Oakville : Development News

Burlington is not the first city—or perhaps even the 100^th—that comes to mind when you think of contemporary design or urban density. That’s been changing slowly. Long seen as a bedroom community of housing loops sprawling between Oakville and Hamilton, Burlington is considered to be built out as far as it should go, especially considering how closely the city rubs against Ontario’s protected Greenbelt. But, in the last few years, the city has been working to urbanize its downtown core and increase residential density to make Burlington more walkable and amenable to transit.
 
This means that the timing’s been right for Burlington-based Adi Development Group to make a splash. When the group  launched in 2007, it brought a far more urban sensibility than the city was used to. But in 2015, Burlington is quickly catching up.
 
“The market has finally departed from the old sloped-roof, siding and brick stuff and is looking for new design-driven development,” says CEO Tariq Adi, who runs the business with brother Saud, who is COO.
 
With 143 units, their new Link2 Condominiums and Lofts project at Dundas West and Sutton breaks ground with a neighbourhood party this week. Named for the bridges that connect a series of six-storey buildings, the links allow the amenities to be centralized and also hide some of the driveways from view.
 
But more interesting is the way the project, designed by Toronto’s RAW Design, reimagines a pretty banal suburban corner as something of a hub. Though it’s next door to a cookie-cutter subdivision of single-family homes, Link2 makes a virtue of not only being close to Highway 407, but walking distance to a school, shopping (it will have its own commercial space at street level) and Bronte Creek Provincial Park. The three-acre property backs onto the protected green space, which required special consideration in design and construction.
 
“We had to create a buffer because it’s an environmentally protected zone,” says Adi. “We had to be careful with our lighting not to disturb the natural habitat that’s currently in the creek—birds, insects or even plant life. We had to work with conservation to create that point of demarcation.”
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Tariq Adi

An international infrastructure company specializing in public-private partnerships has been awarded the contract to design, build, finance and maintain the expansion of the Milton District Hospital.
 
Plenary Health, which has built has several other health facilities in Canada, including the Archives of Ontario, the Humber River Hospital and Bridgepoint Hospital, expects the $512-million project to be completed in spring 2017. The expansion will add 330,000 square feet of space to the existing 125,000-square-foot hospital.
 
The developer has committed to target a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design) Silver certification rating. Nancy Kuyumcu, a communications advisor with Infrastructure Ontario, couldn’t give details on how the Plenary Health would meet LEED criteria, which is typical done through construction innovations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and use energy, water and other resources more efficiently. RTKL and B+H are working together as architects on the project.
 
The project will expand emergency and surgical services, medical/surgical inpatient units, critical care, maternal newborn and diagnostic imaging and support services, increase impatient bed capacity from 63 to and provide the hospital with its first Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, says Kuyumcu.
 
Plenary Health is a division of Plenary Group, which has roots in Australia.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Nancy Kuyumcu

Diamond Schmitt's latest contribution to the GTA's oeuvre of arts architecture opened last week in Burlington.

The Burlington Performing Arts Centre has a 720-seat main theatre and a 260-seat studio theatre, both connected to a "city room" meant for community use when the theatres are dark.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended the opening and spoke of local jobs and economic growth.

The design makes great use of wood, much like Diamond Schmitt’s recently recognized Harbour Light facility for the Salvation Army on Jarvis. The floors are terrazzo, and the main theatre features a cantilevered balcony that juts out over the orchestra seating.

The firm's other arts buildings include the Betty Oliphant Theatre, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts and the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul French

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].

Apparently, Oakville's not just for retirees anymore.

That's the assumption behind Stephen Teeple's design for a condo the marketers have called Op Art, which goes on sale this week.

"The client definitely was looking for something more youthful," Teeple says of Neilas, the Toronto developer behind Cube and Stage East. "Oakville is not as straightforward and flat as one might think. There's a lot of use there, vibrancy, an active downtown. They wanted something that would offer something different."

The two 10-storey towers set on a podium are made of precast concrete, which allowed Teeple to play with the shapes, which he expressed in black and white. Though not really producing the trompe l'oeil its name would suggest, the building does have a distinctive, and distinctively modern, design for staid old Oakville.

The 188 units, with interiors done by Cecconi Simone, start at around $250,000, further ingratiating the building with its youthful target demographic.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Stephen Teeple

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].

Ground is officially being broken today, but the drilling has been going on for a couple of weeks already on the GTA's first major geothermally acclimated residential development.

Once finished, Ironstone in Burlington will benefit from 64 holes drilled 500 feet deep where air can be both cooled and heated and re-circulated up through the units.

Graham Chalmers, the vice president of construction at Davies Smith Developments, says he expects the holes, which are the first things being done on the site, will be finished by the end of the month.

"The next thing I do is bring in a shoring company that shores up the walls of the excavation, they used to call them pile drivers," Chalmers says, "and we expect to begin excavating by the 25th of August."

If things go smoothly -- and Chalmers says the drilling has gone better than expected in the relatively easy Burlington bedrock and everything has so far come in on budget -- the 210-unit, 16-storey condo will be ready for its new residents by November of next year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Graham Chalmers

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].

Appleby Mall in Burlington is getting its first new LCBO store in 33 years.

The new store is being built as a standalone on the mall grounds on New Street near Appleby Line.

"We're basically tripling the size of the shopping area," says LCBO spokesman Chris Layton of the new 14,000 square foot store with 10,000 square feet of selling space.

In addition to having about 2,300 products on the shelves, there will be a walk-in beer cooler and seven check-out lines to take care of the clientele from an increasingly crowded mall store.

Layton expects the store to be ready to open by early summer.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Layton

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].

Digging is about to begin for the geothermal system that will serve a new Burlington condominium.

Named Ironstone, the 16-storey, 210-unit condo is being developed by Davies Smith. The geothermal heating, cooling and ventilation system is expected to reduce energy costs by between 60 and 70 per cent, and eliminate the need for natural gas completely.

According to Riva Finkelstein, who handles public relations for the projects architect, Raw Design, Ironstone "will be one of the first residential condo buildings to use geothermal in country."

Geothermal heating and cooling is based on the fact that the temperature remains fairly constant several metres below the earth's surface, and when water is circulated through specially designed pipes under a building, it can draw heat from the surrounding soil and rock during the winter, and shed heat during the summer. According to Select Energy Solutions, Inc., which is providing environmental consulting services to the development, the temperature 15 metres underground in Southern Ontario remains at a constant temperature of about 11 degrees.
The landscaping is being done by the Seferian Design Group and the interiors have been designed by Fullscale and Partners.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Riva Finkelstein

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 two-tower condo complex slotted for northwest Kerr Village in Oakville, approved for 10 and 14 storeys, is going to the Ontario Municipal Board to increase its height allowance.

The site, at the corner of Kerr and Speers, was once part of an 11-acre orchard and is also home to two historically designated houses, both vacant. Singled out for being the earliest examples of their particular style of stone-based architecture in Oakville, they have already been relocated once, when the developer built its sales office. "They're going to be shifted two more times before they reach their final resting place," says Stephanie Lane, spokeswoman for developer Empire Communities.

Rain was designed by Graziani and Corazza Architects, and is scheduled to launch in September.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Stephanie Lane

One of the GTA's largest LCBOs is opening in Oakville on Friday at 9:30am.

Under construction for sometime, with teaser signs up, the store will open in the Olde Oakville Marketplace on Cornwall Road, and at 16,200 square feet (11,200 square feet of retail space), with 2,100 products and 1,500 Vintages options, it will be only marginally smaller than Toronto's Summerhill, Queens Quay and Bayview Village flagships.

Costing approximately $2 million, it will be Oakville's sixth LCBO.

"We're seeing great growth in that community," says LCBO spokesman Chris Layton. "It will be one of the largest Vintages sections in the LCBO network, and it'll be a destination not only in Oakville, but Mississauga and beyond."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Layton


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

Once the site of Canada's most expensive house, on the market in 2006 for $45 million, the 11 acres known as Edgemere on Oakville's Gold Coast will soon be home to 30 families.

The nation's formerly most expensive home will be demolished.

Once they got the municipal go-ahead in November, Niche Development began work on a plan with Peter Clewes of architectsAlliance and builder Joe Brennan to build 10 buildings, each with three condominiums, that are on the market now for between $2,595,000 and a little more than $6 million.

Unlike other similar large-property developments, Hewitt and Clewes decided not to subdivide the property, first put together into an estate by James Ryrie, a Toronto jeweller whose business merged with Birks in the first decade of the last century.

"We were trying to preserve the memory of the estate," says Clewes. "There's a green house, a  gardener's house, a dry shed, for instance, and also the landscape, there's a spectacular landscape, a 100-year-old landscape with hundreds of trees."

But it's the buildings themselves, novel hybrids of condos, townhouses and single-family homes, that are the main attraction.

"The architecture is not like anything we've ever done," says Clewes, whose other projects include York University's Pond Road residences, the first green student housing in the country. "It's a contemporary re-interpretation of the arts and crafts, shingle-style that's in evidence in a lot of turn-of-the-century buildings in Oakville, with steeply pitched roofs, overhangs, stone. But it also has a contemporary feeling with an extraordinary number of windows."

 

Writer: Bert Archer

Source: Peter Clewes