high hopes the Queensway, a road he says has been thought of for years as nothing more than "a six-lane bypass to the Gardiner Expressway." With people living on both sides of it, he is optimistic that it may become the centre of Etobicoke, a pedestrian-friendly zone with shops, cafes, and everything else Lakeshore Boulevard once had and is attempting to regenerate. He would like to work with Artscape, he says, "to bring in some gallery space and maybe artists’ studios as part of this development to create a bit of an arts hub along the Queensway."

The public meeting will be held at Holy Angels Church at 65 Jutland Road, beginning with an open house at 6:30pm on April 15. The meeting will run from 7pm to 8pm.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Milczyn

CORRECTION: The first reference to the developer's name was misstated in the original version of this article.

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