City Building : Development News

Demolition was completed last week, and construction begins this week on the first building in the new $341-million, 536,967 square-foot phase of the 27-acre Centre for Addiction and Mental Health at 1001 Queen Street West at Ossington.

All built to LEED Gold standards, the Gateway Building will be first of the four buildings to go up. Designed by Stantec to mesh, says vice president of communications of community engagement Susan Pigott, with the loft-converted industrial buildings in the neighbourhood, the Gateway will be an outpatient facility with administration offices and a caf�, called the Out of This World Caf�, on a corner lot on Queen Street.

"It's been too long that the southern strip of Queen Street has been a sinkhole," says Pigott, of the situation that's been largely attributable to CAMH's century-long presence. "The new Gateway building will actually have an external face on the street. For the first time, it will really attract external business. The whole idea is to draw people on to the grounds so it loses that sense of isolation."

In addition to its new buildings, the CAMH property is constructing streets to increase public accessibility, as well as a 179-unit assisted housing project, with 10 units set aside for CAMH-related residents.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Susan Pigott

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Art Condos, a new condo project on Queen West, announced a photo and video clip contest last week, three weeks into its sales launch.

"We're asking people to give their idea of what Queen Street is right now, what it represents, something that will characterize how it is today... something that will give people a sense of nostalgia in the future," says builder Gary Silverberg. "It's going through a massive change right now, and we want to document it."

Judges include local gallery owners, artists and painter/critic Gary Michael Dault. The photo contest runs until May 24, and the video portion deadline is June 13. Prizes include being part of a video loop presentation in the model suite, as well as prizes donated by local businesses.

The contest is part of a larger social media marketing strategy that began before the project was launched.

According to Silverberg, the 11-storey, 150-unit tower at 44 Dovercourt is more than half sold. Construction will begin this year in preparation for a 2012 occupancy.

The project was designed by Hariri Pontarini and Oleson Worland Architects, with interiors by 3rd Uncle.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Gary Silverberg

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There's a poignancy to posthumous dedications. The satisfaction in remembering is mixed with the knowledge that the person being honoured isn't able to share in it.

That bittersweetness is heightened in the case of Edmond Place, an affordable housing development going up at Queen and Dowling. A luxury building with 12 apartments when it opened in 1913, it had been a 55-unit rooming house for 15 years by the time Edmond Yu, for whom it's now named, was evicted in 1996, just a couple of months before he was shot to death by police on a bus in the middle of a schizophrenic episode.

"We wanted the name of the place to be part of its goal," says Victor Willis, executive director of PARC (Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre), the organization that is developing the city-owned property, on which it holds a 50-year lease, "a place where someone like him wouldn't have been evicted."

At about 20,000 square feet, designed by Hilditch Architect to fit in behind the heritage fa�ade, Edmond Place will offer 29 affordable apartments to people with histories of mental health and addiction problems. Originally budgeted at $4 million, the budget expanded to $7 million when the extent of the destruction inside the old building, which had been damaged by fire in 1998, became clear. It's set for completion by the end of this year, with occupancy expected in January, 2011.

Still $300,000 short on its capital goal, Design Hope Toronto is holding an art auction to raise funds on April 16 (see a previous story on Yonge Street about Design Hope).

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Victor Willis

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The 60 Richmond Street East housing project made this year's list of the projects honoured by the Ontario Association of Architects for excellence in design.

The 11-storey, 85-unit affordable-rent building was the first new housing co-operative to be built in years and will be used initially as a place to re-house those displaced by the nearby Regent Park redevelopment. It was built to LEED Gold environmental standards and designed by Teeple Architects. It was built by Toronto Community Housing.

"I think the most significant part of it is the way that it animates the street," says Gordon Grice, editor of Perspectives, the OAA's quarterly journal, citing its colourful cladding and saying the only other building as lively in Toronto is Will Alsop's Sharpe Centre for Design. "It's a good urban neighbour."

According to the OAA's citation, "This project explores ideas for the future of urbanism in the North American city. It seeks to understand and express the notion that urban form can simultaneously be environmental form. 60 Richmond East is also an example of the imagination and dedication that is required in creating responsible architectural solutions for the current global economic and environmental climate."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Gordon Grice

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In a rare move, Canada Post has opened up a new postal outlet in a pre-existing Shoppers Drug Mart on Dupont Street.

Usually scheduled to coincide with new openings of likely shops, Canada Post spokeswoman Jennifer Arnott says this March 9 opening was "part of our ongoing market assessment. We determined we needed another post office in that neighbourhood."

The growth of what might be called the north Annex is something Shoppers Drug Mart spotted five years ago when they built the store just a few blocks north of their Bloor and Walmer location, which also houses a post office.

"We try to make it go in with a relocation or when we open a new store," says  Shoppers spokeswoman Tammy Smitham. "We usually like to incur all the capital costs when we're building."

The new postal space takes over the old photo development desk, which has not been replaced.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jennifer Arnott, Tammy Smitham

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Drywall is going up, the studwork's being done and the drilling for the geothermal system is about to begin on the refurbished seniors facility at 717 Broadview, just south of the Danforth.

The $10-million project, designed by Raw Design for Toronto Community Housing and Woodgreen Community Services, is about halfway done, with a December completion date scheduled.

"It's been a challenging project," says Raw principal Roland Rom Colthoff of the 1970s brutalist brick structure. "It was quite a well constructed building for the time. It wasn't great building science, but there was some good building."

Built as an institutional building, with rooms for seniors and shared facilities, including bathrooms, the new interior is being restructured to build 69 apartments out of the previous 200 rooms, adding a facility for Woodgreen programs on the ground floor and in the basement, as well as turning part of the parking lot in back of the building into a community garden.

Colthoff also expects the new design to deliver a 25%-40% reduction in energy consumption, in part due to the geothermal heating system.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Roland Rom Colthoff

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Concord Adex isn't the only developer creating new 21st-century neighbourhoods in this city. The El-Ad Group, a North American developer with Israeli roots, is near completion on new rental buildings, replacements for old ones they recently demolished at Sheppard and Don Mills that are the first stage in a multiphase development that Netanel Ben-Or, El-Ad's vice president of development, says will transform the area.

"You won't recognize this area five or six years from now," he says. "We're making new neighbourhoods, that's our philosophy, this is what we believe in. So people in the future, when you ask where they live, they will say they live in Emerald City, not at Sheppard and Don Mills."
El-Ad made its name in North America several years ago when they bought Manhattan's famed Plaza Hotel and converted parts of it into ultra-high-end condos.

In addition to the 400,000 square feet of rental properties they're finishing up now, the project will ultimately include 2 million square feet of condo space, all with prices from the low $200s to about $500,000, with a large portion of family-oriented 3-bedroom units in the 1,100 to 1,200 square foot range.

"I see the competition as a good thing," Ben-Or says of the nearby Concord Adex and Daniels developments. "Definitely good for the buyer, and good for us. This whole Sheppard corridor is going to change."

Construction on the first of what will be either 6 or 7 towers will begin in August, and the whole project is scheduled for a 2016 completion.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Netanel Ben-Or

Queen Street West may be getting a new 4,200 square foot fifth-floor penthouse suite if a property owner and the city can come to terms.
The old McCaul Variety on the corner of Queen and McCaul, a long-time corner store from the days when that strip of Queen Street was known for its wicker shops and silk-screened t-shirt kiosks, may soon be disappearing.

Though out of business as a corner store for some time, the well-placed storefront, owned by United Republic of Properties, has recently been used as a promotional space by Juxta Productions for movies Daybreakers and Sherlock Holmes. But if UPR gets city approval, there'll be a five-storey mixed-use brick and glass building taking its place.

"Ideally, we're trying to get a fashion tenant and make it a gateway to that Queen Street West area," says Mark Veilleux of CB Richard Ellis, who's handling the leasing. The city's already agreed, he says, to expand the sidewalk on McCaul by five feet. "It'll give it almost a little piazza-type look," Veilleux says.

Of the possible penthouse, Veilleux says, "There'll be areas for a terrace; it could be a pretty spectacular apartment."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mark Veilleux

The University of Toronto's Mississauga campus is getting a $70-million, 13,000 square metre (140,000 square feet) classroom block. Work is well underway for the project, which broke ground in October, and will ultimately house 27 new teaching spaces, from a 500-seat lecture theatre to 30-seat seminar rooms.

"We're just busting at the seams," says UTM's chief administrative officer Paul Donoghue, using a phrase common among staff at the rapidly expanding university. Donoghue says that 10 years ago, when the university established its master plan, UTM had about 5,000 students.

"We're now at 11,500," he says, growth he ascribes to the changing demography of Ontario and the GTA.

The Instructional Centre is being built on what was a 300-space parking lot, a space designated for development in the master plan. Once completed, UTM will be adding some accessible parking spots near the building.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Donoghue

Tridel has finished everything but the interiors of its latest development, Circa 2, which is also its first foray into Markham.

The 396-unit condo tower is the second phase of a two-phase project that also includes a tower finished in 2006, and several houses, which Tridel is calling carriage homes, which are also complete.

"Circa's a more family-oriented building," says Tridel spokesman Samson Fung. "Suite sizes are a little bit larger, with two-bedrooms and two-bedrooms plus den making up the majority of the suites," he says, adding that, appropriately for the location, Tridel is taking "a more suburban approach to condos" with Circa. The smallest unit will be about 1,000 square feet.

Turner Fleischer are the architects for the building, which should be ready for its residents by May.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Samson Fung

The walls are now fully up on the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, designed by Diamond + Schmitt and being built by Eastern Construction, bringing the $100-million project one step closer to its scheduled summer completion for a Spring, 2011 opening.

"We clad the west wall in glass," says project leader Matt Smith. "So from Victoria Street, you'll be able to see the inner workings of the buildings. One of the reasons we clad the whole building in glass was to create a whole new transparency and linkage between what's going on in the building and the public." The theory is reminiscent of KPMB's work with the National Ballet School's Jarvis Street campus.

Smith says that the older parts of St. Michael's Hospital, founded in 1892 in response to that year's diptheria epidemic, are inward-looking, which was the style in the 1960s, when most of the building was built.

The new centre, one of six chosen by the Li Ka Shing Foundation as a centre of excellence, will bring together the teaching and research facilities in the hospital, in the hope of speeding the process of getting discoveries into practise.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Matt Smith

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Fans of the old Fish Market bar on Market Street, just south of Front, and of the Summerhill LCBO will be pleased to hear that the people behind the latter are getting behind the former. Woodcliffe Corporation is expanding the small Front Street LCBO into a 13,000 square foot space worthy of the growing St Lawrence Market neighbourhood.

Paul Oberman, Woodcliffe's president and CEO, says he'll be announcing it officially soon, but gave Yonge Street the heads up.
"The existing LCBO will be extended on the second floor level, and we're putting restaurants in on the ground floor, so the existing buildings will be renovated, the fish market will be restored, and the garage on the corner of The Esplanade will be demolished, and we're constructing a two-storey building there."

Woodcliffe will start work in April and complete the project in 2011.

"It'll be largely a restored space, with big, tall ceilings, lots of glazing, and we're fully enclosing all the shipping and receiving, the messy backroom stuff, shielding the street from it. It's going to be way cool, if I do say so myself," Oberman says.

Woodcliffe has also applied to the City to make Market Street a pedestrian-only zone, with a flower market on the east side of the street under the St. Lawrence Market overhang. The city's decision is pending.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Oberman

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The first tenant has already moved out, but the restoration of the Five Thieves continues unabated.

Montreal Bread Company, the bakery-caf� franchise that was the first tenant in the first available section of the old strip of upscale shops at 1095-1103 Yonge at Summerhill has moved on for what the developer calls "their own business reasons," but the rest of the project, which has been going on and off since Woodcliffe bought the property in 1996, will be finishing up in the next 90 days, according to Woodcliffe president and CEO Paul Oberman.

"Restoration always takes a lot more time than renovation or new construction," Oberman says. "Part of our program was to stabilize the building structurally, fully excavate the basement � some of the stores had dirt floors down there before we started to work with them. We've also created kitchen areas for each of the tenants below grade, so that the entire ground floors can be used as retail area."

Oberman says that the next phase of the development will be the removal of the temporary buildings that are currently housing several businesses, including Harvest Wagon, just to the north of the main building. In their place will be a permanent one-storey pavillion with a green roof.

Much of the architectural work on the shops was provided by the Adelaide Street West firm of Goldsmith, Borgal and Co. Architects.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Oberman

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As of this week, the New Edwin Hotel has a new lease on life, thanks to Woodgreen Community Services.

After four years and $3.8 million, The Edwin is taking its first clients this week as a 28-unit affordable housing space catering to homeless senior men.

Built in 1905 as a hotel to serve passengers transferring at the Don Rail Station down the hill in the valley, the Edwin Hotel at 650 Queen Street East at Carroll has been a community centre of sorts ever since, even though the station it was built to serve had been declining since the 1930s and finally shut down more than 40 years ago.

It survived for a time primarily as a hotel, then much of its business began focusing on the bar, which became a strip club in the 1950s and remained a night club of one description or another until the late 1980s, when it became a rooming house. According to Suzanne Duncan, Woodgreen's director of philanthropy, the rooming house charged as much as $500 a month for each of its 50 plywood-walled units, many of which were windowless.

The new units, all with windows, bathrooms and kitchen facilities, will be geared to tenants' Ontario Disability pensions, with rent usually coming out between $250 and $300 a month.

Designed by the College Street firm of Levitt Goodman Architects, the new facility retains the hotel's original terrazzo floors, and according to Wendy Shaw, Woodgreen's manager of facilities development, the big Nightclub sign, which she says dates in its current form from the 1980s, will either be changing or coming down in the near future.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Suzanne Duncan, Wendy Shaw

Know of a new building going up, a business expanding or renovating, even a cool new house in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

Streetcar Developments began demolition last week on what will be their largest project to date, an 8-storey, 182-unit condo building estimated to cost $60 million and designed by Quadrangle Architects.

"We typically do 50-100-unit buildings," says Streetcar's vice president of sales and marketing, Jeanhy Shim, "so having a building this size is unusual for us."

Streetcar is demolishing a 3-storey office block at 510 King Street East to make room for the new condos, known as Corktown District phase II (phase I is going up down the street at 549 King East), and even though it's the biggest they've done, it's still well within the definition of mid-rise.

"Philosophically, we're commited to building in-fill downtown neighbourhoods, to improve existing neighbourhoods," Shim says. "We're not interested in doing towers."

The building is scheduled to be ready for owners and tenants by July, 2012.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jeanhy Shim, Streetcar Developments