City Building : Development News

The ever-expanding French public school system is taking over two formerly English-language schools in Toronto.

The two schools, both primary, are the former St. Josaphat Cathedral school west of Symington between Dupont and Davenport, and the McCowan Road Public School just north of McCowan and Eglinton. As of September, they will be known, temporarily, as École Dundas-ouest and Scarborough sud, respectively.

"Viamonde doesn't select a name until part way through the opening year," says Miguel Ladouceur, the director of building maintenance and planning for the board, known as the Conseil scolaire Viamonde. "We allow the school community to determine the name."

For the first year, Viamonde will be sharing the former Josaphat with its current occupants, Toronto Catholic District School Board, who will be leasing part of the building from them until they find new spots for their students. The former McCowan will be leased from the Toronto District School Board for the first year, while certain city planning technicalities are worked out.

According to Ladouceur, major renovation work will wait until the summer of 2013.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Miguel Ladouceur

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An Aboriginal childcare centre in Scarborough has made it to the list of finalists for the Toronto Green Awards.

Designed by Levitt Goodman Architects, the Scarborough Child and Family Life Centre was built on land owned by Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, who worked with the architects to come up with the various recognized amenities and features.

The building has been shortlisted in the green design category.

"We've been working with them for about 10 years now," says Levitt Goodman associate Danny Bartman, who worked on the project with firm partner Dean Goodman. "We recently completed their headquarters and College and Bay.

"One of the main things is because they are the building owners and operators, they were interested in geothermal heating and cooling. Although it required an increased capital investment, it saves them about $10,000 a year on operating costs."

In addition to the geothermal system, Levitt Goodman worked with civil engineers Fabian Papa and Partners to construct of swale  to contain the rain, roof and other site water in order to, as Bartman puts it, infiltrate it back into the water table. The riverbed snakes along the playground they also constructed, which consists of earth berms, log bridges, sand mountains and teaching gardens featuring traditional plantings to teach the children about their heritage.

The 7,000-square-foot, two-storey building was built on the Kingston Road site between May 2010 and October 2011.

The winners of the various categories of the Toronto Green Awards will be announced on April 13.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Danny Bartman

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Six years after launching Madison Avenue Lofts, Burnac is about to launch South Hill on Madison, a seven-storey sister condo next door at 377 Madison.

The new building, which project manager (and one of the "Bur" or Burnac) Zach Burnett says will be higher end, will have 159 units, including 10 townhomes, in about 120,000 square feet. Selling prices will be in the neighbourhood of $600 a square foot, with units ranging from 400 square feet to just over 1,000.

"Our feeling at Burnac is that the landscape of the real estate market has changed quite a bit," Burnett says, "so Madison Avenue Lofts had a lot of units of 1,200 to 1,600 square feet, where South Hill is going to average 750 to 800."

If sales go according to plan, Burnett estimates ground will be broken in a year to 18 months.

South Hill will occupy the remaining 40,000 square feet of the original 100,000-square-foot lot that is visible from Dupont Street at Madison, but is on the north side of the tracks, between the Annex and Forest Hill.

The building, whose exterior will have art deco references, is designed by architect Paul Northgrave, who overhauled the old Hydro building that became Madison Avenue Lofts.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Zach Burnett

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If you're going to have a sales centre in the gallery district, you may as well make it a gallery.

Adam Ochshorn, the man behind Curated Properties and developer of Edition Richmond at 850 Richmond Street West, has lit on a pretty basic idea. If you have a typical condo sales centre, typical condo buyers will likely drop in. But if you make it a gallery, people who didn't know they were looking for a condo might get their appetites whetted.

"Along the Queen West and Ossington Avenue strip are a fair number of contemporary galleries," Ochshorn told the Star this week. "So we thought, why not try to create our own gallery space and feature some artists' work?"

The sales centre cum gallery is in an old garage, with high ceilings. Ochshorn hired Ceconni Simone to whitewash the place, and tomorrow, March 8, it will host a one-night only performance piece called Outside-In, directed by Maggie Groat. The line between the art and sales is a thin one in this instance. Groat describes is as "intended to remind people of their everyday activities, the small moments that make up how we live," while the PR material  calls is "a live-art performance and commentary about Toronto's condo craze."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Ochshorn

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One of the most innovative pieces of landscaping and public space creation in the city has entered its second phase.

Underpass Park—one hopes the name sticks—is a 1.05-hectare site in the West Don Lands. It's a bit of land that, in most cities, including Toronto, would usually barely be considered land at all, placed as it is under and around the Eastern Avenue, Richmond Street and Adelaide Street overpasses that link the central to eastern parts of the lower city.

But thanks to Waterfront Toronto, and a team including Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg, The Planning Partnership and artist Paul Raff, this space has all the potential to become a definitive urban space that can be repeated in derelict places throughout the world's cities. (Think Montreal; think Los Angeles.)

Work on the portion of the site east of St. Lawrence Street and River Street has been completed, and work on the western bit, nearest Eastern Avenue, is commencing.

Waterfront Toronto estimates the work will be completed by the end of the year.

Writer: Bert Archer

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Downtown will get another hit of suburban cuisine when the fifth Jack Astor's hits the core later this year.

The location, the former site of a Tim Hortons and Wendy's at Front and Church, was chosen because it fits Service Inspired Restaurant's (SIR) selection model.

"It's not as though there's a real push on urban stores," says the chairman of SIR's board, Grey Sisson. "We've just identified the kinds of areas we want to expand in, and when an opportunity comes up, then we move ahead."

The 7,000-square-foot location, which will be renovated into a split-floor restaurant with a loft-type bar above, will be about the same size as the restaurants at Sherway Gardens and Yonge and Dundas.

What Sisson describes as a gut renovation will not begin until the city approvals come through, which Sisson is hoping to receive within the next month.

Jack Astor's also operates stores on John Street and on Yonge just north of Bloor.

SIR also owns Canyon Creek, Alice Fazooli's The Loose Moose, Reds and Far Niente.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Grey Sisson

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The CanPar building, formerly known as Marine Terminal 29, is nearly gone, the only thing keeping its final remains from being swept away is a transformer that Toronto Hydro's being slow to decommission.

"We started hazardous waste removal in January," says Mark Potter, construction manager for Hines, which is overseeing the demolition and redevelopment of the Waterfront site. "There was a little bit of asbestos."

He figures it should all be over by mid-March.

In addition to the terminal, the site also included a small shelter used by members of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club while waiting to be picked up by the tender.

The 13-acre site is part of the developing East Bayfront, south of Queens Quay between Sherbourne Common and Parliament.

According to Waterfront Toronto, 80 per cent of the building materials from the demolition are being taken to a sorting and recycling facility.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mark Potter

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When Toronto transit has something to learn from Los Angeles, you know something's gone wrong.

Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and director of its Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative, spoke at the Munk School of Global Affairs on February 27 about the importance of transit in the development of a mature and growing city.

He talked to Yonge Street before his presentation about some of the primary issues, and as it turns out, both Los Angeles and Denver have done some things Puentes figures other growing cities, like Toronto, can learn from.

"The main thing," Puentes says, "one would not want to do is plan in isolation; the transit for transit's sake approach. In the US, we waste a lot of money that way. Given this larger preoccupation, obsession I should say, with this shift from a consumption-based economy to something more productive, like advances manufacturing, trying to find a way to connect transit investment to those economic ends is a way to garner not just political support, but support from the general public."

Denver, he says, has planned its transit growth to match areas of projected population growth, seeing it not just as a way to get people from place to place, but to transform the city into a more productive place. And Los Angeles, long known as the city with the subway no one knows about, got two-thirds approval from voters during the recession from a mayor who made the case for extending that subway down Wilshire Boulevard to Santa Monica. Voters agreed to a half per cent increase in sales tax that’s expected to generate as much as $40 billion over the next 30 years. Voters in Denver did something similar, under a similarly good mayor, whose since has become governor.

"If we do believe that low carbon is going to be something that we're going to have to do long term," Puentes says, "not just as an environmental imperative, but as a market imperative... if these metropolitan areas are going to be economically healthy in the future, they're going to have to have options for transit that can't be car-oriented."

The other two talks in the series will be held on March 26 and April 16 at the Munk School from 4pm to 6pm.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Robert Puentes

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The reconstruction of Market Street is right on schedule.

The block-long street that runs along the west side of the St. Lawrence Market was the next big thing heritage redeveloper Paul Oberman had on his plate when he died in a plane crash last March.

The man responsible for the Summerhill LCBO, the renovation of the Five Thieves (with the addition of a thief or two), and the longtime owner of the Gooderham building (aka the Flatiron) had envisioned giving the city a Market Street that lived up to its name, instead of the desolate little nothing it had become.

And his widow, Eve Lewis, founder of Urbanation, who took the reins of Woodcliffe Properties and as president and CEO, is making sure Market Street turns out just as Oberman had envisioned.

"Everything is going according to Paul's original design," she says, "and we have gotten the approval for the sidewalk widening, which is the first private initiative [like that] that's ever been done in the city."

The small LCBO that had been on the corner of Front has already been moved into temporary space on Market, and construction will start on its vastly expanded space, that will take it from Front almost all the way back to The Esplanade, when the weather turns in spring. When completed, the street, with its newly expanded sidewalks, will be home to the longest stretch of bar and restaurant patios in the city.

"The model is the Summerhill plan," says Lewis, "except with a higher density of restaurants."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Eve Lewis

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Just what residential tower is going to be highest in the last depends on how you define your terms.

If you count things like spires—and the people behind the World Trade Centre and the Sears Tower (not to mention the CN Tower) certainly did—it’s the newly opened Trump at 281.02 metres. But the Trump's highest floor, what's known as architectural height, is 256.7 metres.

That means Aura, the Canderel Stoneridge tower on its way up now, which just got a three-storey boost from City Hall, is the winner in that department. At 78 storeys, it can claim the highest penthouse view at  273 metres above the corner of Yonge and College.

"Planning staff did not have major objections," says the ward's councillor, Kristyn Wong-Tam. "Obviously, there was already shadow impact everywhere at 75 storeys."

What made the deal a slam dunk for Wong-Tam, who is ambivalent on the subject of Yonge becoming a street of towers, was an additional Section 37 contribution, which will now allow for the complete reconstruction of Barbara Ann Scott rink and park.  

Under the original agreement, Canderel was making a $2-million contribution to community benefit in return for the variance that allowed them their initial 75 storeys. But motivated by their desire to beat Trump and partner Alex Schnaider, the developer agreed to another $1 million for the three extra floors.

According to Wong-Tam, there will also be wider sidewalks, better "pedestrian treatment," and "all sorts of cafés and restaurants at the base." There will also be a Marshalls department store opening in the fall.

The extra floors in the Graziani and Corazza-designed building will add about 50 units to the building, bringing its total to 985.

Occupancy is expected to begin next winter.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristyn Wong-Tam

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The latest and possibly final version of the study for Front Street at Union Station will be presented at a public meeting this week at City Hall.

The results of the environmental assessment for the proposed changes to the bit of Front between Bay and York that separates the Royal York Hotel from Union Station will be voted on by the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, with deputations from the public, as well as various interest groups.

"There's interest by the cycling community in having bike lanes and seeing how cycling is treated in the recommended plan," says Stephen Schijns, the manager of infrastructure planning for the transportation division. "There’s interest from the taxi industry in how curbside space is allocated. There's interest from the Royal York and from Union Station and the owners of the Royal Bank building, but those are normally dealt with one-on-one rather than in a committee setting."

If the document is approved, it moves onto City Council for consideration. If approved there, the plan is opened up to the public for a further 30 days. If at the end of that time there is no other significant concern, the project is approved and can be implemented.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Stephen Schijns

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The Sutton Place won't be called the Sutton Place anymore.

Despite some pretty high-value name recognition, at least among the pre-Millennial set, Lanterra co-founder, president and CEO Barry Fenton says they'll be choosing a new name for the refurbished property when it opens in 2014.

Speaking to Yonge Street in a car on the way to the airport to check out British hotels for some design hints, Fenton says, "We have the right to use it, but I think we're going to come up with a new concept, a new name." They have a few names in mind, but when pressed, Fenton says, "We can't reveal all our secrets."

Fenton says the negotiations with the vendor, presumably a representative of the Ho Family Trust that owns the dwindling Sutton Grande group of hotels, lasted five months before going firm in November.

Lanterra will be adding nine storeys to the original WZMH-designed tower at the northeast corner of Bay and Wellesley. Fenton says he's eager to play with a rare square tower after building so many point towers, with the encouragement of City Hall.

"You get more units per floor,” he says.

Lanterra will launch their sales in June, and will start construction, including a new exterior, by the end of the year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Barry Fenton

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Adam Vaughan was surprised by the reaction the public meeting gave the design for the proposed new Globe and Mail tower.

"I haven't had a building this warmly received in six years," the six-year City Hall veteran says.

Vaughan says between 75 and 100 people were in attendance earlier this month when KPMB founding partner Marianne McKenna presented the firm's twisted L-shape design.

"It's a modest building," Vaughan says, referring the variances it will need from the city to get planning approval, "and the design is quite startling, and the animation for that corner above and beyond the current use is quite welcome in the neighbourhood." There will be 200,000 square feet of office space for the Globe and 20,000 square feet above and beyond that for another tenant. "So the live-work thing will get a real shot in the arm."

The audience consisted largely of local residents and members of the Wellington Place Neighbourhood Association.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

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After the high-profile opening of the Maple Leaf Gardens location, the LCBO's next two GTA openings will be smaller, more local affairs.

Construction has already been completed on the new Rimrock Plaza store at 1115 Lodestar Road near Allen. With 5,000 square feet of shopping space and a Vintages section of about 270 products, the store's meant to serve a neighbourhood that's slated to grow by nine per cent in the next decade.

York Mills Gardens at York Mills and Leslie is also getting a big new store, with 6,400 square feet of retail area, including 560 Vintages products.

Rimrock is scheduled to open next month, with York Mills Garden down for May.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Layton

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The Ontario finalists for a nationwide architecture competition went on display Monday in the galleria at Brookfield Place.

The competition, called Migrating Landscapes, "explores how young Canadian architects and designers have been influenced by migration," according to the announcement.

The Ontario winners will be announced on Feb. 22, and the winners of the national competition will represent Canada at this year's Venice Biennale.

The competitions were the result of a call from the Canada Council for proposals for Canada's entry to this year’s Biennale.

"Migrating Landscapes is about the theme of migration and what it means in architecture today," says one of the three Winnipeg-based curators, Johanna Hurme. "It was informed by our own experiences coming together as first-generation architects ourselves." Hurme moved to Canada from Finland, while fellow curators Sasa Radulovic and Jae-Sung Chon came from Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Korea, respectively.

The exhibit runs until Feb. 24. The Architecture Biennale runs from Aug. 29 to Nov. 25.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sascha Hastings

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