city building : Development News

Pickering got a major boost last week when it was announced that Ontario Power Generation (OPG) had agreed to rent most of the remaining floors of the as-yet unnamed tower project under construction that will kick off what Pickering mayor Dave Ryan hopes will be a revitalization of the east-end city.

The $50-million project, which is being built with $30 million in provincial and federal stimulus funding by 20 Vic Management, the development arm of the Ontario Pension Board, will also include a bridge over the 401 between the tower and the GO station.

"We're calling it Pickering's Bridge to the Future," says Mayor Ryan, who is confident the construction of the bridge, which should begin by the end of this month, will not greatly affect traffic.

"It's a concept we've had since 1996," Mayor Ryan says. "We didn't have a design, but we had the idea linking the GO station with Pickering Town Centre, which is essentially our downtown on the north side of the 401."

The original and anchor tenant will be the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), which had threatened to move out of Pickering, with its 200 jobs, until Mayor Ryan brokered a deal to build this tower on the south end of what's now the Pickering Town Centre parking lot, to suit their requirements for increased office space.

MPAC is set to occupy in March of next year, with OPG moving in by June.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Dave Ryan

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The city presented its final plan for the redesign of Dundas West from University to Bathurst on Sept. 27.

The public meeting was held at Alexandra Park Community Centre, in the centre of one of the neighbourhoods that's set for a major overhaul from urban hodge podge to a planned and designed streetscape.

The basic idea is to decongest the strip by designating transit only lanes, a sharrow lane meant for bikes and cars, and more space for pedestrians on wider sidewalks punctuated by trees, new street lights and new street furniture, including redesigned ring and posts, newspaper boxes and so-called "multi-publication structures" for non-newspaper publications like the one currently on the west side of Bay just south of Bloor.

According to the city's web page devoted to the plan, the strip of Dundas, one of the city's most distinctively urban, is "vibrant," "hectic" and "frenetic." "But it's also disheveled and chaotic. With some careful attention to detail, it could be so much more."

Construction has begun, with the replacement of watermains along the strip, a process scheduled for completion by the end of 2011. The re-design will begin after the watermains have been finished, and the entire project is expected to be completed in 2012.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Steve Johnston

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The buildings have all been demolished, and the materials all sorted for recycling at the future site of the Hullmark Centre at Yonge and Sheppard.

"Demolition will be complete by the end of this month, which will allow us to get going with the excavation of the site," says Jim Ritchie, senior vice president of Tridel, the developer of the three acre residential commercial complex best known, so far, for having signed Whole Foods as one of its anchor clients.

When complete, the complex will have two condo towers, an office building, retail, and a new path to the subway.

Ritchie expects excavation to take five to six months, and another five to six months of construction for the building to reach ground level.

The first occupancies are expected in 2013.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jim Ritchie


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Last year, when Home Ownership Alternatives was a finalist for the World Habitat Awards, they threw a party on the UN's designated World Habitat Day to let people know, and to celebrate their various partners who helped them provide the city with an entirely new kind of affordable housing.

It went so well, they decided to do it again, and give the city an event at which to announce a major new funding initiative.

"It's an opportunity to bring together various partners and stakeholders and thank them on a day the world should be talking about availability of affordable housing," says HOA vice president in charge of partnerships, Joe Deschenes-Smith.

So on October 4, between 80 and 100 people from various levels of the municipal and provincial development sector will gather at the Enoch Turner School House, where Sean Gadon, director of the City's Affordable Housing Office, will announce the city's $3.5-million support for affordable housing under a new program.

If it goes as well this year as last, Deschenes-Smith says they'll likely make it an annual event.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Joe Deschenes-Smith

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On June 8, a major new development force announced itself to city council.

The Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, which had recently negotiated a $145-million land claim settlement, appeared before council to introduce themselves as new city partners. Though the claim won't be completely settled or paid out for some time yet, the announcement made it clear that the nation intends to buy back some of the land they lost in 1828.

And this past Monday, an audience at Fort York was able to put all this in a little context with a talk by University of Calgary history professor emeritus Donald Smith, as well as Mississaugans Chief Bryan LaForme and Carolyn King, who talked about the facts and repercussions of the January 30, 1929 meeting between the British and a group of Mississauga chiefs, during which, as the talk put it, the "landlords became tenants."

"This is the first of a series of events that we're going to be having at Fort York, put on by the Friends of Fort York, that focus on Toronto and Canada's history, present and future," says Alok Sharma, supervisor of special events at the fort.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Alok Sharma

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According to its architect, what promises to be a significant addition to the city's collection of streetscapes is just weeks away from getting its building permit.

At the moment, Market Street - the strip that runs from Front to The Esplanade on the east side of St Lawrence Market South -- is negligible. It used to be home to an excellent old-school bar and restaurant called The Fish Market, but now, the heritage designated buildings that used to house it and several other businesses are dilapidated and dis-used. The only visible tenant is the LCBO with its small Front Street frontage.

But Paul Obermann, the man behind the revitalization of the Five Thieves at Yonge and Summerhill, figured it deserved better.

"Our approach with how to keep that existing building, which has been patched and altered over the years, was quite a challenging one, made more challenging made by what Paul Obermann wanted to do," says lead architect Michael Taylor of Taylor Smyth. Obermann wants to "open up the whole ground floor of that building, one level below the LCBO, to create a whole new series of storefronts, which he imagines will have restaurants in them."

In this plan, the LCBO will be the major tenant, extending its reach all the way south to the The Esplanade. With them as anchors, Obermann hopes to attract a sort of Mirvish Village type of tenant collection to make the street a destination.

Taylor hopes to get the hoarding up in October, and to complete the whole project, including an entirely new building built in place of an old auto shop on the Esplanade, by late 2011 or early 2012.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michael Taylor

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Joe Pantalone's mayoral campaign has announced his intention, if elected, to aggressively pursue a green mandate for Build Toronto, the city's arm's length real estate and development corporation.

The deputy mayor would place particular emphasis on green partnerships and development, with Build Toronto encouraging green industrial uses for disused properties in low-income or transitional neighbourhoods.

"This is something to galvanize Build Toronto," says Pantalone's press secretary, Mike Smith. "When you look at these neighbourhoods," Smith says, "these are often post-industrial neighbourhoods. If you pursue the development of green economy, you can let the neighbourhoods transform as they have, maintain their industrial base without bringing in a lot of destructive, polluting industries on the one hand, or going the other way, like Leslieville, replacing good industrial jobs with dead-end service jobs.

"It's a way of looking at sustainability in a wholistic way. It's environmental, but it's also economic and social, and if you take any of those out of the triangle, it's not really sustainable."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mike Smith


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The last of three bridges over the Gardiner to be demolished -- this one on Jameson -- fell this past weekend, closing the expressway from Carlaw to the Humber.

But it's not the end to the closures.

"The work will continue right through till we're finished, says Mike Laidlaw, acting manager of structures and expressways, of the project whose completion date is set for next summer. "After this weekend's closures, there will be a number of night closures as well to erect portions of the other bridges. Right now, we're down to two lanes in each direction. Come the end of October, we'll restore it back to three lanes, and it will remain three lanes for the rest of the work."

Night closures will being on Sept. 28 and run 11pm to 5am until Oct. 7.

The bridges are being replaced, with minor changes, in the same dimensions as the demolished ones. The old bridges had gotten to the point at which demolition and rebuilding was more practical than further maintenance.

The contract to demolish and rebuild the three bridges, including traffic control and all other expenses, was worth $14 million.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mike Laidlaw

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"These garden were in operation in the 70s and 80s and into the 90s," says Councillor Peter Milczyn, of the just-resuscitated Titan Road community gardens. "Around the time of amalgamation, the number of people using it dropped off, and when amalgamation occurred, the garden was shut down."

Then came the Tibetans.

"A couple of years ago, I was approached by a community group, the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre, who were constructing their community and cultural centre across the street. They saw the old sign that says City of Etobicoke garden plots."

Milczyn says he took the idea to city staff, and was met with silence, but after resolving an issue with another councillor who he says had been blocking the grounds use on behalf of one of their constituents, who was using it for storage, the two acres of hydro corridor lands are being prepared to use again. All it will take, Milczyn says, is a little tractor to clear out a decade of overgrowth, and a topsoil top up, to make it ready for the 1,000-plus members of the Tibetan centre, who will also be sharing it with other interested neighbours.

Though Little Tibet is several kilometres away in Parkdale, as a result of these gardens, this Kipling and Queensway neighbourhood will likely take on a greater significance to this exiled community. According to Milczyn, the Dalai Lama will be visiting it and giving the project his blessing next month.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Milczyn

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Bloor and Old Mill is about to get its second condo.

Across the street and a little east of the area's only current condo, the low-rise Brule, Tridel has acquired the lot between the two GM dealerships and will build a 12-storey, 270-unit condominium at 1 Old Mill Drive.

"There's very little condo stock here," says Jim Ritchie, senior vice president at Tridel, of the west Bloor West Village neighbourhood. "We're surrounded by quite a bit of variety of housing, but it's on the more expensive side."

So while saying his new project will not be exactly downscale, the 650 to 2,300 square foot units will likely start in the low $300,000s and appeal to working couples who like the 90-second proximity to Jane station.

The design by Kirkor Architects, as Ritchie describes it, eschews the current glass trend for a pre-cast concrete look that allows the building to stay more in keeping with its residential surroundings.

Tridel expects to launch the building, called One Old Mill, by the end of October, and be in the ground, if sales go as expected, by December, 2011 or January, 2012, and be ready for occupancy by the end of the summer of 2013.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jim Ritchie

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Nesbitt Park almost lost out on its share of the federal funding that's been improving parks and adding playgrounds across the city over the past few months.

But Cheryl Drynan made sure they got what she figured they deserved.

As president of the Governor's Bridge Ratepayers Association, when she was told that her neighbourhood's park would only receive $25,000 to help clean up the after effects of some municipal sewer digging that had gone on in the area, she went to her councilor, Case Ootes, to see how they could get more.

"We developed a good working relationship with Councillor Ootes," Drynan says. "We just kept at them and at them and at them about money, and we got a call in January saying that he had sought out some of the federal funding and that we would be granted $100,000."

The neighbourhood next door, North Rosedale, was not so lucky, and had to raise money themselves to replace their equally elderly playground, according to Drynan.

The $100,000 bought a new playground, made of colourful child-safe plastic, to replace the old wood equipment which, Drynan says, was liable to splintering.

The ratepayers group debuted the equipment this past Sunday at their annual barbeque. They had planned to keep the equipment fenced off for the big unveiling, "but the kids were jumping the fence," she says, eager to get at the new equipment, so they had a soft opening last week.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Cheryl Drynan

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It's been 100 years since Viljo Revell was born, and 45 years this past Monday since his Canadian masterpiece, our City Hall, was opened, and the City Archives and the Toronto Society of Architects is putting on a series of exhibits and events to mark the occasion.

"City Hall had not just a huge impact on Toronto, but internationally," says Margo Welch, executive director of the Toronto Society of Architects, of the design that has ensured this almost half-century-old building is still referred to by most as New City Hall. "The opening of City Hall was really comparable to when the Guggenheim museum opened in Bilbao, it was just such an unusual building, so extraordinary, so specific. It kind of gave permission to local architects, to North American architects, to think more broadly, more interestingly."

The festivities began on Monday, with David Crombie, Frank Gehry and Lisa Rochon speaking in the council chamber. They'll wind up with a symposium, organized by Rochon, on the impact of Finnish architecture. In between, there's an exhibition in the rotunda featuring pictures of other of Revell's buildings, and artifacts from the original and controversial competition which Revell ended up winning.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Margo Welch


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It's a gorgeous wreck of a building, but unfortunately, the Westwood Theatre is useless, the land it's on tainted.

During the final session of the last city council, an agreement was reached to sell a portion of these lands � 4.5 out of a total of 19 � to the Ontario Realty Corporation in order to build a new provincial criminal court house and a 450-spot underground parking garage.

"It will certainly be an economic stimulus to the area," says city councilor Peter Milczyn, who remembers seeing Bambi at the Westwood more than 30 years ago. "We believe it will bring commercial development, offices for lawyers and whatnot, and restaurants and shops to serve them."

The court house will ultimately employ between 400 and 450 people.

The province will have to remediate the soil, which has been used industrially since at least the 1930s. Milczyn expects servicing the area -- drainage, electricity, etc. -- to commence in 2012, with construction set to begin a year later, with a tentative 2015 completion date.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Milczyn

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Construction has begun on a 7.3-acre park what will feature prominently in the new West Don Lands neighbourhood.

"It's the anchor of the West Don Lands," says James Roche, Waterfront Toronto's director of parks, design and construction of the $26.6-million federally and provincially funded project, "a large, huge park that will be connected to streets and pathways and trails along the Don river. The east-west streets of the new developments will all terminate at the park."

The park is being built on the nearly completed Flood Protection Landform, designed by the Toronto and Region Conservancy Authority and built by the Ontario Realty Corporation, which is meant to protect the West Don Lands from the Don's regular flooding, and the downtown core from the less frequent sort of extreme flooding we haven't seen for the last 60 years or so.

"We're long overdue for a similar storm to [Hurricane] Hazel," Roche says, "and this is a measure put in place for that."

Ground was broken last Wednesday, and construction has now begun on the pavilion, which should be completed next April. The southern portion of the park as a whole should be done by fall, 2011, according to Roche, and the rest of it by spring, 2012.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: James Roche

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X2, the condo going up on the corner of Jarvis and Charles where the old Pizza Pizza corporate offices used to be, got a major variance from the city's planning committee to add an extra 7 storeys to their original 42-storey plan.

"X and X2 were exactly the same height," says Geoff Matthews, director of development for Great Gulf Condos, referring to the first phase of the two-phase project, "and we thought we had to punctuate the skyline somewhat."

According to Matthews, the committee heard the application in June and approved it in July with no extraordinary objections.

The building will now have a total of 557 units ranging from 416 to 912 square feet, and starting around $260,000.

Demolition began at the end of August.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Geoff Matthews

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].