city building : Development News

The École élémentaire Charles-Sauriol officially opened last week, the latest in the expanding French-language shool board.

The school will be the 14th elementary school in Toronto for the Conseil scolaire Viamonde, which also operates four secondary schools in the city.

"The school board started working on this project a little more than three years ago," says Claire Francoeur, the board’s director of communications. Francoeur says that the École Pierre-Elliot-Trudeau is operating at capacity, which is what necessitated Viamonde’s purchase of the disused Catholic school formerly known as St. Josaphat at 55 Pelham Avenue in the Junction Triangle.

The school was shared this year with students from St. John the Evangelist school, some of whom learned in portables outside, until places could be found for them. There were 175 French students at Charles-Sauriol this year, and Francoeur expects that number to rise to 200 in September, and to get up to 400 within four years.

After some general clean-up before opening last September, the school is now beginning some renovations for a daycare space, to be completed before the beginning of the next school year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Claire Francoeur

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Live Green Toronto gave out its annual awards on Monday, and the Corporate Award went to the Simpson’s Tower for its near-perfect recycling record.

"Last year, we had an audited rate of 97 per cent," says building manager Arlena Hebert, explaining the success of the waste diversion program administered by property manager Ivanhoé Cambridge, for whom she works.

The program started a little more than five years ago when each of the building’s garbage cans was replaced with three recycling bins. The building’s average diversion over the last five years has been above 90 per cent, according to Hebert.

Hebert credits all parties with the success of the program, including the building’s owner, Hudson Bay Co., the tenants and the cleaning staff.

"The evening cleaning team is really important," she says. "They’re the ones who empty the recycling bins. If people don’t recycle properly, they don’t empty the bins, and the tenant is left with a note on their desk.”

Getting tenants in on it has been a big part of her work, she says, and she’s organized two field trips to the recycling facility that handles their stuff, GFL (formerly known as Turtle Island).

The Simpson's Tower wasn't the only winner.

Justin Nadeau won the individual award, Gordie Warnoff and his A Higher Plane got the small business award, the group award when to James Davis and the Toronto Bicycle Music Festival, and the youth winner was Thezyrie Amarouche. Each of the winners received a $2,500 prize. The Simpson's Tower is donating its prize to Cycle Toronto to help in its efforts to establish secure bike parking around the city.  

Live Green Toronto, funded by the city's Environment and Energy sector of the Toronto Environment Office and various sponsors, has been giving out awards recognizing the city's greenest companies and individuals since 2005.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Arlena Hebert

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Jump, known in the pre-Plenty of Fish-and-Grindr world as the premier spot for business people to meet each other, has just re-opened after its most extensive renovation in the landmark bar and restaurant’s 20-year history.

The first in the now ubiquitous Oliver and Bonacini chain, Jump opened in 1993 as a hopeful investment in a financial district still smarting from the 1989-90 crash.

"This was one of our smoothest construction jobs," says Theresa Suraci, O&B’s director of marketing and communications. "We shut for a month, which is always a very challenging schedule when you’re doing as much work as we did but I think they ran into very few hiccoughs."

The renovation cost $1 million, which Suraci takes some pleasure in pointing out is what it cost to build the establishment in the first place.

The press release announcing the re-opening describes the new interior as "intimate" with "Cognac-coloured leathers, tones of charcoal grey and warm amber woods."

"We are celebrating 20 years in business," says co-owner Michael Bonacini, who left his job at Centro to join Peter Oliver in the new venture, "and there are certainly times in a restaurant’s life when it needs a little TLC. That said, it’s still the solid bones of Jump. It just needed a facelift to make it feel more current and vibrant. That’s essential in the restaurant industry, especially in the very competitive downtown core.

"Whenever you renovate in a building in the downtown core, you’re dealing with one of the most challenging projects imaginable, given that it directly affects an asset worth millions of dollars.  In this case we’re working around say 5,000 occupants of the building, all affected by things like deliveries, offloading, noise, vibrations and general safety factors. For instance, we needed to core through a concrete slab in order to move a fire hose cabinet, requiring us to x-ray the concrete to assess issues of structural rebar or electrical conduit. The problem is that no one can be within 150 feet at the time the x-ray is taken, which means that due to the close proximity of the escalators and subway below, we had only a couple of hours in the middle of the night to possibly schedule the procedure.  It took us seven days just to coordinate the scheduling. These types of renovations are infinitely complicated."

Jump is located at 18 Wellington Street, just west of Yonge. 

Writer: Bert Archer
Sources: Theresa Suraci, Michael Bonacini

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"This year is actually going to be the largest amalgamation of pending road reconstruction, resurfacing and bridges."

The words, spoken by the city’s general manager of transportation services Steve Buckley, should be enough to strike terror into any Toronto driver.

Road construction means detours and delays, and starting now, we’re in for $155 million worth.

"Basically, we have a lot of aging infrastructure," Buckley says, "and at this point, our roads are not in great condition.” He blames in on a "backlog of deferred maintenance" saying that there’s going to be an extra $285 million spent on major roads over the next 10 years to get the major arteries in shape.

Last week, crews were on Kingston Road, which is being reconstructed and resurfaced from Birchmount to Queen. Other major jobs this spring include Keele from Falstaff to Arrowsmith, Bloor from Lansdowne to Bathurst, Dufferin from Dundas to Keele and Albion Road from Steeles to Highway 27.

Drivers who want to keep on top of what’s going on so they can pre-plan (or just pre-fume) can check out both scheduled and emergency roadworks here.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Steve Buckley

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Extending the reach of a neighbourhood has long been an urban technique for paying tribute to a popular neighbourhood, and trying to make a little money off properties that are almost-but-not-quite there. In Toronto, we’ve got spots like the Upper Beach and West Annex.

Now Markham’s picking up the ball with its Upper Unionville development by TACC developments.

Built on the old Beckett Farm at Kennedy and 16th Avenue (which sold for $100 million), Upper Unionville is the 1,600-unit result of a consortium of four builders: Arista Homes, Fieldgate Homes, Paradise Homes and Starlane Home Corporation.

The homes, a combination of townhouses, semi-detached and detached houses, started to go up in September. Paradise just closed on between 30 and 35 of them between late March and early this month.

"We’ve all designed our own houses," says Daniel Salerno, director of sales and marketing for Paradise, "but we all have the exact same lot types, which fell under the same architectural control."

The control architect -- the one responsible for lending the new development the feel of a cohesive neighbourhood -- was Williams and Stewart.

Salerno figures most of the houses will be occupied by 2015. There is also what Salerno calls a live-work area, an area along the south end of the site that will be a combination of homes and businesses, which should be finished by 2016.

Prices range from about half a million to just under a million. Upper Unionville is about a 20-mintue walk to Main Street, Unionville.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Daniel Salerno

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As of last week, there are eight cranes up and running at the future Canary District, the second major neighbourhood to be attempted south of Front Street in the last decade.

Unlike City Place, however, the Canary District is incorporating several layers into its planned community in the hopes of creating a sustainable neighbourhood. 

The cranes are stretched out over 35 acres, the simultaneous erections a reminder of a tight deadline. The district will be used at first as an athletes village for the Pan/Parapan American Games, to be staged across the GTA in the summer of 2015.

"We’re building out the entire athletes village," says Michelle Cain, project manager for developer Dundee Kilmer. "There are two cranes for the YMCA attached to the George Brown campus, two for the two buildings that will be affordable housing, and four cranes for the Canary District condos."

Ground was broken last May on the $514-million project designed by four architecture firms: KPMB, Architects Alliance, Daoust Lestage and MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michelle Cain

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The Remington Group has applied to almost double the number of condos they’re hoping to build in the third phase of their Queensway project, and Councillor Peter Milczyn thinks there may be some problems.

"I’m sure residents will have a variety of concerns," he says, referring to the April 15 public hearing the city is hosting in Etobicoke. "The height, at 50 storeys, is too high. I think that’s not supportable given that there are no other tall buildings around there, that they’re not adjacent to a subway station and so on. The density itself? We’ll have to look at the traffic studies. I’m not so concerned about the number of units as I am about the built form, the height and the massing of the buildings."

Remington is proposing to up the unit count from 1,000 to 1,819.

Milczyn, a graduate of U of T’s architecture school and once head of his own design firm, worries that Richmond may be going for too much too quickly in a spot that has, up until now, been a one-side-of-the-street neighbourhood, with the industrial lands currently being built of having had no residents at all.

The land IQ condos are being built on used to belong to G. H. Wood, the corporation that was responsible, among other things, for public bathroom hand-dryers with their once ubiquitous motto, "Sanitation for the nation." After moving about 20 years ago, the land was held up for about a decade, the result of a protracted divorce between its new Chinese owners.

Milczyn has high hopes the Queensway, a road he says has been thought of for years as nothing more than "a six-lane bypass to the Gardiner Expressway." With people living on both sides of it, he is optimistic that it may become the centre of Etobicoke, a pedestrian-friendly zone with shops, cafes, and everything else Lakeshore Boulevard once had and is attempting to regenerate. He would like to work with Artscape, he says, "to bring in some gallery space and maybe artists’ studios as part of this development to create a bit of an arts hub along the Queensway."

The public meeting will be held at Holy Angels Church at 65 Jutland Road, beginning with an open house at 6:30pm on April 15. The meeting will run from 7pm to 8pm.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Milczyn

CORRECTION: The first reference to the developer's name was misstated in the original version of this article.

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Leaside is getting a new LCBO on April 26.

The store, in a neighbourhood the LCBO expects to grow by five per cent in the next decade, replaces an old Blockbuster next to Epi breads at the corner of Bayview and Millwood.

"Average household income for the trade area is approximately $162,000," says LCBO spokeswoman Linda Hapak. So one would expect more Hendrick’s, less Beefeater.

It’ll be a small store, with 2,500 square feet of selling area, a staff of 10, and three checkout lines serving an area the LCBO approximates to have 8,600 residents.

"In places with urban intensification and cities such as Toronto and Ottawa, we have developed market strategies and look for opportunities to address gaps in underserviced, mature urban markets with smaller stores," Hapak says.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Linda Hapak

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The Ontario Architects Association has announced its prize winners for the year, with two GTA projects standouts among them.

"I really liked the Cedarvale Ravine House,” says OAA president Bill Birdsell of the Drew Mandel Architects-designed infill house. The house sits along Toronto's Cedarvale ravine and features floor to ceiling windows, allowing ample light to flow through its open concept design. "It works very closely with its context and the urban forestry, and it maintains sustainability for that site. That, and the really striking cantilever really stands out for me."

The other project, among eight GTA winners, that Birdsell wanted to call attention to was MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects’ Regent Park Aquatic Centre, which opened along Dundas East late last year and features a pool, large windows and wood accents viewable by street. "I just love that," he said. "Again it comes back to sustainability. It was created on a very tight budget, which I appreciate, and I like the way it brings light down into the pool area."

Birdsell says the winners are chosen each year for the clarity of their architectural language. "If the jury can really understand them," he says, "and the project gets its message across, that’s how they win."

The awards will be presented in May at the OAA annual conference.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Bill Birdsell

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One King West is about to launch its two-storey hospitality suite, expanding the space the city has for meetings, celebrations, and rich people who want a lot of space.

According to spokeswoman Ashley Calapatia, the 2,500 square feet, which includes the terrace, can accommodate up to 60 guests, and an additional 30 in what she calls its "boardroom configuration."

The meeting space and the suite, which can be used overnight, are on separate floors.

The interiors were designed by Squarefoot Design Inc.

One King West Hotel and Residence, originally conceived and built by developer Harry Stinson, was completed in 2006. It consists of a 51-storey tower built on top of the Dominion Bank Building, which was initially completed in 1914 by famed Toronto architects Darling and Pearson.

No word yet on when the launch will take place, but it should be this month.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Ashley Calapatia

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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

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"It’s been something in the back of our minds for a while," says Jane Welsh, the city’s acting manager for zoning bylaws and the environment, explaining that these new green roof guidelines are not only new, they’re the first one’s the city’s issued.

Toronto was the first city in North America, according to its website anyway, to pass a green roof bylaw, back in 2009. It stipulates that all buildings with a gross floor space of 2,000 square metres or more, whether residential, industrial or commercial, establish a green roof.

"When we released the green roof bylaw, we thought it would be helpful to residents and to green roof installers," she says, careful to point out there were no particular offenders or offences that inspired the release of these guidelines. "We were getting green roofs that were going up near natural heritage areas. You want to provide an extension of the natural heritage area, and provide habitats for butterflies and bird, perhaps, or just add to the native plant population."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jane Welsh

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Nominations are now open for the Toronto Urban Design Awards.

The biannual event celebrates and rewards urban design and, as the program’s manager Alka Lukatela makes clear, urban design is quite different from architecture or what’s usually referred to simply as "design." The event culminates in a gala that is set to be held this year on September 11.

"If you go to any of the architectural programs, provincial or the national one, the focus is on the quality of the design of the individual piece," she says. "When we are talking about our program, it is really the relationships and the context, everything that happens in the public realm around the project and innovative ways of dealing with specifications, or creating small open spaces, dealing with the landscape end of things."

With an eye to these criteria, the biannual juries always include an architect, a landscape architect, an out-of-province authority, and what Lukatela calls "an interesting member of the public or the press." This year’s jury is made up of Marianne McKenna, Cecelia Paine, Jeremy Sturgess, Eric Turcotte and Matthew Blackett. They will be adjudicating entries in categories that include "buildings in context" both private and public, small open spaces, "large places and neighbourhood designs," "visions and master plans" and student projects.

There will be an exhibit of all entries at City Hall from Sept. 9-13 after the May 16 entry deadline. Winners will be exhibited at City Hall and tour the city’s civic centres during September and October.

The budget for the project is $60,000, $30,000 of which is spent on the gala.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Alka Lukatela

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We’ve had art exhibits and cocktail parties, but you’d think with all the condo competition in the city, we would have seen more creative launches.

Tonight, Great Gulf is taking a step in the right direction when they unveil Lighthaus with a lightshow designed by Anna Simone and Landmark Communications.

"We’ll be projecting images on the actual sales centre façade," says Simone, referring to the small showroom at the corner of Queen and Fenning, one block east of Dovercourt. "I believe we’re working with two cameras, 15,000 lumens, which is pretty exceptional, music alongside, a light show, but it will also be deaing with a sneak preview with what will come with Lighthaus. Its interior, its architecture, who is presenting it."

Simone got the idea from a mapping installation she saw at Quebec City’s bicentennial, and she says she’s been looking for an opportunity--and a partner--that would enable her to reproduce the effect ever since.

According to Simone, whose firm Cecconi Simone has designed the interiors, Lighthaus itself will be a 40-townhouse development, ranging from about $950,000 to $1.4 million, aimed at second-time buyers who have become used to the high standard of interior design in condos.

One notable design element, Simone points out, will be light wells designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster, the designer of Wembley Stadium.

The 3D light show, consisting of a 4-6 minute production on a loop, will take place tonight from 8:30-10:30 p.m., and will be repeated at the same time until Saturday.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Anna Simone

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The news from Quebec this week that a two metre-wide pothole in Kirkland flipped a car will sound familiar to Toronto cyclists.

Though there are no reports of potholes big enough to crash a car yet, the continual freezing and thawing we’ve experienced here over the past several weeks has resulted in a greater than average number of potholes, any one of which is plenty big enough to flip a bike. 

"The last snowfall we had, it was rain in the morning, then snow, then rain again," says Trevor Tenn, the city’s manager of road operations. "Water gets in a crack in the road, it freezes, expands, and pushes the asphalt up or out. Then a car drives over it, breaks it, and creates a pothole."

Tenn says that there are as many as 40 crews with up to 100 workers on the roads last week and this, repairing as many as 3,000 potholes a day, draining water, putting in a sealant, a bonding agent called SS1, and covering them up with hot asphalt. The city reports there are an estimated 11,000 more potholes this year than average. 

Crews are sent to known areas –- roads that are high on the list for resurfacing –- as well as spots called in to 311, or to www.toronto.ca/311. The wait time is now between 3-5 days.

Tenn says that about $4 million is spent fixing 200,000 potholes annually.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Trevor Tenn

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