city building : Development News

The 2011 Urban Design Award-winners were announced Monday, with Sugar Beach and the Shops of Summerhill two of the big winners.

Thirteen awards of excellence and 10 honourable mentions were given out in 10 categories, including Private Buildings in Context, Public Buildings in Context” and Large Places or Neighbourhood Designs, the last of which was won by Waterfront's Sugar Beach, Toronto’s version of the internationally popular urban beach.

"Toronto can proudly boast of having one of the most talented pools of practicing design professionals, and sophisticated development companies anywhere in the world," said Councillor Peter Milczyn, chair of the planning and growth management committee, in a statement borne out by the broad swath of winners.

The jurors for this year's awards were journalist John Lorinc, Christine Abe of MBTW Group, Markham's Town Architect Ronji Borooah, Giannone Petricone Associates founder Ralph Giannone and Greg Smallenberg, founding partner of Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg.

The winners are being displayed in the Rotunda of City Hall until Sep. 23, and will be shown at Etobicoke Civic Centre, North York Civic Centre and the rotunda of Scarborough Civic Centre in successive weeks in October, beginning Oct. 10 in Etobicoke.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Bruce Hawkins

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The Ontario government will help the city's public French school board buy a disused school in Etobicoke.

The announcement came as part of a three-year, $45-million commitment to French-language education in the province. The Etobicoke funding totals $5.2 million.

The former Parkview Public School will accommodate 200 students when it opens after renovations in 2013.

Local MPP Laurel Broten didn't return a call for comment, but said on her website that "I am proud to be part of a government that values French language education."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Laurel Broten

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The plans went through a few incarnations in this picky—or as Councillor Adam Vaughan describes it, "extraordinarily democratic"—Annex neighbourhood, but as of this week, Taddle Creek Park is officially open.

"The neighbourhood secured the funding for this park as part of the settlement for the One Bedford condominium," Vaughan says of the $800,000 the half-acre park's rehabilitation cost. "The Parks Department went off without talking to anyone. The park they came up with was a wonderful and astonishing design, but the community was not comfortable with it. It was a very modern design, very high-end design, and there were 10 different neighbourhoods where you could have dropped it and they would have said 'Wow,' but the neighbourhood is a heritage community."

So they demanded the city go back to the drawing board, which they did, to the neighbourhood's general satisfaction. But in the meantime, a piece of public art was commissioned from Maritime sculptor Ilan Sandler. He produced something akin to a vase or a jug, woven out of four kilometres of steel rod to mirror the length of the now submerged creek from which the park takes its name. As Vaughan explains it, the sculpture's antique shape disconnected it from the unrealized modern design for the park, and its modern design set it at odds with the park's ultimately more traditional design.

"It's like the Archer in Nathan Philips Square," Vaughan says. "Most people hated it [when it first went up], but if you tried to move it now, they’d lynch you."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

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Vaughan is about to join Markham and Mississauga in redefining suburbia.

Taking its lead from the construction of the York University subway station, the first to be planned outside the city of Toronto, Expo City is the first of several planned developments that are meant to eventually cover 400 acres of what is now mostly unused farmland and light industrial grounds.

Developed by Vaughan-based Cortel Group and designed by Alan Tregebov of YYZed Project Management, Expo City is a five-tower, 1,933-unit project.

"It would not be very different from downtown Toronto," Tregebov says. Among five-storey buildings, much taller towers will define the skyline. "It would not be very different from most cities, it's not a suburban form, it's very urban."

Expo City, launched last week, will be built up near the intersection of highways 7 and 400. The stretch of Highway 7 going through the development will be renamed Avenue 7.

Tregebov estimates that all five towers, each slated to be between 37 and 39 storeys high, will be completed in five to seven years.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Alan Tregebov

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Though it's been open for more than a year, the final touches have now finally been finalized and a plaques going up on the old Roxy Theatre.

Originally known as the Allenby, this 1935 theatre is now an Esso station and a Tim Horton's after years of desuetude.

"It's very exciting," says Councillor Paula Fletcher, who's ward it's in. "Michael McClelland at ERA Architects is who they hired… to restore the façade. It looks beautiful, better than it has in 60 years."

Fletcher suggests that the reason so much work went into the restoration is that Imperial Oil needed several variances, which the councillor implies she was able to use as tools in her negotiations with them. And according to her, they ended up going all out. "Even the ticket booth has been restored," she says, adding that the interior has also been decorated with pictures of the old interior, which was demolished.

A plaque outlining the building's history and paid for by ERA, will be unveiled next month.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paula Fletcher

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The old Four Seasons hotel will soon be a condo tower, and since Camrost-Felcorp are doing it, it will even continue to look like the old Four Seasons.

"We're going to respect the brutalist architecture of the building," says founder, president and CEO David Feldman, 
"and in that regard also the classical nature of the interiors of the existing Four Seasons building."

An earlier plan, by Menkes, would have seen the demolition of the building and the erection of two towers high enough to cause concern for the north-looking vista of the Ontario legislature. Under Camrost-Felcorp, the vista will be staying put.

They're even hiring the building's original architect, WZMH (formerly The Webb, Zerafa, Menkes, Housden Partnership), to work alongside interior firm The Design Agency on the project, which Feldman estimates will cost about $250 million.

When the refurbishment is done in early 2014, which will include retail, restaurants and maybe a bar at street level, units will be available in the $300,000 to $500,000 range.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: David Feldman

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As of this week, the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus has a little more space for its swelling student body.

The Instructional Centre cost $78 million, of which $70 million came from the federal and provincial governments, will add 13 classroom, 7 labs and 90 offices to the university's suburban campus, whose undergraduate enrollment has grown from about 5,000 in 2001 to 10,400 for the coming year.

Construction began on the 150,000 square foot Diamond and Schmitt-designed buildings in September, 2009, and people started using the buildings last March.

"Once we had occupancy, there was still the moving in the furnishings, getting all the classrooms set up," says UTSC's chief strategy officer Andrew Arifuzzaman.

"It's put us on a firm footing for growth as we move forward," he says.

The centre also has a restaurant facing Military Trail at Ellesmere, which is open to both students and the community at large.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Andrew Arifuzzaman

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The men behind The Social and Parts & Labour are opening an event space tonight at King and Bathurst.

The 8,000 square foot Hoxton will be a general entertainment space, the first of which will be a DJ show on Sept 3.

The building itself, once a printing factory, according to Hoxton principal Jesse Girard, was most recently the State Theatre night club.

"We completely gutted it," Girard says., "We changed the entranceway, we built a stage at the end of it. It used to be a very dark, cluttered space. We moved all the washrooms."

The design was conceived by Castor, the same people behind Parts & Labour. The renovation cost $750,000.

Girard and his partner, Richard Lambert, handled the contracting themselves on the project, which they started in February. "That's something I'll never do again," Girard says. "It's too much hands-on work. We tried to save some money. But it was an interesting experience."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jesse Girard

Photos courtesy of Notable.ca, Canada's digital publication for young professionals.

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The provincial government announced last week that Toronto Grace Health Centre would receive all the funding it needed for a complete overhaul.

The hospital, which caters to the chronically and terminally ill and is run by the Salvation Army, has 119 beds, a number it will maintain after the renovation. But significantly, according to Glen Murray, the Ontario Minister for Research and Innovation who announced the funding, "It's keeping all 119 beds active" throughout the renovation.

"Basically, it's a rebuild for the entire building," Murray says of the Bloor and Church hospital, built in 1909, and the setting of Allan King's 2003 documentary, Dying at Grace. "On the concrete skeleton of the old building, it will be rebuilt floor by floor into a brand new hospital." According to Murray, the hospital has set aside some money of its own � equivalent to roughly 10 per cent of the cost of the rebuild, which staff at the hospital are referring to as a "decanting" -- to begin preparations immediately before sending out the request for proposals for the project next summer.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Glen Murray

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"We're not digging anymore, thankfully," says Jim Ritchie of the Three Hundred, a long-planned condo at Front and John.

As of last week, the foundations were being poured on the 683-suite condo by Tridel, which according to Ritchie, who is Tridel's senior vice president for marketing and communications, is about 90 per cent sold.

The complex consists of one 49-storey tower and one 13-storey building next to it.

Designed by Rudy Wallman and Wallman Architects, Three Hundred is scheduled to be ready for occupancy by April of 2013.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source; Jim Ritchie

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As part of a $190-million investment, Roche Canada will be renovating its Mississauga campus to accommodate as many as 200 new employees.

"It's re-purposing the existing facilities," says Roche spokesman Mike Vesik. "We don't have enough room to build up on the property. We're taking a section of our warehouse to accommodate the new positions."

Vesik said renovations, which were to include new infrastructure and amenities such as a cafeteria, were going to begin immediately.

The $190-million, which includes $7.79 million from Ontario's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, will make the Mississauga campus into what Roche is calling a "global site for pharmaceutical development."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mike Vesik

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A company has leased the rooftops of five Ontario Purolator buildings to set up a solar power-generating business.

"We will own and operate, build and finance these projects, and monitor them over the course of the contract," says Sarah Simmons, government affairs manager for Sun Edison Canada.

Two of the five buildings are in Etobicoke.

According to Simmons, her company is currently working through the regulatory process for the deal, which was signed this month, and she expects work to be completed on the buildings within 12 months.

When all five buildings are up and running, Sun Edison, a division of MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., which manufactures the solar panels in Newmarket, expects to generate 1.14 megwatts of energy.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sarah Simmons

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Apparently, Oakville's not just for retirees anymore.

That's the assumption behind Stephen Teeple's design for a condo the marketers have called Op Art, which goes on sale this week.

"The client definitely was looking for something more youthful," Teeple says of Neilas, the Toronto developer behind Cube and Stage East. "Oakville is not as straightforward and flat as one might think. There's a lot of use there, vibrancy, an active downtown. They wanted something that would offer something different."

The two 10-storey towers set on a podium are made of precast concrete, which allowed Teeple to play with the shapes, which he expressed in black and white. Though not really producing the trompe l'oeil its name would suggest, the building does have a distinctive, and distinctively modern, design for staid old Oakville.

The 188 units, with interiors done by Cecconi Simone, start at around $250,000, further ingratiating the building with its youthful target demographic.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Stephen Teeple

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Reve, the almost completed condo at Front and Bathurst, may be the first building to bear its architect's name after a recent by-law was passed making it mandatory.

"I don't know if the law is going to take effect in time," says Tridel's senior vice president of sales and marketing Jim Ritchie, "but we already put plaques that say Tridel on every one of our buildings, so it would be easy to do and we'd be happy to accommodate it."

The architect of the 305-unit building is Rudy Wallman.

The building started taking its first occupants, mostly singles and couples according to Ritchie, at the beginning of the month, and it will be complete by the end of the year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jim Ritchie

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Toronto is well on its way to getting a new hospice for children that will allow their families to live right alongside them as long as they like.
The Philip Aziz Centre is building the $7.5 million Emily's House at Gerard and Broadview in front of the old Don Jail, part of which will be housed in the old jail governor's mansion.

The result of six years of working with the city and Bridgepoint Health, physical work began on the site in July.

The hospice has been named in honour of the capital campaign's first donor, Emily Yeskoo, a 16-year-old girl with a terminal illness who gave $100. The Centre has also received a $500,000 Trillium grant, as well as an anonymous donation of $2 million, and is currently about 75 per cent of the way to its goal.

Emily's House will have room for 10 hospice beds, in addition to the family facilities. It will be run free of charge.

"There are two buildings," says Rauni Salminen, executive director of the Philip Aziz Centre, "one is the mansion, which will become the children's home, with an addition of 6,000 square feet, and the smaller building, right on the street, will be the administrative offices for the current hospice. We've been providing support in their own homes."

The Philip Aziz Centre was founded with a bequest to the Church in the City by Mr. Aziz, an artist and art teacher, who died of AIDS in 1991.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Rauni Salminen


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].