City Building : Development News

The last of three high-level talks on mass urban transportation took place Monday.

The speaker was Richard Katz, chair of L.A.'s regional transit system, Metrolink. He is also on the board of the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and a former state legislator. His topic was transit funding.

Los Angeles has become an unlikely model of transit funding done well, and though not everything that's worked there can work in Toronto—L.A. imposed a sales tax, for instance, which Toronto does not have the power to do—the principles are the same. Public support is essential, and generating it, through education and publicity, is the sine qua non of a well-funded system.

The talks were sponsored by the Munk School of Global Affairs, and held at the theatre at the school's Devonshire Place campus.

Writer: Bert Archer

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].

Mid-rise development has taken a backseat to Toronto's towers for the past decade, but thanks to developers like Streetcar, they may be the next big phase of the city's intensification.

The developer, known for buildings in Corktown, has just launched two new projects bookending the downtown core. The Carlaw, at Carlaw and Dundas, will be a 12-storey condo by TACT Architecture, built in conjunction with Dundee Realty. The plan is for 320 lofts, as well as several townhouses.

The other is The Carnaby, the third phase of a development at Queen and Gladstone that also includes mid-rises at 2 and 8 Gladstone Avenue.

Built in a laneway between the two Gladstone properties, the Carnaby will nudge the limits of the definition of mid-rise, with 20 storeys and 200 loft-style units.

The Carnaby has also been designed by TACT, with interiors by Seven Haus Design.

Both proposed buildings stick to the developer's strategy of keeping their properties on streetcar lines.

Writer: Bert Archer

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].

Gabby's is opening its 15th location in the Junction.

"It's the area that attracted us," says Todd Sherman, managing partner for the restaurant/pub company whose brands also include Hey Lucy and Hush. "We think the Junction is a very vibrant, up-and-coming area. We see a lot of change-of-use building going on in the area right now," he says, referring to renovations that transform a commercial space from, say, retail to hospitality, a classic indication of a neighbourhood in serious transition.

"There's a lot more younger families, and a lot of conversion in the area to take it from rough-and-ready to something more polished," says Sherman. "To be honest, I think it's like Yonge and Lawrence 15 years ago." Gabby's opened its first location in that area in 1989. 

The renovation at 3026 Dundas West (formerly the Relax Shack furniture store) began last week, and will ultimately involve about 50 workers in what Sherman describes as a gut renovation of the 2,200-square-foot space.

Sherman expects work on what will be a 75-seat space will be completed by the end of June, though exactly when it opens will depend, he says, on the inspectors.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Todd Sherman

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The student population's not going up, but this tiny, expensive school in the Annex is finally getting a $10-million addition to replace its long-standing portable classrooms.

"It's a three-storey addition to an existing building,” says Royal St. George's College chief financial officer Andrew Whiteley, "with a drama studio in the basement, an art studio in an attic, and the two floors in between a classroom and a seminar room."

The project is now above-grade, with structural steel in place.

Adjacent to the space is a new garage, with a green roof that will serve as a student play space.

The student population of Royal St. George's, which teaches students in grades three to 12, is 426. The work, by architects Joseph Bogdan and Associates, managed by Triaxis, began in June 2011 and will be finished by the end of August. The costs are being covered by fundraising and a long-term mortgage.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Andrew Whiteley

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].

Drivers will be pleased to hear that roadwork season has begun.

According to Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, more than $140 million will be spent on road and bridge improvements this spring and summer.

"We must continue to ensure that work is coordinated in order to minimize disruptions to the public," Minnan-Wong said, providing cold comfort to people taking the roughly five million car trips a day around the GTA.

The city lists the areas of major work as Spadina Avenue from Bremner Boulevard to King Street West, Danforth Road from Midland Avenue to McCowan Road, Burnhamthorpe Road from Martin Grove Road to The East Mall, Finch Avenue from Bayview Avenue to the Don River, and Wilson Avenue from Dufferin Street to Keele Street.

The city also took the opportunity to announce that on average, it has filled 225,000 potholes each year for the past three years.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Denzil Minnan-Wong

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].

When columnists talk smack about Regent Park, they should be prepared to be smacked back.

After a series of columns by Sue Ann Levy appeared in the Toronto Sun last week, questioning the propriety of the revitalization of this originally ill-conceived low-rent neighbourhood, residents organized a press conference.

Mistress of ceremonies Debra Dineen, executive director of the Toronto Christian Resource Centre and a subsidized resident of the neighbourhood since 1989, introduced a string of speakers, including longtime residents and a new buyer of a market-priced condo, to speak on behalf of the neighbourhood and its current direction. (The physical aspects of the revitalization are being handled by Daniels Corporation.)

Dineen calls Levy's columns a "smear campaign" and an attempt to destroy the "good work" being done in Regent Park.

The event drew about 140 people to the as-yet-unlandscaped grounds in front of the Resource Centre at 40 Oak Street.

"Regent Park has gotten richer," Dineen told the crowd. "And we're worth it."

Kate Sellar, a young mother who recently bought a market-priced condo, spoke of the community feeling she's gotten since moving in.

"We all shop for bargains at Freshco," she said from the podium. "We all get our coffee from Tim Hortons," adding that "all the kids are going to swim in the new pool, all the kids will go to school together."


Writer: Bert Archer
Sources: Debra Dineen, Kate Sellar

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 Toronto has won a national award for excellence in urban sustainability.

The award was handed out last month by the Vancouver-based GLOBE Foundation, which is described on its website as a "not-for-profit private business foundation... established… to carry forward our mandate to promote the business case for sustainable development." It won the award over contenders such as the University of British Columbia Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability and the City of Vancouver.

"What set Waterfront Toronto aside and earned it the GLOBE Award for Excellence in Urban Sustainability was the framework they established back in 2005 and updated in 2011," says Carine Vindeirinho, awards program co-ordinator for the Global Opportunities in Business and the Environment (GLOBE) Foundation. "Their Minimum Green Building Requirements guidelines, proprietary Carbon Modeling Tool and successful stakeholder consultation were some of the noteworthy elements of their approach. The judges also commended Waterfront Toronto's commitment to deliver sustainable, mixed-use communities integrated with parks and open spaces with a focus to enhance the natural environment, generate economic benefits and produce social-cultural gains in a triple bottom line approach."

The award was given jointly to Waterfront Toronto and Halsall Engineering.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Carine Vindeirinho

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].

It's been vacant for 25 years, but things are finally stirring inside the venerable old Canadian Bank of Commerce building at 197 Yonge Street.

Bought by Montreal's Parasuco jean company about a decade ago, the building's been through any number of attempted re-uses, but everything's fallen through, until now.

Work has finally begun on renovating the interior of the neoclassical, Darling and Pearson-designed bank building, which will within six weeks be serving as a showroom for the Hariri Pontarini-designed condos slated to be built on top of it.

The tower, which is still being considered by the city, would be 60 storeys with 689 units.

According to restoring architect Michael McClelland of ERA, the fact that the building is finally moving ahead is a reflection of the changing face of the downtown core.

"Developments are quite large and this has been regarded as quite a small site," he says. "It's been very difficult to figure out how to make this site work. There's all kinds of complex easements for the Elgin Winter Garden theatre and Massey Hall.  You have to be very patient landowners to make this happen."

And until recently, it's not really been worth it. But now, with the city's large plots mostly spoken for, the smaller ones are looking better and better.

The vacant lot on the north side of the site will, as a result of a stipulation in the sales agreement, become a Parasuco Jeans shop, that will include some form of commemoration for the old Colonial Tavern that once stood there.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michael McClelland

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].

The city's holding its first public meeting on the subject of wayfinding.

Defined as the comprehensive way people—both residents and visitors—find their way around, wayfinding includes signs, maps, lighting, street furniture and new media possibilities. The March 28 public open house emerges from a 2010 proposal to figure out ways to improve the existing situation. "The growth in visitor numbers, and the 2015 Pan Am Games makes this a timely opportunity to take the initial steps towards delivery of this goal," states the info sheet.

The most prominent aspect of the city's current wayfinding system at the moment is PATH, the often confusing series of signs and maps meant to help people find their way through the tunnels, lobbies, food courts and other indoor routes in the financial district between Union Station and Eaton Centre.

Current problems for visitor wayfinding include overly modest street- and subway-level indications of major tourist attractions, such as the AGO, the Hockey Hall of Fame and Casa Loma.

Steve Johnston, the city's senior communications coordinator, says the first meeting is intended to discuss the first phase of the wayfinding project, which is to "establish principles and an implementation strategy, identify potential funding sources and define the parameters of a pilot project that will be presented to Toronto City Council."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Steve Johnston

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].

The 18,000-square-foot building on Queen West at Beverley is on the market in what the brokers at CBRE hope is a newly energized Queen West strip, as large anchor stores try to pull back some of the energy lost to West Queen West.

The three-storey building was formerly meant to be a Marciano by Guess store, and is now offering various large or small options to potential tenants at $110 per square foot per year.

The building at 327-333 Queen West has been vacant for more than a year, though CBRE brokers say there are currently several potential tenants considering taking space in the building, which has a stone façade and floor-to-ceiling storefront windows on the ground floor.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Stuart Smith

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].

Rapid condo development along the Queensway has finally resulted in the formation of the sorts of organizations that make neighbourhoods neighbourhoods.

The first phase of IQ Condos by the Remington Group is now under construction at Zorra Street east of Kipling, and phase two has just been approved by council, bringing hundreds of new residents who will start arriving in 2014.

These newbies will join residents of several smaller, loft-style condos that have also been approved for the area, along with several new restaurants, giving the Queensway, located in Peter Milczyn’s Ward 5, the density needed for a fully functional and enthusiastic BIA, which will be going before the business community in April for a formal vote. This follows the formation of the neighbourhood's first residents association about a year ago.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Susan O’Connor

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

A tower on a forlorn stretch of Bloor Street East is getting a $10-million renovation to liven the place up a bit.

"The building really turned into a bit of a dog," says Chris Fyvie, a broker with Colliers who's handling the building. "They weren't investing any money into it. It was the last place you would show; you would show it if you had a client with a really limited budget."

Work is already underway, with common areas on the 12th and 19th floors completed to show prospective tenants. According to Fyvie, landlord Greenwin is looking for tech companies and smaller businesses. They'd also like media companies; Fyvie points out the building's extreme proximity to the Rogers campus. Suites as small as 1,690 square feet are available.

The price will be in the low $30s per square foot.

The 20-storey tower, built in 1972, current has about 80,000 square feet of vacancy out of its total 272,908. Fyvie says there are negotiations afoot with one major potential tenant who might take a sizeable portion of the building, potentially including the lobby.

There's an open house for brokers on March 29 to show them the new 365.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Fyvie

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].

Yonge Street's going vertical, and Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam figures it's got something to do with a generational shift among the people who own it.

"I think that for Yonge Street, for a long time it's been multi-generational ownership, parent to child, parent to child," says the Ward 27 councillor and former real estate agent with Coldwell Banker. "I think that in many instances, the children are no longer [interested in] operating these businesses."

Yonge Street south of Davenport, along with most of Bloor, the Danforth and Queen Street, have not kept pace with the intensification of the core, keeping to their quaint, two-, three- and four-storey selves. But Wong-Tam's started to notice a tidal shift on Yonge.

"I've had many pre-application meetings with third-generation property owners who are bringing in developers with whom they've structured deals," she says, adding that these days, "applications in Ward 27 seem to start at 40, 45 storeys."

Some of these families are prominent property holders, like Hong Kong-based holding company Chen and Sons, and others own one or two storefronts and are looking to maximize the profit on their generations-long investments, while allowing Yonge Street to grow up.

As Wong-Tam has said before, she's ambivalent on the issue of Yonge Street's imminent verticality. As a former real estate pro, she likes good development, but at the same time, she talks about walking down Yonge on a recent afternoon during this unseasonably sunny spring.

It was, she says, "really illuminating for me, to see all those people lining up for patios with sun. It's not shadows in parks or shadows in backyards, it's shadows right on the street, on patios, that matter." And soon, there'll be many more of them.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristyn Wong-Tam

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].

Jane Bird, former chief executive of Vancouver's Canada Line Rapid Transit Inc., is in town March 26 to talk about the role the private sector can play in mass transit.

With Toronto's Mayor Rob Ford apparently at his Waterloo on the subject, the timing couldn't be better.

Currently the president and CEO of Columbia Power Corp., Bird was instrumental in developing the $2-billion, 19km Canada Line. An elevated train that connects the Vancouver airport to Richmond and the downtown core, it's widely considered a model of its kind.

Bird will discuss the pros and cons of getting private funding involved in what is usually referred to as public transportation, making the case that private participation can inspire the usually purely bureaucratic process to new levels of innovation without losing sight of public service.

The talk will be held from 4pm to 6pm at the Munk School of Global Affairs at 1 Devonshire Place.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Andrea Ellison

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 Kristyn Wong-Tam gets her way, those big white development notification signs are going to get a little more useful for the general public.

They've already taken a leap in that direction, starting in January 2011, when they started to include illustrations of the proposed development in the upper left hand corner of the sign. The printing, too, took a turn for the better, leaving behind the all caps in favour of typography that didn’t imply it was yelling at you.

But there are still two problems, as Wong-Tam, councillor for Ward 27, sees it.

"There is no consistency," she says. "This is something I've been working with the planning department on. Why in one case do I see an elevation from the street, and other times a bird-eye view? I think it's a little bit confusing, but it is something they're working on."

But more fundamental is the fact that there is nothing in the planning act that requires developers to submit completed applications. Though submitting renderings of a proposed development are part of the application process, most developers do not submit complete applications.

"Almost 99 per cent of the time, the form comes back to me incomplete," says Wong-Tam, whose downtown ward is home to an especially large number of development projects.

The councillor suggests that if people have any other concerns or suggestions regarding how proposed developments are announced, they can write to [email protected].

Writer: Bert Archer
Source; Kristyn Wong-Tam

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].