Long Branch - New Toronto - Mimico : Development News

The first watershed for the reconstruction of the mega-intersection known as Six Points has been reached, with the grading of Dundas Street West.

Peter Milczyn, former councillor for the area, now the riding’s representative at Queen’s Park, and well known city-planning and design geek, tweeted out a picture on Friday of the site, which looks like a bit of a wasteland at the moment, but will soon be a key element in the large-scale reconfiguration of the area.

The project, officially known as the Six Points Interchange, has been years in the planning, and is meant to support the development of the central Etobicoke area around the intersections of Dundas, Kipling and Bloor as a residential, commercial and transportation hub.

Much of the residential development is already underway, with Kipling station already engulfed by towers trading on the site’s current subway and highway access, and future Metrolinx hub status.

In addition to re-organizing the roads, the project includes upgrading and re-arranging major infrastructural elements such as watermains, sanitary and storm sewers, as well as telecom and hydro. The project also includes plans to incorporate what’s known as “district energy” into the area, generating and sharing heat from central hubs, obviating the need for individual heating plants for each building.

"This work is the implementation of the vision for the Etobicoke City Centre to create a pedestrian friendly urban community," Milczyn says. "The City Centre Streetscape Plan will be implemented with wide sidewalks, street trees, bike lanes, public parks. The City of Toronto will then be able to release a portion of its 20 acre land holdings for redevelopment. The first project will be a YMCA Community Recreation Centre, followed by retail, office, and mixed use development."

Workers will be on the site from 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday until it’s completed in roughly four years.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Milczyn

A major new transit-friendly development is almost ready to go ahead near the Kipling subway station and the future Metrolinx Kipling mobility hub.

The Kip District, being developed by Concert Properties, is a re-imaginging of a large site originally owned by Canadian Tire, who got the initial approvals for 1.1 million square feet of density back in 2005, equivalent to a 4.23 density.

And Concert thinks that will still work fine.

"We want to move the density around," says Andrew Gray, vice president of Vancouver-based Concert Properties' eastern region and former vice president of development with Waterfront Toronto, "but we don't want to increase the density."

The original Canadian Tire submission envisioned much of the ground covered in relatively squat buildings. Concert is planning to squeeze them upwards into higher buildings that allow for more green space, including a central square.

They also intend to build a two-level parking garage underneath the entire site, and include retail at the ground level of the buildings to encourage local activity.

"We really wanted to emphasize a quality public realm," Gray says. "You can leave your car, walk around the site at grade, and in the winter walk through the parking garage, because it'll be heated. It's a five-minute walk to Kipling station."

The first phase of what Gray figures will be a 10-year project will be going before the city's Committee of Adjustment on Nov. 13 for approval of, among other things, the initial 90-metre tower designed by IBI Page and Steele.

Given its proximity to the planned mobility hub, which would include a new regional bus terminal, Gray says that, over the decade it will take to build, the development's planned parking facilities may be reduced.

The old Canadian Tire store is being demolished now, in expectation of some form of approval in the offing.

The Kip District, if it goes ahead, will join developments by Tridel and others centred on Kipling station, all looking to take advantage of the area's access to the subway system and western-bound roads, as well as its relative proximity to Pearson airport.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Andrew Gray

In a further sign that Long Branch may finally be coming into its residential own, Minto has submitted an application to turn a former industrial site into a low-priced condo.

Minto Long Branch is proposed for the 11.81-acre site of the former Wilson Motor Bodies, and which was in industrial use until 2009. The 448-unit project, in one-, two- and three-bedroom townhouses, will start at 515 square feet and sell for about $340 per square foot, putting the low end in the low $200,000s.

The design is by Guthrie Muscovitch Architects.

"The planning report recommending rezoning approval will be heard at the community council in November, 2013 and then recommended for approval at the December city council," says Minto’s development manager Lee Koutsaris. "The site plan application will be submitted to the city before the end of the year."

If all goes well, construction will start next spring, with the first occupancies set for July, 2015.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Lee Koutsaris

The LCBO is going through its biggest ever expansion, with 65 new or expanded stores now in the works across the province, including about a new one a month in the GTA.

The latest additions here have been in Forest Hill and Etobicoke.

In Forest Hill, an area the LCBO expects to grow by about six per cent in the next decade, the new shop opened June 24 at 420 Spadina Road. It has 2,900 square feet of display space, with about 1,100 products in the regular selection--including 29 craft beers--and about 200 in the Vintages section.

The Etobicoke shop opened last week on July 4 at 211 Lloyd Manor Road with 4,860 square feet of selling space, 1,450 regular products and 120 Vintages selections, as well as a beer cold room.

"Across Ontario so far, since 2012, a total of $56 million has been invested," says LCBO spokeswoman Sally Ritchie, who says that 139,000 square feet of selling space has been added so far.

She also says there are two new ways of getting our booze to us. The LCBO is introducing Express shops in grocery stores (yay!), and Ontario wine boutiques inside certain existing LCBOs. The latter, Ritchie says, is in response to wine producers, who told the LCBO they'd like to have more opportunity to put their wines in front of customers.

The LCBO expects the current expansion to be done by the end of 2014.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sally Ritchie

 Superior Avenue was meant to be a big deal.

Look at the street, tucked away in Mimico, a Valu-Mart on one corner, a hardware store on another. But notice how wide it is: 100 feet, about double the streets that cross Lakeshore on either side of it.

"It was meant to be a major thoroughfare," says Graham Chalmers, who's taken a recent interest in the area and its history, "but it never happened."

Chalmers is co-owner and partner in Davies Smith Developments, which is building an 11-storey condo at 11 Superior, designed by RAW architects.

His interest is serendipitous, stemming from the city's encouragement of his firm on how to spend the Section 37 money from other nearby condos they'd been approved for. The city suggested overhauling Amos Waites Park (named for Mimico's longest serving mayor) behind and beside Birds and Beans Café.

"We were asked to do that as a bit of a revitalization," he says, "so the way it went, we bought a couple of derelict buildings that were adjacent to the park, that blocked the park from Lakeshore Boulevard, demolished them for the city, transferred it back to the city and built Mimico Square. When we began doing that work, I wasn't overly thrilled with the neighourhood, but when I went back to look at the park, I realized the lakeshore is gorgeous, it's right there, it's so close. I felt that once I read about the history of Mimico and specifically Superior Avenue, it was intended to be somewhat of a major thoroughfare and a connection to the lake."

A city study had previously targeted the intersection as a spot that could use more density—it's pretty open and bleak at the moment, with two wide streets meeting and nothing higher than three storeys anywhere in sight—so after talking to Councillor Mark Grimes and establishing there was the political will to develop, they bought the property. They demolished two buildings which had been built in the 1920s and had once been retail, but were vacant for about a decade. The company broke ground last week.

The building was originally going to be 14 storeys, but neighbourhood consultation reduced it to 11, allowing 120 units— meaning a couple hundred more people to encourage this strip of Lakeshore—and a rooftop party area with a 180-degree view of the lake. There will also be retail at street level when the building's complete by about January 2014.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Graham Chalmers

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It started with a fundraising lake cruise in 2006, and it finished just last week, with the official opening of the therapeutic terrace for the residents of the Lakeshore Lodge.

With the help of landscape architect Viive Kittask of Vertechs Design, the municipally owned long-term care home now has a lake view, a gazebo and a raised garden, part pre-planted, and part left fallow for those of the home's 150 residents to plan themselves.

The lodge also invested in a floor specially designed for its residents.

"For people who may be shuffling, it's a perfectly level floor," says Rob Price, the lodge's administrator, speaking of the Buzon system. "It's a technology that was borrowed from Belgium. It's like little piano stools underneath each corner of the floor slabs. They're raised and lowered as needed to make the floor level."

The budget for the project, Price says, was in the neighbourhood of $30,000.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Rob Price

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Nominations opened this week for the 2012 Green Toronto Awards, though the most interesting category from the 2011 edition has been dropped.

Last year, the awards expanded to include a green homes category, aimed at individuals who had done something remarkable to or with their own homes.

"It wasn't our strongest category," says Jessica Chow, co-ordinator for the city-sponsored awards. "We don’t know why. We noticed a lot of them were, 'Oh, I recycle in my home.' It wasn't really what we were after."

So this year, it's been folded into the more general green design category, where individual homes will now compete with eco clothing, green roofs and other design innovations.

Nominations can be submitted here until midnight on Feb. 6. Winners will be announced in March.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jessica Chow

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The Ontario government will help the city's public French school board buy a disused school in Etobicoke.

The announcement came as part of a three-year, $45-million commitment to French-language education in the province. The Etobicoke funding totals $5.2 million.

The former Parkview Public School will accommodate 200 students when it opens after renovations in 2013.

Local MPP Laurel Broten didn't return a call for comment, but said on her website that "I am proud to be part of a government that values French language education."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Laurel Broten

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A company has leased the rooftops of five Ontario Purolator buildings to set up a solar power-generating business.

"We will own and operate, build and finance these projects, and monitor them over the course of the contract," says Sarah Simmons, government affairs manager for Sun Edison Canada.

Two of the five buildings are in Etobicoke.

According to Simmons, her company is currently working through the regulatory process for the deal, which was signed this month, and she expects work to be completed on the buildings within 12 months.

When all five buildings are up and running, Sun Edison, a division of MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., which manufactures the solar panels in Newmarket, expects to generate 1.14 megwatts of energy.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sarah Simmons

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Mark Grimes was elected to council in 2003, and one of the first things across his desk was a Boy Scouts petition, with 225 signatures, asking for a skate park.

"It was one of the first things I undertook," Grimes says the day before the hoarding was finally going to come down, the same day about 60 kids decided they'd waited long enough and hopped over that hoarding to skate the park a day early.

The 14,000 square foot facility, built in the 8th Street park, cost $500,000, but got a concrete bowl for free, thanks to Toronto Redi-Mix.

"It's a great thing to bring to the youth here," says Grimes, the father of five. "Not every kid plays hockey and lacrosse. These kids are misunderstood. These kids are just looking of place to ply their trade, they skate downtown, they get chewed, they skate at Humber [College], they get chewed there."

The park was designed by EDA Collaborative, in consultation with Newline Skateparks, as well as local skaters.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mark Grimes

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The Lakeshore Village Business Improvement Area's building a community square.

"It's very small, not like Yonge and Dundas, " says John Scheffer, the west-end BIA's chairman, chuckling, "and we don't have $20 million either."

Far from it. The 5 metre-by-15 metre square at Lake Shore and 5th Avenue is expected to cost, tops, about $40,000.

"We pay half the cost, the city pays the other half," Scheffer says, "once they approve the project."

The application went in late last week, and the plan includes narrowing the road somewhat, and installing solar panels to light a sign as well as a few chess tables. The BIA also hopes to install a small fountain.

Scheffer says they hope to get working on it soon, and possibly complete it by the end of the year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: John Scheffer

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The first major step in the plan to re-develop Mimico is being taken this week with the launch of a 9-storey condo called Eleven Superior.

Designed by Raw Design for Davies Smith Developments, the project, pending approvals, would be the first new building in the Mimico 2020 plan to develop the small Lakeshore community. (Amos Waites Park is also part of the plan.)

"This is sort of par for the course for Davies Smith," says project architect Roland Rom Colthoff. "They're pioneer developers, one of the first in Mississauga near Square One, they were the first people in the Distillery District with a couple of affordable condominiums, and now this will be the first significant building here for some while."

The brick-exterior building will go up on the corner of Lake Shore Boulevard and Superior on the site of a disused three-storey commercial-residential building.

Colthoff expects that construction will begin next fall or early spring.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Roland Rom Colthoff

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One tower is nearing completion and another is getting its parking-level concrete poured at the latest large condo project in Etobicoke.

Beyond the Sea, which is rising at Parklawn and Lakeshore, was launched three years ago this month and the three-tower complex (the second tower reached its 10th floor last week) is now set for a fall, 2012 completion.

The project, whose towers will be 26, 36 and 44 storeys respectively, will house 830 units and retail on the ground level. And though the building will have 40,000 square of amenity space, in addition to offering new office space to the area, Empire Communities' spokeswoman Stephanie Lane says that the chief attraction "is the neighbourhood itself. It's almost directly on the waterfront, and they've got a park and the Martin Goodman Trail right across the street."

Retail tenants have not yet been signed, and the residential portion of the project is 93 per cent sold.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Stephanie Lane

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