City Building : Development News

According to David Amborski, Toronto could stand to look a little more closely at what it's doing.

"One of the things that often seems to be missing is economic analysis of urban policies."

Amborski, a professor at Ryerson's School of Urban and Regional Planning, is heading up a new research operation, the Centre for Urban Research and Land Development (CURLD), at Ryerson whose mission it is to tease out the economic implications of the decisions being made at Queen's Park and City Hall, with the hope that their papers will not only contribute to the general debate, but will occasionally land on the desk of some decision-making desks.

The centre is part of the Faculty of Community Services.

"One example I often point out: When the Greenbelt was put in place, they figured it wouldn't have an effect on property prices," Amborski says. "But as every economist knows, you can't effect supply without also affecting price. It’s not that we would have changed the Greenbelt policy but we could have done some things to mitigate the price impacts."

A more recent example was the talks a few years ago about dramatically increasing development charges. At the time, Amborski says, though it would have worked and improved revenue for projects in the downtown core, it would have seriously hampered development along current and future transit lines as described by Mayor Miller's Transit City plan.

The plan is for the centre to conduct seminars, hold public debates, and put out calls for proposals to do work related to various topics of compelling interest.

"We're looking to be part of the city-building initiative," Amborski says, "part of that base that provides information for decision making."

Though they’re still getting settled in at Ryerson and don't have any official areas of focus yet, Amborski did say that one likely area of study would be how to get the most out of Section 37, the regulation that ensures money flows from developers into areas of communal interest, such as park-making and public art.

"Some of the issues involve the way it's determined, who negotiates it," Amborski says. "Ward councillors have a major hand in it now. Can there be a more transparent approach? Can we be sure the money collected is being used in the best interests of the community involved?"

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: David Amborski

At Monday’s meeting of the Chief Planner’s Roundtable, consultant Jane Farrow announced to the 200 attendees that 60 per cent of the people living in eight so-called tower neighbourhoods in the inner suburbs do not have drivers' licenses.
This is big news.

These suburbs, built at a time when cars seemed the natural tools for urban expansion, are no longer inhabited by car people. They are, in fact, decreasingly suburbs at all, but rather less dense cities of their own, and as Vaughan and Markham, among others, seek to redress the change in various ways, the Chief Planner’s Roundtable is looking into how people do, can and should move around.

"A tremendous number of them walk," Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat says, "even when walking conditions aren’t that good."

So one of the ways Keesmaat would like to address that is by studying how and where people are getting around now, and adapting the now outmoded infrastructure to accommodate them.

Some aspects of this could be relatively easy, like making sure paths are shoveled, taking down fences that obstruct natural routes, and keeping them well lit after dark. But there are more profound ways to address the issue as well.

"It's about how we can re-adapt very suburban, car-oriented environments," Keesmaat says, "by getting a much finer street network, and adding development parcels, recognizing the importance of land-use planning and infrastructure changes in order to increase the options."

In other words, as these suburbs expand, they expand with these more reasonable, responsive forms of transportation and mobility in mind.

By the end of the roundtable, which was open to the public but attended mostly by those in related professions, they came up with a list of seven things that, Keesmaat says, need to happen now, including improving the walking infrastructure where people walk already, ensuring walking and cycling infrastructure links up with transit, improving data collection so future decisions can be made on solid ground, improving signage, loosening land-use controls to allow for more organic change as it is warranted, develop to allow people to live closer to where they work, and encourage individual "champions" to get behind significant infrastructure investments in these suburbans and push them through.

Video records of this and previous roundtables are available on the chief planner’s website.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jennifer Keesmaat

The city’s approach to heritage conservation has won it recognition from the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals.

Guided by the planning department, in concert with a consortium headed by Taylor Hazel Architects, the city's policy, as embodied by a new amendment to the Official Plan, tries to treat heritage in a broader way than usual.

"We identify that conserving heritage buildings is not just a physical act," says Scott Barrett, the city's senior coordinator for heritage preservation services. They concentrate, he says, "on why it's important, on heritage values. They're not just an assemblage of buildings; they create a sense of place, places people can experience."

This is best exemplified in the city's Heritage District initiative, which looks into preserving entire neighbourhoods, rather than individual buildings.

"It's a significant change to our old policy," Barrett says.

The new approach calls for, among other things, archeological finds to "remain in place where possible," Barrett says, but according to the city's supervisor of archeology, Susan Hughes, "possible" is a frangible term.

Sometimes it works, like with the Norr Architects project for HK Hotels at Exhibition Place, where the remains of some barracks from the War of 1812 are being preserved where they lie, under glass. For the oldest house in the old City of York, the foundations for which were destroyed in the construction of the building that will house the Globe and Mail, or the remains of the 1830s Bishops Block, discovered then destroyed in the building of the Shangri-La Hotel, not so much.

In both instances, according to Hughes, it would have been "prohibitively costly" for the developers to incorporate the archeological finds into their new buildings.

But as the new and now award-winning amendment takes root, both Hughes and Barrett hope that more and better preservation of significant aspects of the city's history, early and recent, will be possible.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Scott Barrett, Susan Hughes

Three of six finalists in the competition to design Canada's Holocaust monument in Ottawa are from Toronto.
 
The shortlist was announced last week, and among entries from Vancouver, Montreal and Massachusetts are proposals from Quadrangle Architects, as well as teams led by museum planner Gail Lord and art historian and curator Irene Szylinger. There were 74 submissions in total.
 
The monument, in whatever form it takes, will be going up at the corner of Booth and Wellington streets, near the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
 
The Toronto finalists were forbidden from talking to the media about their designs, but the ministries of Canadian Heritage and Foreign Affairs did release the names of all the members of each team. Szylinger’s team includes artists and architect Ron Arad, and Lord’s includes architect Daniel Libeskind and photographer Edward Burtynsky.
 
The shortlist was decided by a jury of art and design professionals, someone from the National Holocaust Monument Development Council, and a Holocaust survivor.

The winning design for the $8-million monument will be announced next winter. Len Westerberg, a spokesman for Canadian Heritage, says there will be a public exhibition of the finalists before the winner is announced.
 
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Len Westerberg

Just when we we're getting used to calling the Beaches the Beach, the association of businesses that contributes to the upkeep of the commercial strip in the Beach has rebranded itself to reflect the changing nature of the neighbourhood.

All of the business improvement area’s official signage and other materials will now refer to the area as the Beach Village.

"The Beach Village was launched to create a distinct identity for the business and shopping district along Queen Street East," says Elise Felton, Beach Village’s co-ordinator.

"This brand refresh was not done on a whim. We partnered with … Top Drawer Creative, an ad agency here on Queen Street East. Top Drawer conducted in-depth research, including interviews and surveys with focus groups made up of both BIA members and Beach residents. The Beach as a neighbourhood offers several attractions and shopping areas.  We want to encourage residents to rediscover what’s available in the Beach Village - in the heart of The Beach."

The Beach Village Business Improvement Area, or BIA, is the longest in Toronto, spanning 23 blocks. It has an annual budget of $230,000, and its membership includes just under 350 businesses.

"Our members will benefit from a refreshed look and feel on the street with banners and transit shelter ads," says Felton, "the marketing campaign that will extend into 2014 increasing promotions and visibility to the area. The re-branding campaign is intended to get people talking about our area and to get them shopping on Queen Street East again. People will be able to identify the businesses along Queen Street East as a must go-to destination for all their needs."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Elise Felton

The city put up a blog last week that will let us keep track of how its so-called Heritage Conservation Districts (HCDs) are coming along.
 
Maintained by the city’s Heritage Preservation Services (HPS), part of the Planning Division, the blog provides background information as well as updates on the five parts of the city currently under consideration for the designation, covering about 2,000 properties.
 
The districts are King and Spadina, “historic” Yonge Street, the Garden District (a fancy, newfangled name for the area between Allen Gardens and Moss Park), St. Lawrence and Queen Street East.
 
"The purpose of the HCD study is to determine if the area warrants designation as a HCD and to develop a full understanding of what makes it significant and a valued part of the city," says Scott Barrett, senior co-ordinator with the HPS, in the blog’s welcome post.

"The plan phase develops and implements policies and guidelines for conserving the valued character and sense of place that exists within the district, and to welcome the type of new development that fits in and benefits a HCD. A plan is adopted by bylaw when a district is designated."
 
The blog will also function as a public feedback tool.
 
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Scott Barrett

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

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

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

"When we learned of the internationally based Active House Alliance, established with an ambition to build homes that create healthier and more comfortable lives for their residents without impacting negatively on the climate and environment," says Madeline Zito, director of public relations for Great Gulf Homes, "we knew this was the right association for us to work with in order to progress our objectives and learning."

Great Gulf, which does high-rise business downtown under the name Tucker Hirise, has built Canada's first house built to the specifications of the Danish-led Active House organization, a non-profit consortium of academics, activists and corporations dedicated to developing systems and technology to lighten the footprint of homes.

Great Gulf says that the grand opening of the Thorold, Ontario house on Oct, 16, attended by the Danish ambassador, Niels Boel Ambrahamsen, marks a new step in the company’s interest in green building.

"The Alliance includes the whole supply chain in the construction sector from manufacturers to architects, engineers, builders and investors, to research institutes, universities and branch organizations," Zito says. "The Alliance has developed specifications, standards, and tools, for active houses and the members are involved in demonstration projects, knowledge sharing, webinars, etc. The wish of the members is that Great Gulf Active House become the future principle for new residential buildings in Canada."

The house itself will act as a research tool for Great Gulf and their partners to study the effect and effectiveness of various building materials, products and techniques that will be incorporated into future developments.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Madeline Zito

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

Toronto design firm Union31 was recognized three times at a recent industry gala for its interior designs of a high-end condo and two condo sales centres.

The high-end condo – one of the discreet units at 155 Cumberland – is obvious prize bait, but according to Union31 principal Kelly Cray, sales or presentation centres can be designer catnip.

"There's a certain gratification," he says, speaking about the two award-winning projects he worked on for Tridel towers. "They happen so quickly…. Getting to see something go from start to finish in eight to 10 weeks is pretty gratifying."

Though it's design by committee – the designers have to come up with their approach in consultation with the developer and their marketers – there’s a certain freedom that comes with the tight deadlines, allowing the designer to sometimes overlook minor details in pursuit of the greater aesthetic.

Both presentation centres use materials from the exterior of the buildings in question – 101 Erskine, 300 Front and 10 York – in the design of the interiors, both to give a taste of the as-yet unbuilt buildings to potential buyers, as well as bring together inside and out in the final product, which Union31 will also be designing.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kelly Cray

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

The Dufferin Bridge closes to pedestrians today while Metrolinx checks it for potentially dangerous loose concrete.

According to Frank Clarizio, the city's director of capital works delivery for the department of Engineering and Construction Services, the 10-day closure is the result of a recommendation of one of the city's consulting engineers.

The closure to pedeistrians and cyclists comes almost four months after it was precipitously closed to vehicular traffic, and five years after the original report suggesting the century-old bridge was in urgent need of repairs was released in 2008.

The clearing of loose concrete, known as scaling, is Metrolinx's responsibility, as the brdige runs over GO Transit tracks, and any falling chunks would be endangering its trains.

During the closure, pedestrians and cyclists looking to get to the Exhibition grounds can use Atlantic Avenue.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Frank Clarizio

The amount of money developers are subsidizing the city’s infrastructure with is going up dramatically.

Development charges are the way the city extracts money from the companies building all our new condos and office towers to help defray the costs of, among other things, transit, water and sewer, roads and parks. They come up for renewal every five years, but this year, the city in its eagerness has already reached the penultimate step in approving an average of a 70 per cent increase in the rates seven months in advance of the April deadline.

"For a two-bedroom condo, the rates are increasing about 70 per cent, from about $12,000 a unit to just over $21,000," says Rob Hatton, the director of strategic initiatives in the city’s corporate finance division.

The almost completed Aura at College Park, for instance, would pay the city and its residents about $20 million in development charges under the new system.

The rates for single-family dwellings is rising even higher, by 78 per cent.

"It’s a substantial increase," Hatton says, pointing out that even thought it’s slightly less than the last increase five years ago, that increase was belayed in response to the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

"The city is clearly growing," he says, "so we’ve had to make significant investments to maintain service levels."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Rob Hatton