city building : Development News

The LCBO is re-locating and expanding its Eglinton Square store.

Due to open Dec. 9, the new space, at Eglinton and Lebovic, near Pharmacy, will be a standalone shop, in keeping with the LCBO's current program of moving out of mall spaces.

The new shop will have 8,600 square feet of shopping space, compared to Eglinton Square's 3,700, which will be able to house roughly double the number of products, as well as a full-time "product consultant."

"With the increase in population over the years and changing tastes, [including] increased interest in premium products and home entertaining," says LCBO spokesman Chris Layton, "a new larger store with a full range of services was warranted to meet our current and future needs in this community."

The old store, which has been at Victoria Park and Eglinton since 1983, will close for good at its regular time this evening.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Layton


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Toronto Hydro is replacing 153 poles along western College Street in a $2.4-million neighbourhood upgrade.

The current poles and wiring are between 40 and 60 years old, according to Hydro spokeswoman Jennifer Link.

"We will be replacing wood with wood and square concrete with round concrete," Link says of the cedar and concrete poles along College. "On College 45-foot poles will be replaced with 50-foot poles and on Margueretta, Dufferin, and  St. Clarens the poles will be changed from 30-foot to 40-foot."

The wiring is also being improved, with capacity increased from 4.16 kilovolts to 13.8 kilovolts. As the wiring and poles are replaced, the system in the immediate vicinity is turned off for about 3 hours, resulting in small-scale outages.

The project, part of Hydro's $175-million city-wide upgrade, began in October, and Link expects it to be completed by the end of January.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jennifer Link

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Work has started on the second office tower slated for the block of land between York and Simcoe fronting on Bremner.

The tower, currently named Bremner Tower, is slated for occupancy in 24 months, and will join the nearly completed PwC Tower and the future 45-storey Delta Hotel to form part of what's being called Southcore Financial Centre.

The project is owned by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation and developed by GWL Realty Advisors. The two office towers, totalling 1.4 million square feet of office space, were designed by KPMB. The Bremner tower, the larger of the two, will offer 700,000 square feet on 30 floors.

According to Mervin McCoubrey, senior vice president of development for GWL's Eastern Canadian division, all three buildings are being built with the environment very much in mind.

"We're building to LEED Gold standards," he says as he leads a tour around the unfinished interior of the PwC Tower, but adds that whether they get certification or not, their concerns and efforts are focused on that level of sustainability. The buildings will have roof water collection, which will be used both for toilets and to water the extensive wooded areas being built as third-floor terraces on all three buildings. Light sensors in the building will alter the artificial light levels based on existing natural light, and they'll be making extensive use of Enwave's deep lake water cooling, doing their intake at night, so they can also make use the energy they use in the process at off-peak hours.

There will also be more than 130 interior bike parking spots in each of the two office towers, and the whole complex is connected directly to both the TTC and GO Transit.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mervin McCoubrey

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Robert Sidi is not a fan of tolerance.

"For 25 years, most of my best friends have been architects," says the owner of Kiosk, the furniture store that just moved its residential location from Dupont and Christie to King and Parliament, "and we sit down and tell stories of frustrations, when so much talent goes to waste, when developers refuse to stray even a little bit from the Home Depot standard. Standard this, standard that. The tolerance for this is 3 inches, the tolerance for that is 6 inches. And I'm saying the tolerance for this is 3mm."

At first, you don't notice much beyond the acute angles, the porous planes that make up the two floors that both divide and join the three floors of the new shop that specializes in four-figure furniture, with the occasional foray into the fives. The floors are white, which is interesting, and the 20,000 square foot space is made both practical and intimate by being organized into staging areas, where scenes are set with various pieces and sets of furniture.

But it's only when you look at the places where the walls meet the floors, and where two walls meet in a corner of the ceiling, that you realize there are no tolerances here. There are no mouldings, no baseboards to hide drywall approximations. Then look at how the sprinklers are centred perfectly above panes of glass, or electrical outlets set flush inside concrete columns, and you'll begin to get a sense that this space is very, very well constructed.

Designed by Vancouver architect Omer Arbel, with construction overseen by Sidi, who took a seven-month sabbatical to make sure everything was perfect, the shop is a window onto what Toronto might look like if more owners and trades demanded perfection of themselves and each other.

As Sidi says himself, "Who gives a damn about furniture showrooms? Let's have our institutions like this."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Robert Sidi

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Menkes has just launched the second tower of their latest condo project for North York Centre, adding to a collection that has done much to define the skyline there.

The two 42-storey towers, which will house a total of 901 units, were designed by Rafael and Bigausakas, will join other Menkes residential projects in the immediate area -- Pinnacle, Royal Pinnacle, Ultima and Broadway � and will, like them, offer direct indoor access to the North York Centre subway station.

"Menkes has played a pioneering role in the creation of the North York City Centre community," says Mimi Ng, vice president of marketing. "We have been actively building in this area along Yonge Street since the early 1980s, and over the past 30 years we have built over 2 million square feet of retail and commercial space and over 5,000 condominium residences in this node." The commercial space they've built there includes the Procter and Gamble building, the Transamerica tower, and the Empress Walk shopping centre. "We remain very committed to the ongoing growth and evolution of this community."

The model suites for the project, which is called Gibson Square for the Gibson House Museum next door, were designed by Munge Leung.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mimi Ng

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Tomorrow, on the second day of Construct Canada, the country's biggest building trade and professional show, Cliff Korman will lead a discussion on the negotiating skills needed to get a project built in as close to the way it was intended as possible.

According to Korman, who put the "kor" in Kirkor Architects, "It's an idea I've been working on for a little while, something called the 'collaborative planning process.'" He says about 90 per cent of the work he does in Toronto involves intensifications or re-zoning, and as a result has to wend its way through a labyrinth of panels, committees, interest groups and regulations.

"It's become a very, very complex group of problems," he says. "In the municipal planning process, we have planners, ratepayers, councillors, design review panels, neighbourhood design charettes; you don't just have a client anymore, you have a huge collaborative effort."

We've got plenty of design and development talent in the city, he says; all we need is a little more negotiating know-how to convey the value of projects to a wide variety of stakeholders and decision-makers.

Korman's panel will include Moiz Behar of M. Behar Planning & Design, Niall Haggert, executive vice president of Daniels Corporation, and Stephen Upton, vice president of development planning at Tridel.

Construct Canada, which this year offers 1,050 exhibits, and is being held at the same time and next to the Home Builder and Renovator Expo, Concrete Canada and Design Trends, takes place Dec. 1-3 in the South Building of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Cliff Korman

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Toronto Hydro is finishing its $2-million maintenance and upgrading of its underground transformers in the east end early. A Toronto Hydro spokeswoman says work that was meant to be completed by the end of the month is now expected to wrap up today.

The work on Sheppard Avenue East south to the lake and Rouge Valley west to Meadowvale and Centennial roads involved replacing the residential transformers and installing fault indicators to improve power restoration times during future outages.

An estimated 2,570 people were affected by rolling outages as the work was being done over the past two months in batches of 100-200 at a time, typically between 9am and 5pm.

"Toronto Hydro has a program that addresses system reliability," says spokeswoman Jennifer Link, explaining why the work was being carried out. "Under this program, we are replacing underground distribution equipment in response to reliability concerns."

The project is part of Toronto Hydro's $275-million PowerUp program, which is upgrading infrastructure across the city.


Writer: Bert Archer

Source: Jennifer Link


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Toronto's first shop dedicated to the Italian Calligaris line -- a mid- to upper-end Italian furniture designer -- opened last week on the increasingly dense King East furniture strip.

"We were looking for a particular square footage," says store owner and manager Yana Evlentieva, whose family has been in luxury retail in Moscow for 18 years, and recently moved to Toronto. "Real estate on the street is hard to come by. It just happened that at that time [that we were looking], the two units became available, and none of them worked for us independently, so we decided to combine the two spaces, and it worked out fabulous for us."

The total space is 5,000 square feet, part of which is in the old Imperial Bank building.

Evlentieva says the reason she approached Calligaris about opening a shop in Toronto is that their designs are especially well suited to condos.

"They're building 20,000 units of condos a year," Evlentieva estimated, "which is by far the highest rate in North America, so people are looking for furniture, and what we are offering is very functional furniture, [much of which] is meant for small spaces."

The renovation took about two months to complete, and was designed in Italy, modeled after the company's flagship store in Milan.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Yana Evlentieva

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The ground was broken this past Friday on the city's newest hotel, a hotel Canada's largest chain, Delta, hopes will redefine the brand.

"It will have no exterior walls," says Delta president and CEO Hank Stackhouse, "it'll all be glass." He says the rooms will all be oversized as well, with most being over 400 square feet. "It will also be highly steeped in technology," he says, saying it will have WiFi "top to bottom," though as for the rest of the technological amenities for guests, "as sure as we're standing here today, technology will be different by 2014," he says, of the projected opening date, so he's loath to go into particulars.

The building will be built to high environmental standards, however, with systems for heat recovery ventilation, low-flow water fixtures, a green roof and an "urban forest" of full-grown deciduous trees on about 10,000 square feet of terrace on the third floor.

The building, built on land once owned by Fairmont, sold to BCIMC (British Columbia Investment Management Corporation) and now managed by GWL Realty Advisors, will be 45 storeys high, with 566 rooms, including 24 extended-stay suites with full kitchens.

The building was designed by Toronto's Page and Steele/IBI Group; the interiors will be by Champalimaud Design in New York.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Hank Stackhouse

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Work on the foundation for the first building of the new George Brown campus on the waterfront is nearing completion. The 330,000 square foot, 8-storey building with underground parking on the 0.83-hectare site is expected to cost a total of $175 million.

What's currently known as Building A, the larger of two buildings that will house the campus's four health sciences schools, is expected to be able to accommodate its first students in the fall of 2012. It was designed by Stantec and KPMB, and construction is being managed by EllisDon.

"There were many practical reasons for proceeding with the waterfront location," says Lorie Shekter-Wolfson, dean and assistant vice-president for the Waterfront Campus development, "namely the close proximity to our existing St. James campus -- but the fact that Waterfront Toronto was looking for a post-secondary institution to help revitalize the waterfront made our involvement a natural fit."

Once complete, the new campus will be able to accommodate about 4,000 students in its dental, nursing, health management, continuing education and "health and wellness" schools.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Lorie Shekter-Wolfson


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Booze-buying commuters will have to change their shopping habits as of Nov. 25, when the hugely popular Union Station LCBO moves to the underground portion of the Royal Bank Plaza, one of the first signs of the coming massive renovation at the station.

The new store will be bigger, offering about 2,700 square feet of shopping space, as opposed to the old one's 1,800.

"It's a good location, because it's very close to the subway," says LCBO spokesman Chris Layton. "Something like 195,000 people pass by each week."

The old store, which Layton says has been around and mostly unchanged since the 1970s, will close for good at the end of the business day on Nov 24.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Layton

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The gentrification of the formerly industrial Dupont strip continues westward with the renovation of the old Angelo's Diner (aka Howland Diner, aka AAA Chinese) at 268 Howland on the corner of Dupont.

Leanne Martineau and her husband, Stephen Hancock, moved onto Howland three years ago and with her history in the food industry, had her eye on this space ever since. Her husband had grown up in the area and used to go to Angelo's, which had been in business on the corner from the 1940s up to the 1970s or early 80s. "It was always a space in the neighbourhood where all the kids would go for their French fries," Martineau says.

When AAA Chinese moved out this past spring, Martineau and Hancock, along with business partners Sarah Baxter and her husband Reid Pickering, who owns The Feathers pub in The Beach, contacted the landlord, Chris Chaggaris, Angelo's son, and made a deal.

The $250,000 renovation expenses, which include putting in a full-sized basement, re-doing the interior complete with custom-made furniture by Jason Davis Design/Build, as well as recladding the small structure in brick, were split between landlord and tenants.

Martineau and Baxter will manage the restaurant, to be called Fanny Chadwick's, after a historical Annex figure Martineau uncovered, and will be hiring four wait staff and five kitchen staff for the planned mid-January opening.

The flooring was installed and kitchen appliances were moved in this week.

The restaurant will be relatively upscale, with main dishes between $15 and $25. And the neighbourhood kids, in recent years mostly from Royal St. George's College down the street? "It's not going to be a particularly attractive space for them to hang out," Martineau says. "There's certainly enough of that on Bloor Street."

"The development on Dupont -- a lot of designer firms, little intricate shops, especially closer to Spadina -- has certainly taken hold," Martineau says, "and it's just a matter of time before it continues on."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Leanne Martineau


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Dufferin is finally straight. After months of work to align the jog in the road that occurred around Queen, the newly orthogonal street will have it's official unveiling tomorrow at 3pm at the north end of the underpass between Queen and Peel.

"It's been a project the city has wanted to do for decades, almost a century in fact," says Councillor Gord Perks, in whose ward Dufferin once jogged. He lists one of the major benefits of the change a quicker running time of the Dufferin bus, which will, he says, allow fewer buses to transport more people in less time, which translates into financial savings.

He also foresees new development in response to the friendlier streetscape, which includes an amphitheatre on former scrubland and a bike path that leads from Dufferin to the future site of a railway bike path.

"Already the 2 Gladstone project is going in, and there will be opportunities for development along Dufferin north of the bridge that had been abandoned, empty warehouses," he says, adding that one such proposal, for a public health centre, has already been approved.

There will also be a major piece of public art, a mosaic, by Toronto artist Luis Jacob inside the underpass, a $300,000 installation whose cost is equivalent to 1 per cent of the project's total $30-million expense.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Gord Perks

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Roncesvalles still isn't finished. But it's getting there. Work on this second phase of road-munching began in July, and is expected to be finished by April or May.

The current $9.2-million phase of work, being carried out by Sanscon Construction, includes TTC track construction, transit platform construction, road reconstruction and resurfacing, sidewalk repair and streetscaping, including continuous soil trenches to give planted trees more root freedom.

The earlier work, carried out between July, 2009 and May of this year included water main and sewer replacement over the same 2km stretch of beleaguered road roughly between Queen and Dundas.

"More or less, all of the infrastructure was of an age that it needed significant repair or replacement," says John Kelly of the city's technical services division. "The surface works were the first to be identified as required, and we always try to co-ordinate any underground utility work with road reconstruction to maximize the life span of the road by minimizing the need to cut into it in the future."

So, stiff upper lips till May, then, to all those business owners behind the cheeky, door-mounted Construction Sucks posters.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: John Kelly

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Toronto-based Quadrangle Architects have won a design award for urbanization work they've done in Markham.

The firm got the Urban Intensification Award for the four-building Rouge Bijou development, downtown Markham's first condo project.

The project gets its name in part from its proximity to the Rouge River at the western edge of Markham's city centre.

"The ambition is to establish a context for the next buildings and support the vision of Downtown Markham as a compact, sustainable, walkable and transit-oriented community," said Quadrangle principal Sheldon Levitt in a press release.

Rouge Bijou, whose buildings range in height from seven to 10 storeys and which house a total of 450 living spaces, is part of a larger, nine-building collection of buildings that also includes Verdale, Nexus North and Nexus South.

Rouge Bijou is also built to LEED Silver standards, and includes in-suite energy recovery ventilators, super-lobby green roofs and will collect rain for grey water use.

The award was presented on November 8.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sheldon Levitt

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