Infrastructure : Development News

A lot of people will soon be inhabiting the Waterfront, all ultimately gathered in an area that has, traditionally, been more or less unserved by transit, given its largely industrial heritage, making the roll-out of transit options, from mass transit to bicycle access to roads for cars, of paramount importance in the coming years.

On March 25, Waterfront CEO John Campbell and First Gulf CEO David Gerofsky had a conversation about the Waterfront's future and its present city-building initiatives under the moderation of Glen Murray, Ontario’s Minister of Infrastructure. The title of the discussion was "Connecting the Dots: Waterfront Roads, Rail and Redevelopment."

Both CEOs have played a role in creating entire neighbourhoods (First Gulf is responsible for redeveloping the former Lever Brothers lands), making them both familiar with the obstacles and opportunities specific to this rarefied form of city-building.

"Developing an entire neighbourhood requires a big vision and a well-thought out fully integrated plan," Campbell told Yonge Street after the event. "In order to create a vital and inclusive neigbourhood you need to ensure that there is a complimentary mix of residences, commercial and retail space, and public spaces. Having a well-thought out plan ensures that you avoid having uses that don’t fit and need to be fixed or adjusted afterwards. You also have to ensure that you have the necessary infrastructure in place to support the needs of the community – now and in the future. 
 
"Waterfront Toronto’s approach has always been strategic revitalization as opposed to simple real estate development. We take an integrated planning and design approach that looks not just at buildings but at all the things that make great cities, such as street networks that link to the rest of the city and scale that fosters a good sense of community, walkability and balancing all modes of transportation. We also emphasize parks and public spaces, and we design in a way that’s environmentally and economically sustainable."

Campbell listed public cynicism, limited resources, global competition and complexity as the main challenges behind creating communities from whoe cloth.

Though the benefits are at least as redoubtable. Campbell said that the $1.26 billion that has been invested in the Waterfront is generating $3.2 billion of economic output, $622 million in government revenues, and 16,200 years worth of full-time employment.

Included in this is $2.6 billion of development, which he helpfully spelled out for the audience. Bayside Development is worth $910 million, the PanAm/ParaPan athletes’ village $814 million, River City $383 million, Monde condos $276 million, Toronto Community Housing $95 million, and George Brown College’s Health Sciences campus $85 million.

In addition to that, Campbell claimed there were 44 recent or planned developments on privately owned land adjacent to Waterfront lands that is capitalizing on Waterfront infrastructure to the tune of $9.6 billion.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: John Campbell

The new Waterfront neighbourhood of Bayside in the East Bayfront is holding a contest to name its main street.

Until March 27, you can go to Waterfront’s Facebook page or tweet your suggestion with the hashtag #waterfrontstreet and a panel will cull a shortlist from the entries. Then, between April 22 and May 2, you’ll be able to vote on the finalists.

“The revitalization of Toronto’s waterfront isn’t about just one community or one pocket of the city," says Waterfront Toronto spokeswoman Samantha Gileno, "the waterfront really is an asset for everyone. So holding a public street naming contest gives us a chance, in a fun way, to have a conversation about street names and get people involved in this part of city planning.

“It’s fun to hear the kinds of names that appeal to people. Some have been thinking about the rich history of the waterfront others are playing with water themes."

Though it will be the area’s main street, Bayside is going to be a small neighbourhood, so the street in question – more a crescent than a street, really – is only 500 metres long, beginning and ending at Queens Quay East.

According to Gileno, early infrastructure work on the street is now underway, including some excavation of the former industrial site, which housed the Canpar warehouse.

The winning street name will be announced in May.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Samantha Gileno

Architects can do more than just design your building. If you get them to believe in your project, they can help you raise the money to get it built.

It turns out that those renderings that architects do, sometimes for free, sometimes on spec, can be powerful tools to get developers, backers and government agencies interested in a project. When Tony Azevedo wanted to build a seven-storey condo in his old neighbourhood on Dundas West, for instance, he got Richard Witt, then with RAW, to do up an attractive rendering package, and it was on the strength of that package that Azevedo was able to make enough in pre-sales to actually start digging.

They can be even more powerful when the project is not-for-profit.

"Eva’s Initiatives, which provides housing and training for underhoused and homeless youth, are on Ordinance Street," says Janna Levitt of LGA Architectural Partners, who spoke with Yonge Street after speaking on a recent panel about design and social change. "They’re getting kicked out because of condos. They got a new location [city councillor] Adam Vaughan helped them find, and we’ re working with them to develop packages to go out and get funding."

It’s a skill some firms, such as LGA, have developed over time as they realized the power of the rendering to make a project seem more real to potential clients.

"I would say that at this point we have the expertise," Levitt says. "It became one of the things that we realized we were doing quite often. In our case, it was because the people we were doing it for were really forward-thinking people who had ideas about the way a certain program should run and didn’t understand it would cost additional money to do that, or who were just going out on a limb."

Levitt sees it as a way for architects to be "agents of change."

"You can, through your work, effect change on a whole lot of levels with every building," Levitt says, "and that’s very exciting."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Janna Levitt

Tomorrow is the deadline to communicate your thoughts on the future of the east Gardiner.

About 200 people showed up to the third and final public meeting for the environmental assessment of the 2.4 km stretch of elevated highway on Feb. 6, which was also streamed live.

The section in question runs from Jarvis to just east of the Don Valley Parkway. The options being evaluated are to maintain it, "improve the urban fabric" while maintaining it, replace it with a new expressway of some sort, or remove it and build a boulevard. The options, as developed by the city and Waterfront Toronto, are on view here.

According to the environmental assessment, the four goals of the project are to reconnect the city with the lake; balance various modes of travel, cycling, walking and transit along with the previously favoured cars; achieving greater sustainability; and generally creating value, letting the project act as a catalyst for future development of the area.

After taking a look at the proposals, and scrolling through the Twitter conversation hashtagged #GardinerEast, you can send in your thoughts by filling out the form here before the end of the day tomorrow.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Waterfront Toronto

In proof that a city is more than its political parts, Toronto has been named one of the world’s 7 most intelligent communities.

The designation comes from the Intelligent Community Forum, the 13-year-old international organization that rates communities based on "policies and practices that are creating positive economic, governing and social activity."

The 2014 shortlist is the most geographically concentrated in the ICF’s history, with two cities each from Taiwan and the US, and three from Canada.

The list includes Hsinchu City and New Taipei City in Taiwan, Arlington, Virginia, and Columbus, Ohio, and Kingston, Winnipeg and Toronto.

According to the ICF, Toronto is cited specifically for its "renowned waterfront development that will provide Internet at 500 times the speed of conventional residential networks."

Representatives from the ICF will be visiting the shortlisted cities over the next several months, and the final decision will be made in New York City in June.

According to Kristina Verner, Waterfront Toronto’s director of Intelligent Communities, the importance of this designation "is largely economic development, in terms of brand recognition that there is the technological capacity, as well as the innovation and workforce capacity, for emerging businesses."

Last year’s winner was Taichung City, Taiwan. Toronto was also on last year's shortlist.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristina Verner

Jennifer Keesmaat, Toronto’s chief planner, will be talking about her favourite subject, walking to school, at Walk Toronto’s annual general meeting next Wednesday.

"We're generating a culture change in our school system and in our communities around walking," Keesmaat says, "recognizing walking to school as being a fundamental part of creating healthy, happy communities."

Her thinking on the subject, which she has laid in several TEDx talks, is that walking to school benefits children's health, creates communities that are pedestrian friendly, and increases the chances parents will send their children to local schools, discouraging the development of what Keesmaat calls mega-schools.

"In downtown Halifax, they closed a series of schools and opened a mega-school," she says, "and guess what that mega-school needed? A huge parking lot. Part of the connection I would like to make is that there is a public policy implication in the academic performance of our children and the cohesive strength of our communities that is unrelated to the financial efficiency of having one building instead of five."

Keesmaat believes that walking and pedestrian issues are a fundamental part of a city’s transportation planning. "Thinking about walking is a part of how we learn about our community. It’s not a design question, it’s a choice question and a cultural issue.

"We have a culture where we've become inverted in just one generation from being communities, back in the 1960s, where 70 per cent of our children walked to school, to now, when 70 per cent of our children are driven to school. Schools are still centrally located, they’re still within walking distance, and the choice is being made to drive.”

Keesmaat says our communities are safer than ever but, ironically, our perception of their safety is lower than ever. She says there’s a direct correlation between this perception, having children walking on the sidewalks, employing crossing guards, and generally populating the streets with people instead of cars.

Keesmaat will be speaking and taking questions from 8pm to 9pm on Wednesday, Feb. 12, at the University of Toronto Schools auditorium at 371 Bloor St. W.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jennifer Keesmaat

The first step in the reimagining of what was once Ontario Place is underway, and the province is presenting its initial ideas to the public on the 22nd.

This is the second of four planned public meetings on the subject. The first, in early December, introduced interested folks to the design team.

The first phase of a multi-year redevelopment, according to an announcement the province made in June, will be a new park and waterfront trail.

"The new public space will be open and accessible to Ontarians, creating much-needed green space and access to the waterfront," says Charles Millett, a manager with the communications branch of the Ontario government. "The new park and trail will serve as an anchor for future development on the rest of the site."

The consultations will continue through the spring, at which point a decision will be made as to what, exactly, will be done.

"Engaging with Ontarians on the park design is a priority for us," Millet says. "The design process for the park will be collaborative to ensure that Ontarians’ ideas and comments are reflected in the final design."

The current goal is to have the park and trail completed by 2015.

And what then?

"The scale and complexity of this project means that it needs to be completed in phases to ensure the transformation is done in the best possible way," says Millett. "It is too early to say what the next phase of revitalization will include. The new public park and waterfront trail will serve as an anchor for future development on the site."

Writer; Bert Archer
Source: Charlene Millett

Photo by Tanja-Tiziana.

Last year did not do much for Toronto’s image as an intelligent city. But Waterfront Toronto is looking to turn that all around in 2014.

For the second time in as many years, Waterfront is spearheading Toronto’s application to the Intelligent Community Foundation in the hopes of being named the world’s most intelligent city. Out of more than 400 applications, we’ve already made it to the top 21, and at the end of this month, we’ll find out if we made the final seven, as we did in 2005 and again last year.

Cities are judged by the foundation on criteria such as digital inclusion strategies and the status of their knowledge-based workforce. The 2011 winner, Eindhoven, Netherlands, is known for its Brainport, a public-private project that’s controibuted 55,000 jobs over the past decade. Last year’s winner, Taichung City, Taiwan, is known for its environmental friendliness.

According to Kristina Verner, Waterfront Toronto’s director of intelligent communities, Toronto is already becoming known in global circles for building the only community in which the principles of intelligent communities are, in the words of people who speak of such things, baked in.

"We're serving as a catalyst for the city of Toronto," Verner says of the work going on at the Waterfront. "We're a living lab, not just for the city, but for other cities in North America."

According to Verner, winning the competition would drastically increase the city's so-called brand recognition in the community of site selectors – corporate types who decide where in the world facilities will be built – as well as governments looking to collaborate on large projects, as Eindhoven did with Waterloo, which won the title in 2007.

If Toronto makes it to the final seven, it moves on to the final phase, the results of which are to be announced in New York in June.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristina Verner

Photos courtesy of Waterfront Toronto.

The first building on Waterfront's East Bayfront isn't going to break ground until next year, but before the condos comes the infrastructure, and East Bayfront's going to need a lot of it.

The13-acre site, being developed by Tridel and Hines under the name Bayside, will require a continuation of the water's edge promenade, new public streets and stormwater management.

In the fall, crews began reinforcing the dockwall I preparation for the promenade, and demolition and various other forms of site preparation began.

"Over the next few months, crews will begin the stormwater management facility for the development, continue with the construction of municipal services -- watermain, Hydro -- and dockwall reinforcemen," says Samantha Gileno of Waterfront Toronto. "Promenade construction will begin March, 2014."

East Bayfront is part of the massive effort by the city to rehabilitate its waterfront, which has not served the city at all well since its industrial days.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Samantha Gileno

It turns out when you ask the business community to cut their energy use, and they find out that it also saves them money, they go green like gangbusters.

Civic Action announced last week that the Race to Reduce, a voluntary campaign among Toronto’s commercial landlords and their clients to shave their energy use by 10 per cent in four years, was two years ahead of schedule, with consumption to the end of 2012 - figures that have just been compiled and analyzed -- down nine per cent ahead of their end-of-2014 schedule.

Brad Henderson, a senior managing regional director for CBRE and Race co-chair, is proud of what they’ve been able to collectively do so far.

"There was a lot of heavy lifting in the early days," he says. "We needed to establish process, we needed to get consensus on how information on energy reduction would be collected, measures and reported.  We also determined that it was important to collect and document case studies and tools used by participants as a way to help accelerate achievement by other companies.  While this work has been completed, there is a lot more work to be done."

The fact that they were able to do as much as they were is largely attributable to the fact that in the first few years of what's expected to be an ongoing program, Race participants were mostly large landlords and large tenants with, Henderson says, "considerable resources to mount significant energy reduction programs."

Programs included switching to LED lamps, converting to 100 per cent daytime cleaning to reduce lights used after hours, and decommissioning inefficient transformers.

(The Commercial Building Energy Leadership Council, made up of landlords and tenants representing 175 buildings and 67 million square feet, set their own reduction goals.)

The big challenge now, Henderson says, is that they've started recruiting smaller players. "As a result," he says, "achieving success of energy reduction will get harder and harder. Notwithstanding, the Race to Reduce participants are dedicated to persevere."

The Council is scheduled to set its new goals in January.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Brad Henderson

The amount of money developers are subsidizing the city’s infrastructure with is going up dramatically.

Development charges are the way the city extracts money from the companies building all our new condos and office towers to help defray the costs of, among other things, transit, water and sewer, roads and parks. They come up for renewal every five years, but this year, the city in its eagerness has already reached the penultimate step in approving an average of a 70 per cent increase in the rates seven months in advance of the April deadline.

"For a two-bedroom condo, the rates are increasing about 70 per cent, from about $12,000 a unit to just over $21,000," says Rob Hatton, the director of strategic initiatives in the city’s corporate finance division.

The almost completed Aura at College Park, for instance, would pay the city and its residents about $20 million in development charges under the new system.

The rates for single-family dwellings is rising even higher, by 78 per cent.

"It’s a substantial increase," Hatton says, pointing out that even thought it’s slightly less than the last increase five years ago, that increase was belayed in response to the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

"The city is clearly growing," he says, "so we’ve had to make significant investments to maintain service levels."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Rob Hatton

"Harbord Village is always like this. You ask them to do something, and they turn it into a piece of genius."

Councillor Adam Vaughan is talking about the lane-naming that's been going on in and around Harbord over the past several weeks. Naming laneways around town has become a priority for the city in the last couple of years, as emergency services makes it clear that it can help them locate people and situations more precisely, and communities have used the opportunity to celebrate themselves.

Harbord Village has used its namings as an impetus to remind its residents, and the city at large, of the neighbourhood's history, organizing events around each naming, and setting up a website to provide more details.

Recent laneways have been named in honour of Barbara Barrett, founder of the Toronto School of Art, the Greenberg family, several generations of whom have lived in the same Harbord Village house for about a century, writer and poet Barker Fairley, and Albert Jackson, Toronto’s first black postman, who lived in a house currently occupied by literary editor Patrick Crean. According to Vaughan, there were guests from as far away as Atlanta who came in for the naming ceremony back on July 6.

The lane that's received the most attention, though, is the Boys of Major Lane, named for six boys, all from Major Street, who fought in WWII. Only two, including the aforementioned Greenberg family’s son Joe, returned.

Vaughan says the next neighbourhood that will be announcing its line-up of lane-names will be Seaton Village. They’ve got a tough act to follow.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

The people at the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority were leaving nothing to chance during the recent deluge. On July 9, in addition to everything else, they were paying special attention to a newly built mound that's part of the River City 2 condo development.

"We were monitoring it 24/7," says the TRCA's Sameer Dhalla of what's technically known as a berm, or a flood protection landform, put in place by the TRCA and Urban Capital, the developer behind the River City condo project.

It was built to protect the eastern downtown core, from the Don to Bay Street, from the sort of flooding that's known in meteorological circles as a 100-year storm.

And during the lashing the city got on July 9, the TRCA were at no point certain this wasn't one of them.

There were indications that it might not be. The storm limited itself to the downtown core, for instance, excluding much of the Don River watershed, which extends north to Richmond Hill, meaning there would probably be little of what's known as river flooding--the exult of too much rain dumped into the entirety of a river system--as opposed to urban flooding, which is what happens when a city's sewerage and guttering infrastructure can't handle the amount of rain that's falling, and backs up into the streets.

In the end, this ended up being one of the saving graces of what was otherwise quite a catastrophic storm. The very fact that the city's infrastructure couldn't handle the rain meant that not too much of it made it into the rivers, keeping the truly monumental sort of flooding that happened along the Humber during 1954's Hurricane Hazel at bay.

When the storm was over, the berm was barely touched, with no flooding at all in the flood protection landforms vicinity, south of King Street between River Street and the river.

Which, on one hand, is good news, and on the other, means we ain't seen nothing yet.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sameer Dhalla

The huge Toronto Star parking lot at the base of One Yonge Street looked even bigger this week when sketches leaked showing an as-of-yet undiscussed 30-storey tower. The sketches show a major ground-level retail component across Queens Quay to form the bulk of the development land, for which the developer purportedly paid more than a quarter of a billion dolllars.

The sketches, by Hariri Pontarini for Pinnacle Interntional, show a crystal-shaped glass tower with what looks like three storeys of ground-level retail. Given the site's proximity to several major Waterfront Toronto developments, as well as a large Loblaws and one of the city's two biggest LCBO outlets, the addition of this much retail could significantly increase the amount of traffic, both pedestrian and automotive, to the currently quiet section of town.

According to a member of Councillor Pam McConnell’s office, who was not authorized to speak on the record, the sketches are very preliminary and can’t even be considered until the Lower Yonge Precinct Study is complete, which won’t be for at east six months.

The staff member expressed the hope that the new proposal would be informed by that study, which is expected to prioritize office space in any major development in the area, which abuts the Waterfront Toronto revitalization area to the east.

Sarah Henstock, a senior planner with the city, confirms that there has been no formal application from Pinnacle, and regarding the precinct study, she says "We would hope that it would inform their application. It’s really up to a property owner what they want to apply for and how they want to work through a process." But, she adds, "Some property owners do work with us, and some, not so much."

The sketches, which may turn into the official proposal, feature five towers, the highest of which is 98 storeys, which would make it the tallest residential or office building in the country, beating the current record-holder, First Canadian Place, by 26 storeys. Tom Yim, the spokesman for Pinnacle's Toronto office, says they'll probably be waiting for the study to be released before going ahead with their final plans and proposal.

The Toronto Star building itself is expected to remain the same.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Pam McConnell

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].

In a case of space defining culture, the new Leslieville wine bar Skin and Bones is taking not only its aesthetic, but also its name from the former industrial property the restaurant partners first spotted in July.

The owners, both formerly with Pizza Libretto and Enoteca Sociale, used the skeleton of a stout, industrial-era brick building as a jumping off point to design the new open-concept space on the norht side of Queen Street at Carlaw.

The former Trusty Automotive double-wide space at 980 Queen Street East was built about a century ago, and according to Skin and Bones managing partner Harry Wareham, it looks like it was built as a high-end factory with no expense spared.

“The costs to put in the steel I beams originally must have been astronomical,” Wareham says of the now-exposed 12” x 24” beams that form the 16-foot-high ceiling. When Wareham and his partner, Daniel Clarke, were inspecting the place, a consulting engineer told them that, though there were at the time several interior walls, none was load-bearing. This meant that the entire structure is supported by the beams and the four exterior walls, and that they were free to hollow it out to their hearts’ content.

Wareham says the whole project, which involved polishing the original concrete floors and installing the kitchen, took four months and cost just under $1 million.

The contractor was PT Construction.

Though the basic idea of the place, including the menu and the wine list, had already been decided on, what they were able to do with the space moved them to name it as they did. In addition to the bare aesthetic, the name also refers to the skins of the grapes, and bones, which according to Wareham, “are the basis of all good cooking.”

Skin and Bones opened in December.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Harry Wareham

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].