Church & Wellesley - Yorkville - Annex : Development News

The Cookbook Store is gone. After 30 years, and some last-minute noises about possibly moving, Alison Fryer and Co. closed up shop for good this month. In its place, a proposed 58-storey condo. They've not put much effort into the name – One Yorkville – but one hopes the Bazis tower, designed by Roy Vacarelli, makes good the loss.

On the surface, it appears to fit firmly into the Toronto Condo 2.0 school – still a glass tower, but with decorations, in this case, something a publicist calls "3D wallpaper."

The proposed tower would consist of 622 units in the place of the Victorian/Edwardian row houses currently ranging from 838 to 848 Yonge. Unlike 5 St. Joseph a few blocks south, Bazis is not attempting to work its new tower into the existing fabric, preferring to take an out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new approach that has, over the decades, been a standard Toronto approach.

True, the Vicwardians are in no way remarkable, never mind unique, but as more thoughtful developers have shown, there's a value to maintaining familiar streetscapes, to growing rather than razing.

When asked what it was hoping to do differently in this especially condo-crowded section of town, Bazis replied, through its publicist, that they were, "Catering to anyone in the area from students to empty nesters -- those that appreciate the accessibility of the Yorkville area, transit and downtown living." As mission statements go, this is one of the most discouraging heard in years.

The Cookbook Store was a small but valuable part of the city. This large but generically conceived replacement is going to have to do some work to convince anyone it's worth what it's proposing to wipe away.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Vicki Griffiths

Anyone who's walked up or down Avenue north of Bloor over the last decade or so will have noticed a sad little vacant lot behind frost fencing on the corner of Webster, just north of the Hazelton retirement home.

It looks like it's finally got a future.

Urbancorp has just applied to build a very high-end, 14-storey condo tower there, with just 14, two-bedroom units (meaning everyone gets their own floor).

The design is by TACT, who are reluctant to comment (often not a great sign, to be frank), on what looks from the preliminary sketches like a sort of skeletonized version of the standard glass tower.

According to a report commissioned by the city from Ted Davidson Consultants, the proposal meets all the neighbourhood's development standards meaning that, barring a local uprising at the upcoming public meetings, this one's a go.

It's not the best use of the space, from an urban point of view, adding just 28 or so people to the neighbourhood. But if any part of town is going to support a floor-by-floor owned condo with gallery space for its retail level, it's this spot, just a hundred or so metres up from the Ferrari dealership.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Oren Tamir

As of last week, Toronto’s got a new attraction. The Bloor Street Cultural Corridor calls attention to a strip that before now didn’t have much of an identity.

The corridor runs from Bay to Bathurst, and as corridor director and Royal Conservatory director of marketing Heather Kelly pointed out at L’espresso on Wednesday, it includes a dozen arts and culture spots for Torontonians and tourists to take in.

"This is a new type of collaboration," Councillor Michael Thompson said to the packed house, referring to the collaboration among the dozen to promote the area as a whole.

"I've travelled to 60 cities," said Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, whose ward covers the eastern part of the corridor, "and I know when you visit a city, you don’t go for the skyscrapers, for the condos."

From east to west, the BSCC consists of the Japan Foundation, the Gardiner Museum, the ROM, the Bata Shoe Museum, the Royal Conservatory and Koerner Hall, the Istituto Itlaiano di Cultura, the Alliance Française, the Native Canadian Centre,  the Miles Nadal Jewishj Communtiy Centre, Trinity-St. Paul’s with its Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Toronto Consort, and the Bloor Cinema.

"By working collaboratively and cooperatively," their press release said, "the cultural organizations intend to attract more Torontonians, tourists, and attention to the Bloor Street Culture Corridor. Helping visitors connect the dots, the initiative will increase awareness of how close together and easy to access these arts and entertainment experiences really are. The partnering organizations hope to entice people to stay in the area longer and ultimately include more destinations in their visit."

There are also two hotels in the strip — the Intercontinental and the Holiday Inn — and a couple of dozen restaurants, bars and cafes. It’s not necessarily the best restaurant strip, nor the best part of town for cafes, but there is no other part of town with as much of a mix.

In addition to the brochure, which will be made available to various tourism outfits, they’ve set up a website to bring it all together.

If it achieves nothing else, the initiative reminds us that there’s plenty to do and see around Bloor and Spadina.

Writer: Bert Archer

The proposed Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship at U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering was unveiled Oct. 29. According to one of its biggest proponents, it represents a great leap forward in the often retrogressive world of engineering education.

Designed by Montgomery Sisam Architects in Toronto and the UK’s Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, the new building -- estimated to cost considerably more than the $50 million already raised for it – is meant to encourage students to learn from each other as much as from the lecturers.

The 500-student auditorium will be the centrepiece as well as a model of how the school intends to conduct its teaching in this realm. Professor Emeritus Ron Venter, former chair of mechanical engineering and a consultant on the current project, explains.

"Normally the seats are next to each other, and the lecturer stands in front," he says. "We are trying to build the lecture theatre so it will still be tiered, but instead of the seats being one next to another in rows, the rows aren't there. What you've got are tables, a work surface with six students or four students being able to sit around, to discuss things in groups. You can lecture, but the group has a dynamic going on on its own. Then that group can interact with the lecturer. Everything is electronically connected, so if you've got a laptop on your table looking something up and find something that's pretty good that supports what the concept is of the lecture going on, you can, with the lecturer's approval, be beamed onto the Jumbotron at the front."

Another novel concept is the "alumni attractor" rooms, conceived as a place engineering alumni can hang out with current students, do some of their own work, and casually mentor the next generation.

If Venter’s optimistic timetable were followed, ground on the new building, to be put up next to Simcoe Hall on land that's currently a parking lot, would be broken next fall, with completion set for December, 2016.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Ron Venter

"Harbord Village is always like this. You ask them to do something, and they turn it into a piece of genius."

Councillor Adam Vaughan is talking about the lane-naming that's been going on in and around Harbord over the past several weeks. Naming laneways around town has become a priority for the city in the last couple of years, as emergency services makes it clear that it can help them locate people and situations more precisely, and communities have used the opportunity to celebrate themselves.

Harbord Village has used its namings as an impetus to remind its residents, and the city at large, of the neighbourhood's history, organizing events around each naming, and setting up a website to provide more details.

Recent laneways have been named in honour of Barbara Barrett, founder of the Toronto School of Art, the Greenberg family, several generations of whom have lived in the same Harbord Village house for about a century, writer and poet Barker Fairley, and Albert Jackson, Toronto’s first black postman, who lived in a house currently occupied by literary editor Patrick Crean. According to Vaughan, there were guests from as far away as Atlanta who came in for the naming ceremony back on July 6.

The lane that's received the most attention, though, is the Boys of Major Lane, named for six boys, all from Major Street, who fought in WWII. Only two, including the aforementioned Greenberg family’s son Joe, returned.

Vaughan says the next neighbourhood that will be announcing its line-up of lane-names will be Seaton Village. They’ve got a tough act to follow.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

The Green Building Centre at George Brown College’s Casa Loma campus celebrates its topping-off this week, having reached its full height on the way to a March, 2014 completion.

And perhaps not unsurprisingly for a building that’s part of the college’s Centre for Construction and Engineering Technologies, things have been going pretty smoothly.

“I've been waiting for shoes to drop," says the school’s dean, Nancy Sherman, “but as far as we can tell, everything’s going according to plan.”

The $4-million renovation and construction is part of a $13-million school overhaul, including $3-million in new equipment. When the renovation and expansion began, the school had 3,000 students. This includes $6.6 million in federal funds from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario’s Prosperity Initiative. By completion, the building should be able to accommodate 5,000.

With the extraordinary amount of construction going on in and around the city, the school is in particular demand and has been for sometime. The current expansion is meant to take a bite out of what Sherman describes as fairly substantial student waiting lists.

The centre was designed by KMA Architects and is being built in conjunction with MHPM property management.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Nancy Sherman

If the name hadn’t already been taken, Toronto might have been known as the Grey Lady. Even the recent flourish of condo development has added little to the city's palette.
 
This is where Street Art comes in.
 
For the past two years, this tiny sub-section of the city's transportation division has been underwriting murals all around town. Its latest, a two-sided piece by Ian Leventhal in the Mt Pleasant underpass at Bloor, is due to be finished next week. Another of his works is visible to motor commuters just off Bathurst Street at the 401.
 
"People are finally starting to notice the art around the city," says the program's manager, Lilie Zendel. The 22-storey mural of a Phoenix on 200 Wellesley, the apartment building that suffered the hoarding-related fire last year, is probably helping out on that front. (There’s talk that one may end up being the world’s highest, though it has some competition from the 70m high piece by German artist Hendrik Beikirch in Busan, South Korea.)
 
"We're trying to encourage walking," Zendel says, "and one of the ways you do that is to improve public space." She says they took some inspiration from Philadelphia’s 30-year-old mural program that started out as a graffiti prevention initiative and grew into itself over the years.
 
In addition to subsidizing and orchestrating these murals–it pays no more than 70 per cent of the cost--Street Art has put up an artist directory to help business owners commission their own pieces if they like.
 
The latest program, to be announced shortly, is called Outside the Box, for which they’ve hired two artists to create wraps for traffic light boxes, from which the city spends an inordinate amount of money each year removing tags and other graffiti.
 
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Lilie Zendel

The Yorkville is the latest condo to pop its head above ground in its namesake neighbourhood, reaching its third floor this week.

"It's a 31-storey building so we’re going to continue building through the winter," says Lifetime Developments VP Michael Pearl. "We’ll start closing the building in the next month or so."

Designed by RWA Wallman, the building is distinguished from all the other glass towers on pedestals by a couple of boxy bulges in the building's top third.

Demolition of the old Moriyama Teshima architecture office was completed at the beginning of 2012, and though that small garden enclave is itself a rehabilitated gas station, the digging was deep enough, according to Pearl four or five levels’ worth, that no soil reclamation was needed. "It was like beach sand down at the bottom," he says.

The interiors of the 233-unit building were designed by Tomas Pearce Interior Design.

Pearl figures the first of the sold-out suites will be ready for their owners or tenants by the middle or end of 2015.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source; Michael Pearl

South Rosedale is a little more of its own neighbourhood now thanks to a gift from longtime resident Ray Cowling.

Though many outside of the Rosedale area think of it as all of a piece, residents of South Rosedale, the area than runs from Yonge to the Bayview extension, north Sherbourne to Roxborough Drive, have long thought of themselves as distinct from the rest of Rosedale and Moore park to the north. And now, on Crescent Road just east of the bridge that runs over the subway tracks at Rosedale station, there are gateposts to mark the entry to the neighbourhood.

"It's been a wish of his to leave a legacy for the local neighbourhood that he cherishes so much," says Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, "and I know there have been plans for some sort of iconic gateway marker for some time."

The pre-cast column markers were designed by fellow South Rosedale resident Joe Brennan, and was executed by the South Rosedale Residents' Association.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristyn Wong-Tam

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

The Church of Scientology looks like it’s going to increase its Toronto presence.

The longtime occupants of the storefront at 696 Yonge have just moved to temporary digs in an old brick building at 77 Peter Street (former home of Time and Studio 77 night clubs) in order to renovate the Bauhaus-inspired modernist Yonge building at the corner of St. Mary.

According to Melissa Wong, who handled development in Councillor Kristyn Wong Tam’s office, there has been no rezoning application, though sketches floating around the Internet show a radically different facade for the building, including red detail and a large cross on the Yonge side of the eight-storey building.

Update (Jan. 17, 2012):

According to the city's planning department, an application for a building permit for the site was received on Jan. 15, but until approved, which the city estimates will take about two weeks, its contents remain private.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Melissa Wong

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

A new kind of condo is going up on St. Thomas Street.

Though not unprecedented, commercial condos are still a rarity in Toronto—entire buildings devoted to them even more so.

But when St. Thomas Developments, the company behind the residential condo tower at 1 St. Thomas, was trying to decide what to do with its extra bit of land on Sultan Street, compiled between 2002 and 2008, the format made the most sense.

"We looked at all sorts of various schemes," says president Patrick Quigley, "including high-end retirement home, boutique hotel. The site is not that deep, so to do any sort of residential, in the market today, whether it's high-end or entry-level, you need balconies, and we don't have the depth for balconies."

So what’s going up is a nine-storey glass structure, built on top of seven heritage facades from the former single-family homes on Sultan Street. The strip more recently housed businesses like Theatrebooks (which was the last business out of the area, moving mid-July to Spadina and Adelaide).

Though the absence of kitchens and residential bathroom finishes means the construction itself will only take about 18 months, the bracing and shoring up of the heritage facades is adding about six months to the process, which Quigley hopes will begin in March or April. It is expected to be completed by the spring of 2015.

The move's a new one for St. Thomas, but one Quigley thinks is the natural next step in the wake of the city's intense decade of residential development in the core.

"I've been around for a while," Quigley says, "and I can remember the exodus of commercial offices moving out to the suburbs in the '80s and '90s. They weren't able to get staff, who were living out in the suburbs. And now with intensification of residential in the downtown core you're starting to see more and more commercial offices from the 905 and suburbs back downtown."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Patrick Quigley

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

The quickly gentrifying Dupont strip may be in for a big box store.

The developer that bought the Leal industrial equipment rental outfit (previously an A&P) originally applied to turn the large one-storey building into a multi-retail establishment, sort of an urban strip mall.

But now, says councillor Adam Vaughan, they've found a single retail tenant, and are changing their application.

"You might see something like Target go in there," Vaughan says. The city has not been told who the prospective tenant is. "It's a concern, because quite clearly, when Loblaws went in [at Christie and Dupont], it has a major impact on the traffic in the neighbourhood."

Vaughan says there is "no planning work" being done at the city due to cutbacks, so he has commissioned a grad class of Ryerson planning students to do the legwork on the area, and submit their material to the city. The north side of Dupont is considered "employment lands," putting strict limitations on the sort of development that can happen there. But the south side is different, and may be more liable to various forms of building.

"We're trying to get a visioning study of the area as it runs from Avenue right across to the top of Ward 19," Vaughan says. "We'd like to do a unified streetscape." But he says "one-off" developments like 555 Dupont, or the Wynn application for a high-rise apartment complex on the north side at Kendal, currently before the Ontario Municipal Board, "are not giving us a chance to do that."

A public meeting is being held on the subject of the revised application on Tuesday, October 9 from 6pm to 7pm at St. Alban's Boy sand Girls Club at 843 Palmerston Ave., in the second floor library.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

We have a builder for the Pan Am Games.

Infrastructure Ontario announced Monday that Bondfield Construction has been awarded the contract to build and finance the three major venues for the 2015 Pan Am Parapan American Games.

The contract, valued at $80.5 million, covers the Markham Pan Am Centre, the two-field Pan American Field Hockey Centre on U of T's downtown campus, as well as renovations to the Etobicoke Olympium.

The original request for qualifications went out in October, 2011, with the request for proposals being issued this past March.

According to Jennifer Asals, a spokeswoman for Infrastructure Ontario, which managed the bidding process along with TO2015, the cities of Toronto and Markham and the University of Toronto, "the next step is that construction will begin on the Markham Pan Am Centre in the coming weeks, and the Pan Am field hockey and Etobicoke Olympium will start in 2013."

Bondfield has also recently begun work on the new Women's College Hospital.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jennifer Asals

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

The old Sutton Place will get nine new storeys and about 20,000 square feet of retail before it turns into The Britt at the end of 2015.

Barry Fenton, president and CEO of developer Lanterra, whose purchase of the venerable hotel went through about six weeks ago, will officially unveil the plans tomorrow, including the addition by Page and Steele architects, and the new interior design—based on inspirations Fenton collected several months ago on a trip through some of London’s highest-end hotels—which will be executed by Munge Leung, who recently handled the design of Vancouver's Rosewood Georgia Hotel. Fenton says his intention with The Britt is to cultivate "old elegance in a new building."

In addition to the approximately 700 condo units Lanterra hopes to renovate and built (pending an application currently before the city), they'll be retaining 20 rental units, which will be in the eight-storey podium to the south of the main tower.

Fenton says many of the recognizable items from the old Sutton Place are being donated to Mount Sinai Hospitals neonatal unit to auction off, and many of its beds are being given to the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Barry Fenton, President & CEO, Lanterra

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

The ice has come back to Maple Leaf Gardens.

This week, the ice has begun to gel once again in the storied space at Carlton and Church, part of a $72.5-million project to make the space into the sports facility Ryerson never had.

The new rink is on the third floor, above the Loblaws on the ground floor and the LCBO on the second. When it’s complete, it’ll seat 2,600 for hockey, and more for other ice sports with seating possible on the floor. The third floor is also home to the new volleyball courts, the floors of which have just been laid. They'll take four to five weeks to settle, roughly the same time it’ll take for the ice to set next door.

Michael Forbes of Ryerson’s public affairs department says work started in December 2009. There’ll be an opening ceremony in August, with the official grand opening on September 6, in time for the new academic session.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michael Forbes