city building : Development News

Project Neutral launched the second year of its household survey last week, and while the organization is still concentrating on two neighbourhoods—Riverdale and The Junction—it is opening the survey up to everyone in the city.

From now until November 25, Project Neutral is asking anyone who owns their home, including those with tenants, to fill out a questionnaire to determine their carbon footprint. It takes about 20 minutes, but in an improvement over last year's, the questionnaire allows you to log on and off, permitting you to do it in stages.

"Last  year, we were entirely volunteer-based," says the project's co-founder and managing director, urban planner Karen Nasmith. "It was a pretty massive effort, but we got feedback on the survey that it needed to be more user-friendly."

Though the focus is still on the original two neighbourhoods, with various prizes available to those who fill out the form, Nasmith hopes that more people from outside wards 13 and 30 will contribute data this year. Last  year, the project received 120 completed questionnaires.

Project Neutral's ultimate goal, after establishing a baseline of household data for the city, is to assist in making the city's neighbourhoods as close to carbon neutral as possible.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Karen Nasmith

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 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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The formerly peripatetic Theatre Centre is getting a permanent home in an Edwardian library on Queen Street West at Lisgar.

Designed by city architect Robert McCallum in 1909 and funded by Andrew Carnegie, the two-storey brick building's getting a $6.2-million renovation beginning this week that will include a 200-seat performance space, a rehearsal hall and a café, which, in artistic director Franco Boni's opinion, is the most important part.

"The whole idea is that there needs to be a space open to the public," Boni says. "That glass cube at the back, the café, is the most expensive, but I also think it's the most important. Artists will make work, create work and produce work in lots of different kinds of spaces, but the one thing that is so important for a performance space is that we need to create these kinds of meeting places, a third space. We need to be building these spaces and integrating these spaces into our theatres. We can't just be open at seven at night for a show and then cart the audience out. We have to be open all day."

The old building, which has been used as a public health facility in the years since the library closed in 1964, is about 10,000 square feet. After the renovation, which should be finished by next fall, it will be between 13,000 and 14,000 square feet, with the extra space coming mostly from extensions above and to the rear.

The architect is Philip Goldsmith of GBCA, the man behind the Summerhill LCBO.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Franco Boni

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Nothing can slow down the condos in this town, but sometimes, the occasional house is able to scurry away.

Like 106 John Street, the 142-year-old house—two houses when the structure was built for its original owners, a piano-maker and a contractor—which was moved about 200 metres south to make room for a new tower on Adelaide by Pinnacle.

Moving is a several week-long process. Danco, a company from Sutton West, Ontario, specializing in heritage house moves, does this sort of work about eight or 10 times a year.

"This was pretty much the same as every other house we've done," says Danco's Danny Myette. "But it's always a little tougher downtown. You don't have as much room to work, and we had to take two 90-degree turns.... If you're going to have problems, that's where you're going to have them."

The process involved putting 13 steel crossbeams and two main beams under the house and then raising it using 26 hydraulic jacks. The process began in August and was completed two weeks ago.

The house, which Myette estimates weighed 278 tonnes, took a day to move across two parking lots, to be set down next to the Bell Lightbox tower closer to King Street.

It's the second time Danco moved the house to accommodate the needs of the construction site.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Danny Myette

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The findings of the 2011 Census are finally trickling through, and the city has released its assessment of the demographic changes that may have a profound influence on Toronto's future development.

Despite the numbers having been collected in the full flush of the condo boom, the city of Toronto's demographic primacy within the GTA is actually slipping. In 2011, it accounted for 48.2 per cent of GTA households, down from 49.8 per cent at the time of the 2006 census.

Among those households, the number non-family households—households made up of roommates or singles—increased by 13.5 per cent, while the number of single-family households increased by only 3.9 per cent. The number of one-person households increased by 12.1 per cent to 331,180. The average number of people per Toronto household was also the lowest in the GTA, at 2.5.

There has also been a six per cent increase in the number of seniors living alone, up to 95,205.

"Those types of numbers affect the ways we look at the types of services we provide," says Harvey Low, manager of the social research and analysis unit of the city's social development finance and administration division, "from housing services and infrastructure to the delivery of social services, smaller household services means a different type of client."

In addition to, for example, deciding where to spend the city's childcare money (increasingly in the outer boroughs), the dwindling Toronto numbers within the context of the GTA imply either an overly optimistic condo development industry, a continuing and perhaps overshadowing development boom in the suburbs, or a possible evacuation of the suburbs for the core once an oversupply of housing forces a drop in Toronto prices.

More detailed census data, including how long people live in households and low long it takes to build them, have yet to be released.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Harvey Low

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The new streetcars have arrived.

Well, one of them, anyway.

Train 4400 came in on the rails last week, its slim, low-slung profile turning heads and fetching out the camera phones getting people talking about the next big transit thing.

We won't be able to board them for a while yet, probably not until 2014, in fact, says Jean-Pierre Boutrous, the former Formula 1 entrepreneur and current advisor to TTC chair Karen Stintz.

"It's the first delivery from Bombardier," he says of the Thunder Bay-built vehicle. "They're going to be putting it through its test internally, electronics, make it's ready for prime time. You don't necessarily transport these things with the electronics inside them."

Two hundred and four of the cars have been ordered, at a cost of a little under $6 million each, making for an investment of more than $1.1 billion over the course of the contract, which was signed in July 2009.

There will be a media event officially introducing the car to the public within the next couple of weeks, though Boutros doesn’t expect any car will be put on the tracks before early next year. What he refers to as "revenue service" for paying customers will not start until the year after.

In the meantime, drivers will be trained by Bombardier staff, tests will be run and changes will be ordered for future, as yet unbuilt cars.

"When the rockets came out," Boutros said of the new subway trains still being deployed across the system, "we ran them empty, at night, loaded with concrete bricks to simulate the weight of passengers," saying that the new streetcars will require similar batteries of tests before coming into service.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jean-Pierre Boutros

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In the midst of the most crowded condo market in the world, David Mirvish has made a bet that Frank Gehry can make his proposal rise above the rest.

That, and the fact that he is proposing the city's first full-blown condo cultural centre, with a major new art museum and a new campus for the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Early skepticism concentrated on the demolition of the Princess of Wales Theatre, which Mirvish built in 1993 to accommodate a production of Miss Saigon. But at a well-attended press conference at the AGO on October 1, Mirvish did a credible job of laying money-grab fears to rest by reminding the crowd that architecture is also an art.

"I do theatre, I do art, and I'm interested in saying who we are as a people through architecture," he said at a podium set up in front of a wall full of sketches and several early models of the proposed two-podium, three-tower proposal. "Having theatres that are not full all the time is not better than having art galleries." The proposed 60,000-square-foot gallery would house Mirvish's private collection.

In a speech that referred to artists Frank Stella (who was in attendance), Ron Davis and Gaudí, Mirvish told the press that he had spent his life travelling, looking at paintings and architecture, making the proposal sound more like an ambitious art project than a development deal. "I am not building condominiums," he said in what has already become the most quotable quote from the announcement. "I am building three sculptures for people to live in."

Gehry spoke after Mirvish, revealing, among other things, that we might have had several more Gehry buildings in Toronto, the architect's native city, but he had been beat out repeatedly in competitions and calls for proposals by Jack Diamond.

These buildings, he said, would "connect to the John Street cultural corridor, which is a great idea. As a kid, I used to go up and down John Street, and to think of it now as a major cultural corridor is exciting. I hope, I pray, it happens."

The proposal will now begin the approvals process, and if everything goes perfectly smoothly, which it rarely does, the towers, between 80 and 85 storeys each according to the current design, would be ready for residents by 2019.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: David Mirvish & Frank Gehry

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The main drag of the Dundas West strip is about to break ground on its first condo.

The mid-rise Abacus, developed by Daz and designed by Richard Witt, is on schedule to begin construction in November, says developer Antonio Azevedo.

The building, with its floors swivelling out over the sidewalk, will be a distinctive addition to the still largely Portuguese neighbourhood around the corner from the Ossington strip. The height is right, says Azevedo.

"I don't see a high-rise there," says Azevedo, who bought the old garage across the street from the LCBO two years ago. "It could probably work, and I know this sounds cliché, but it would be bad karma."

The building is one of a new generation of mid-rises going up, in part in reaction to the city's Avenues and Mid-Rise plan, meant to intensify the city's east-west corridors.

Azevedo predicts the building will be ready for occupancy in June 2014.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Antonio Azevedo

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The quickly gentrifying Dupont strip may be in for a big box store.

The developer that bought the Leal industrial equipment rental outfit (previously an A&P) originally applied to turn the large one-storey building into a multi-retail establishment, sort of an urban strip mall.

But now, says councillor Adam Vaughan, they've found a single retail tenant, and are changing their application.

"You might see something like Target go in there," Vaughan says. The city has not been told who the prospective tenant is. "It's a concern, because quite clearly, when Loblaws went in [at Christie and Dupont], it has a major impact on the traffic in the neighbourhood."

Vaughan says there is "no planning work" being done at the city due to cutbacks, so he has commissioned a grad class of Ryerson planning students to do the legwork on the area, and submit their material to the city. The north side of Dupont is considered "employment lands," putting strict limitations on the sort of development that can happen there. But the south side is different, and may be more liable to various forms of building.

"We're trying to get a visioning study of the area as it runs from Avenue right across to the top of Ward 19," Vaughan says. "We'd like to do a unified streetscape." But he says "one-off" developments like 555 Dupont, or the Wynn application for a high-rise apartment complex on the north side at Kendal, currently before the Ontario Municipal Board, "are not giving us a chance to do that."

A public meeting is being held on the subject of the revised application on Tuesday, October 9 from 6pm to 7pm at St. Alban's Boy sand Girls Club at 843 Palmerston Ave., in the second floor library.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

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Two years after city council passed a Toronto Hydro proposal to better embrace solar power, the solar panels are about to start going up on the first three of the city's municipally owned buildings.

The plan, a sort of pilot project, calls for panels on 10 city buildings, the first three of which, Mimico Arena, York Mills Arena and Goulding Park Community Centre/Arena, will start getting their photovoltaic panels this week.

The city estimates that once all 10 buildings are outfitted with the projected 8,800 panels, they will generate the equivalent of about $16 million in revenues for the city over the next two decades. The electricity will enter the Toronto Hydro grid and be bought by the Ontario Power Authority. The city estimates that the new panels will save about 480 tonnes of carbon emissions a year.

"The city is our shareholder," says Toronto Hydro's Jennifer Link. "It's a good opportunity to generate revenue for the shareholder. We do have experience in the renewable space and I think it's an area we do explore occasionally."

The remaining seven buildings are Police College, Agincourt Park Arena, Victoria Village Arena, Malvern Community Centre, Grandravine Community Centre/Arena, Roding Community Centre/Arena and McGregor Park Arena.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jennifer Link, Spokesperson, Toronto Hydro

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One hundred Wellington has become the first tower in Toronto to be given LEED Platinum certification.

The Canada Green Building Council made it official this week, recognizing the work Halsall Associates and the TD Centre have done over the past several years, which has included earning LEED Gold status for the centre as a whole.

In order to achieve this level of carbon efficiency, the building had to demonstrate its performance in several areas, including having a sustainable site, being water efficient, having sufficiently low energy use, using materials and resources in a sustainable way and having a high level of what's known as "indoor environmental quality," which includes being smoke-free and using environmentally friendly cleaning products.

In addition to these infrastructural improvements, the TD Centre has also planted a green roof, made up of a grid of sedge grass to cool the roof, and set up what they're calling a green portal to allow both tenants and the public to track energy use in the complex.

Writer: Bert Archer

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One of Victorian Toronto's few surviving Yonge Street mid-rises is getting a new lease on life.

iQ Office Suites has taken two of the four storeys of 140 Yonge Street, at the northwest corner of Temperance, and spent about $1 million turning them into full-service, flexible office space.

The offices will be launching October 1.

Partners Alex Sharpe and Kane Willmott, who plan to expand  iQ into other, similar properties, see what they do as a sort of more accessible version of Woodcliffe's renowned character office spaces. They spent about eight months in renovation, with much of the time and expense devoted to exposing or restoring original details of the Renaissance Revival building. "The building was pretty neglected for the better part of 60 years," Sharpe says.

The interiors were stripped to the original brick, copper detailing around the windows was exposed, and a blacksmith was hired to restore the exterior ironwork. The exterior renovations were funded by the building's owner, Commercial Realty Group, the company that recently bought the Gooderham Building from Woodcliffe. The renovations were overseen by Empire Restoration.

Office space is available from $1,500-$4,900 a month.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Alex Sharpe

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Pinnacle International has begun work on their master-planned community in northern Mississauga.

Pinnacle Uptown is being built on 37 acres of farmland, incorporating 14 acres of parkland and the Cooksville Creek into its plan.

"It's pretty exciting for us," says Anson Kwok, the Toronto VP of sales and marketing for the Vancouver-based developer, which is also in negotiations to buy the parking lot attached to 1 Yonge Street for a reported quarter billion dollars.

Once complete, Pinnacle Uptown will add 2,500 residential units, high-rise and low-rise, to Mississauga’s north end at Hurontario and Eglinton.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Anson Kwok

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We have a builder for the Pan Am Games.

Infrastructure Ontario announced Monday that Bondfield Construction has been awarded the contract to build and finance the three major venues for the 2015 Pan Am Parapan American Games.

The contract, valued at $80.5 million, covers the Markham Pan Am Centre, the two-field Pan American Field Hockey Centre on U of T's downtown campus, as well as renovations to the Etobicoke Olympium.

The original request for qualifications went out in October, 2011, with the request for proposals being issued this past March.

According to Jennifer Asals, a spokeswoman for Infrastructure Ontario, which managed the bidding process along with TO2015, the cities of Toronto and Markham and the University of Toronto, "the next step is that construction will begin on the Markham Pan Am Centre in the coming weeks, and the Pan Am field hockey and Etobicoke Olympium will start in 2013."

Bondfield has also recently begun work on the new Women's College Hospital.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jennifer Asals

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The City of Toronto has just completed an assessment of the effect we have on Lake Ontario's water quality.

Nine years in the making, the report is part of the wet-weather flow master plan, passed by council in 2003.

"A few years ago, the International Joint Commission reviewed the state of the Great Lakes and issued a report that pointed to sources of contamination around the lakes," says councillor John Parker, whose Ward 26 includes large parts of the Don Valley through which much of the city's lakebound rainwater flows. "Toronto didn't do as badly as some, but we had our share of responsibility for the state of Lake Ontario."

The report makes three categories of recommendations related to sanitary sewer systems, wet-weather flow collection and storage systems, and treatment of the water, which collects various contaminants on its way through the city to the lake after rain and snow falls. The report itself is available online here and in physical form at the Beaches Library, Leaside Library, City Hall Library and the St. Lawrence Library until September 24.

"This is another one of those enormous capital costs that we face that isn't on everybody's radar," Parker says. "It isn't something that's immediately at top of mind when people think of what we need to spend money on now and into the future, but it's something we can't ignore forever and it's a cost we have to build into our budgeting as we look towards the future.”

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Councillor John Parker

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].