Downtown Eastside - Old Town - Corktown : Development News

Toronto's ravines take up 10 times the amount of acreage of Manhattan's entire park system. And given that Manhattan and Toronto have roughly the same daytime population - about 3 million — we have a lot of grass to frolic in.

But the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority doesn't think we're taking full advantage of this aspect of the urban ecosystem.

"We have all these wonderful ravines running through our city and a lot of people don't know they're there," says Steven Heuchert, the TRCA's senior manager of planning and development.

Though he thinks the city's done "a pretty good job" of keeping the system reasonably natural, Heuchert thinks the next step is incorporation the ravines into the city, and the city into the ravines.

"For example, a lot of entrances to these ravines are nothing more than a little pathway put there to accommodate some sort of infrastructure," he says. "There may be a pipe there and maintenance people need to get in to work on the pipe, but we don't make these things generally accessible to the public."

Heuchert gave a talk on Oct. 9, hosted by the TRCA, on his thoughts about where the ravines have come from, and where they ought to be going to. It was part of a series of talks in the Ravine Portal exhibition that will be continued tomorrow night by the landscape architects of the Lower Don Master Plan, which Heuchert says puts into practice on a relatively small scale the ideas he thinks should be extended to the entire ravine system.

"The Lower Don Master Plan and the work that Evergreen is doing to try to connect their site into the city a little better are good examples of what I was speaking to in my presentation," Heuchert says, "looking at design solutions to make people recognize that the ravines are there, getting them in in a co-ordinated fashion."

Tomorrow's talk, titled "Possible Futures," will include Seana Irvine, Chief Operating Officer of Evergreen, with Bryce Miranda and Brent Raymond, landscape architects and partners at DTAH.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Steven Heuchert

The Distillery district isn't leaving its industrial heritage entirely behind it.

The big building currently going up on Parliament just north of Mill – five storeys, 125,000 square feet, no windows – will be a data centre.

"The building houses mainly computer racks for storing data," says architect Nicola Casciato with WZMH.

In a quickly developing part of town that includes not only the Distillery District, but the new Canary District, Bayside and the rest of the burgeoning East Port Lands, a windowless building filled with machinery could really weigh the place down.

"The architectural challenge was to design a building located within a rich architectural neighbourhood that has no windows," Casciato says. "Architects typically use windows to provide urban animation, in this case, the animation was provided through a richly detailed terra cotta façade system that recalls early computer punch card technology and responds to the local brick environment."

Urbacon, the Toronto- and Montreal-based construction and development company in charge of the project, did not want to discuss the building.

The data centre is being built in two sections, and what's visible now are three of the first five floors of the first section.

Construction began in March, 2013 and is scheduled for completion by the end of the year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Nicola Casciato

Toronto has two more award-winning buildings.

Daniels Spectrum, the Regent Park community centre designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects and run by Artscape, and the Rotman School of Management at U of T (KPMB) have won Architectural Record's Good Design Is Good Business Award, which according to the journal is given out to "demonstrate how embracing design can benefit an organization’s bottom line."

It was one of 10 given out internationally this year, and Toronto is the only city represented twice.

An award for design and business is perhaps not so surprising for a business school. But a community centre is a little less intuitive a choice.

But Daniels Spectrum, developed by the Daniels Corporation, is in the business of community outreach, and according to Seema Jethalal, who heads the place up for Artscape, it makes good sense--business and otherwise.

"Daniels Spectrum has a modular design that lends itself well to users with different needs," she says. "The 6,000 square foot Ada Slaight Hall, for instance, has been set up in dozens of configurations thanks to its partition walls and a retractable seating system."

In any given weekm Jethalal continues, the space can be divided to suit simultaneous events with different needs--from dance performances, to cinema-style film screenings, to art shows, banquet-style gala fundraisers, and 10-piece band performances.

But what sets it apart is the involvement Daniels Spectrum's tenants had in the initial design. 

"Each of the tenant organizations at Daniels Spectrum worked with Diamond Schmitt Architects to design their studios with their respective audiences in mind. Native Earth Performing Arts has a unique ventilation system to allow smudging in Aki Studio (a 120-seat black box theatre), ArtHeart Community Art Centre has a built in kitchen in their art studio so they can provide free meals for drop-in participants, and COBA Collective of Black Artists' drumming and dance studios have been built with a unique sound design to limit sound bleed."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Seema Jethalal

We may have to concede the whole stripper thing to Montreal.

After yesterday morning's announcement that Jillys will be closing, and that Streetcar Developments will be doing something new and exciting with the old Broadview Hotel, there's really no point in going on.

The hotel was originally built as an office building in 1893 by Archibald Dingman, who struck oil in Turner Valley, just south of Calgary, kicking off Alberta's first oil boom on May 14, 1914. (The second, and current, boom started in 1948 at Leduc.) Dingman later owned a piece of the Scarboro Electric Railway.

Les Mallins, the man who bought the building, is president of Streetcar Developments, the first developer to fully invest in the city's mid-rise condo market. He's not been a run-of-the-mill developer thus far – he started out on his own, for one, renovating a house into apartments and leveraging up from there – and so when he says he wants to return the building to its previous splendour, he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

"Significant investments will be required to repair the structural issues," Mallins says, "and that's just the damages we can see. We're excited to be owners of this landmark real estate and are committed to restoring the building to a place that everyone in the area is proud of."

Oddly, he's also saying the old Broadview will not be turned into condos.

The building's long been seen as an east-end equivalent to the Drake and the Gladstone, so though Mallins isn't saying, that's one possibility. Streetcar's been doing pretty well recently, too, so he could also be turning it back into offices, headquarters from his already Riverside-based company.

But don't expect anything quick. The National Post is reporting that the sale was hastened by the savvy tenants at Jillys, who just took down a couple of load-bearing walls, putting the building's structural integrity in harm's immediate way.

They'll be evicted, according to a statement from Streetcar, along with the residents. The Gladstone and Drake also had residents when they closed, with the Gladstone acquitting itself especially well in the way they handled their relocation.

According to Mallins, "We've been working closely with the operators throughout the process and will work with the people staying there to support in the transition to ensure it's done with respect and care."

Streetcar will close on the property in 30 days, and has given Jillys 60 days to vacate. No word on whether they're looking for new digs. I hear Montreal real estate's still pretty cheap.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Les Mallins

The Allan Gardens neighbourhood is known for many things, including drugs and an annual leatherman festival, but three years ago, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam decided to add a little something for another neighbourhood demographic.

"The Allan Gardens playground was not scheduled for capital improvements until 2018, and I believed that was too late," she says.

"Considering the dogs in the park had two elaborate off-leash play areas and children next to nothing, only a meagre swing set and a broken see-saw in a dull sand pit, it didn't seem fair to delay the playground investment any longer. Given the number of children and young families moving into the area, I accelerated the Allan Gardens playground renewal process by seven years. Given what I know now about the technical requirements of space and relocation, if we stayed with the original schedule, I imagine that children in the neighbourhood would not have a new playground until 2021."

The contract went to tender an unusual three times, after the budget for the update was tripled to allow for better fences, among other things. The budget stands at $1,160,400.

Wong-Tam says she has been advocating for family-sized development in the area since taking office, and this is a reaction to and preparation for that.

"This means that any development proposed in Ward 27 will have 10 per cent of their unit mix be family-sized, therefore, either three-bedroom units or two-bedrooms and larger at a minimum of 900 square feet," she says. "Given the proposed unit sizes by developers today, 900 square feet by downtown standards is large."

The playground, which will be about 2.5 times the size of the original, should be completed by September.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristyn Wong-Tam

Ryerson's oddly named but Snohetta-designed Student Learning Centre is fast taking shape, with work just completed on the seventh of nine floors. Though calling a campus building a student learning centre is like calling a wing of a hospital the patient care centre, the SLC is obviously going to be among Yonge Street's most aesthetically distinctive façades.

Snohetta, the Norwegian firm in charge of re-imagining Times Square and rebuilding the Alexandria Library, has created a building with a sneering, upturned lip for a corner entrance, and a snowy glass skin that sets it apart from its glass-centred condo neighbours.

When finished in January, the building at 341 Yonge – on the site of the old Sam the Record Man -- will be 155,000 square feet.

"Student facing services such as academic supports - access, math, writing, test centres and English Language and Learning Success Services - will be moving into the SLC from their current locations around the university," says Ryerson public affairs rep Michael Forbes. "The DMZ and library administration will also have a presence in the new building."

When asked about the building's generic name, Forbes said, “Currently, Ryerson students do not have a dedicated space on campus. We've designed this building to create a space specifically for students to study, collaborate and create."

Writer: Bert Archer

Construction has begun on the building that will house the new Globe and Mail offices, among others, on King Street East.

"We're now underway," says David Gerofsky, president of First Gulf, the commercial real estate arm of Great Gulf Homes, of which he's CEO. "Foundation, excavation and shoring will begin cirtually immediately, and it will be continuous construction for the next three years for completion in the spring of 2016."

The new 500,000 square foot glass tower, a curtain-wall construction, was designed by Diamond and Schmitt. There will be four levels of underground parking and a raised floor system that allows for the heating and ventilation system to be installed underfloor. A boon to Globe journos and possibly to smokers, there will also be 20,000 square feet of terraces.

The site contained the foundation of one of Toronto’s oldest houses, built in 1794, the year after the city was founded. Artefacts were found on the construction site, which Gerofsky says will become part of a display, possibly in the building's lobby.

The construction budget for the building is about $250 million.

Gerofsky says the buildings other major tenant has been signed and will be announced as early as this week.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: David Gerofsky

Our skyline is being defined for a generation, probably several, and it looks like Toronto’s decided it’s got a heart of glass.

But before the cult of mirrored and transparent rectilinearity bedazzled our pragmatic developers and their pet architects, Toronto allowed itself to show a little detail, some of which is on display at the Market Gallery’s show of the city’s Art Deco and Style Moderne history.

"Art Deco was a great escape route for designers coming of age during and after the First World War,"  says Alec Keefer, president of the Toronto Architectural Conservancy, which is putting on the show. "Those, like Alfred Chapman, J. J. Woolnough and Martin Baldwin, were looking for an approach that was daring and muscular. Art Deco and its successor Style Moderne allowed them to rid themselves of the cult and sophisticated trappings of classical elegant restraint that epitomized the Anglo-British school, full of conceits and mannerisms that was then the norm."

The exhibition, which opened on Saturday and runs until Jan. 25 on the second floor of St. Lawrence Market, is a good opportunity to get in touch with the burst of development Toronto experienced in the 1920s and 30s, much of which has since been replaced.

It's also a chance to think more general thoughts about Toronto's sense of self and place, leading viewers to look for themselves into other eras. Keefer has one, in particular, he'd like to see more attention paid to.

"In the decade immediate preceding the First World War," he says, "under the National Economic Policy there was a true explosion in the construction of factories, commercial lofts, and  warehouses. These over engineered beauties are one our greatest cultural and economic assets. They can if successfully managed be one of the truly economic generators, employing a work force even greater than when they were first opened."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Alec Keefer

On Oct. 18, Leaside’s getting 10,000 extra square feet of LCBO.

The new location at 65 Wicksteed will be replacing the current store on Laird.

The new location will stock 2,700 wines – 900 more than at the old store -- and between 850 and 1,000 spirits and premium wines in the Vintages section.

There will also be a tasting bar.

According to LCBO spokeswoman Heather MacGregor, the area the new LCBO will be serving is expected to grow by nine per cent in the next decade.

An extra feature will be the cold room. Though many LCBOs have them, this one will put our climate to use, sucking in chilled air from outside to cool it for much of the year instead of using coolant.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Heather MacGregor

When developer Paul Oberman died in a plane crash in 2011, Market Street, and the buildings that line its west side across from St. Lawrence Market, was much on his mind.
 
As early as 2010, Oberman told Yonge Street that restaurants would be going in on street level, and that the work, which was scheduled to begin the month after he died, would be finished by 2012.
 
The LCBO at Market and Front, which was also part of the project, has finally opened, but the delays have meant that Temperance Street has stolen Market’s thunder, becoming the first of at least three such street restorations that had been planned in the city’s core to be completed.
 
Oberman’s company, Woodcliffe, was a leader in what's known in the development industry as adaptive re-use, the thorough renovation and reconception of old structures and spaces. Before Market Street, Woodcliffe was responsible for the Toronto North Stations becoming the LCBO’s Summerhill flagship store. Woodcliffe also owned the Flatiron Building, which was sold after his death to Clayton Smith’s similarly focused Commercial Realty Group, which recently completed its work on Temperance Street, anchored by the Dineen Building.
 
The third such street rehabiulitation in the works is St. Nicholas, an alley parallel to Yonge running south fron St. Joseph that MOD Development’s Gary Switzer has promised to turn into a shop-lined street as part of his Five project.
 
The restaurants on Market Street – which Woodcliffe tried to get re-named after Oberman – didn’t open in time for the summer. And after three weeks of communications neither Woodcliffe nor their PR agency, Vicbar, was able to tell Yonge Street what the source of the delays – or the unattractive metal corrals that have appeared on the street, presumably to house small sidewalk seating areas – was.
 
Let’s hope it's nothing serious.
 
Writer: Bert Archer

A year and a half of work on the Gardiner Expressway began Monday.

Two eastbound lanes were shut down between Jarvis and the Don Roadway. They’ll remain closed until December.

There will be various road and ramp closures for the duration of the project, which the city expects to have finished by December, 2014.

Work began with the installation of a traffic light, and will continue with the relocation of light poles, and the repair of various aspects of the road, including drainage.

The budget for all the work is $6.99 million.

All this work is being done while the city decides exactly what to do with the road, which many believe is a blight and one of the major factors in hobbling the process of connecting the city to the lake.

But while the lengthy environmental assessment (EA) is done to determine the Gardiner’s fate, the city couldn’t hold off on repairs any longer.

"The repairs of the deck are to keep the Gardiner safe and serviceable until the EA is complete," says Jim Schaffner, the city’s acting manager of structures. "The repairs should cover a seven-year span (2013-2020), during which time the EA should be complete."
 
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jim Schaffner

A fire ejected Home Ownership Alternatives, along with its newly appointed CEO, from their Queen Street East offices over the Victoria Day weekend.

They’ve since relocated to 2300 Yonge Street until their old offices can be rehabilitated from the water damage. It’s an extra challenge for their newly appointed CEO, Jens Lohmueller, the Hamburg native and graduate of the University of Western Ontario who just took over the organization.

It’s a relatively small one compared to his larger brief, which is to expand HOA out of Ontario and into Vancouver and even Africa.

"We've already had to make little tweaks to accommodate partners -- cities, towns and regions -- so I think there will be an ability to change as we go along," he says. 

It will be a massive change for the organization, which has a staff of, in Lohmueller’s words, "four or five."

Though their focus will remain on families, Lohmueller says that could change in the future, implying that they might take up the Artscape model and get into making office and studio space affordable in similar ways to their current down payment-loan system for homeowners across southern Ontario.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jens Lohmueller

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].

Waterfront’s contest to name its newest park was won by a recent immigrant to Toronto who has taken the city’s history to heart.

Tedd Konya, a research technician at the University of Toronto working on infant health, moved to Toronto from Pittsburgh to marry his Canadian husband. He came up with the winning name, Corktown Common, for the 7.3 hectare park formerly known as Don River Park.

"I moved to Toronto five years ago and have lived in Corktown a little over two years," he says. "Most of what I learned about Corktown's history came from the CRBA's corktown.ca website and other posts on the web from Toronto blogs. I've always had an interest in history, especially where I live, so I like to read anything that I come across.

"One of the sites had maps that showed the neighborhood over the last 100+ years and it was clear how much the neighbourhood was broken up with rail lines, then highway ramps. Since this piece of land is finally coming back to the community I thought it was appropriate that the park should be named for the neighbourhood."

Konya won a competition that consisted of 450 entrants, with 1,500 people voting online for their favourite among them. He’ll be presented with a rendering of the park and will be a guest at the opening of the park later this summer.

The name must be accepted by city council at their June 18 meeting to become official.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Tedd Konya

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].

If you’ve gone east on either King or Queen to cross the bridge into Riverside, you can’t help but to have noticed the enormous development going on between the two streets. It’s called River City, and few Toronto condos have been more aptly named.

The pilings are just now being put into the ground for River City 2, the second of what will ultimately be four phases of this massive addition to the city, one that may just make that Don River of ours into something people occasionally remember exists.

"We started construction in the beginning of February," says Jeff Geldart, Urban Capital’s development manager in charge of River City. "We’re currently drilling for caissons and piles -- the foundation system -- because we don’t have any program underground. We’re not allowed to build down."

Geldart explains that they’re not allowed to dig out a foundation of the sort we’ve become used to around the city because they’re building on a flood protection landform built by Infrastructure Ontario to protect the city’s core from the sort of flooding New Orleans experienced after Hurricane Katrina. Geldart describes the landform as "an extremely large berm," and says that the first three phases of the project are all being built on it.

River City 2, designed by the Montreal firm of Saucier and Perrotte with 249 units in three 12-storey mini-towers, will be completed in two years, with the entire project is expected to be done sometime between 2018 and 2020.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jeff Geldart

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].

Don River Park, the 7.3 hectre park in the heart of the West Don Lands that will be largely completed this month, is remarkable chiefly for its incorporation of what’s known as a flood protection landmass into its landscape.

It’s the latest example of a city that’s long been in the habit of blending infrastructure and design.

Like the old Hydro houses and the R.C. Harris water treatment plant, Infrastructure Ontario’s armoured mound near the mouth of the Don at River Street, meant to protect the downtown core from the sort of flooding that might result from a century hurricane, is one of the centrepieces of this new park, working water necessities into itself, much like Sherbourne Commons turned its water purification plant into a water feature.

"I think this is a good precedent for how we can design our spaces," says James Roach, Waterfront Toronto’s director of parks, design and construction.

The park has been in development since September 2010. When completed, it will run along the Don River while simultaneously providing "spectacular views of downtown and Lake Ontario," according to the park's website. It will include areas for lacrosse, soccer, bird watching, picnics, concerts, tobogganing, as well as meadows and hiking trails. 

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: James Roach

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].