Development News

The old Rawlinson Cartage building at 11 St. Joseph Street, built between 1895 and 1898 and turned residential between 2002 and 2004 when a 17-storey tower was added outback, is getting another update. Design firm II by IV (Two by Four) began work a month ago for owner Barney River to redesign the more than 200 rental units to be sold as condos.

"The units were pretty well planned, so there was no structural or architectural alterations needed," says II by IV partner Dan Menchions, who says the project is meant to be completed on March 27.

Forty-two of the units have already sold to previous tenants, according to Menchions, who is confident sales will progress briskly from here on out. "I think they have the advantage that the building exists," he says, in contrast to the numerous pre-build sales going on around town.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Dan Menchions

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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

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].

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

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].

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

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].

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].

The Church Street strip got a new restaurant to occupy the space vacated by the late, lamented Il Fornello just south of Wellesley when Chi-Ko-Roo opened on March 2.

The Mediterranean-themed restaurant is owned by long-time Yonge and Dundas Pickle Barrel general manager Gilmar Oprisan, who partnered with the team behind the two Green Eggplant restaurants to open his first restaurant.

"The rent's not cheap here," says Oprisan, who before moving to Canada 10 years ago worked in restaurants in Israel, the Netherlands and his native Romania. "It's big competition, but I like competition."

He says he renovated about 40 per cent of the space, including adding new hardwood floors, a stone bar and new lighting to the 2,600 square foot space, which employs between 20 and 30.

The name, Oprisan says, doesn't mean anything in particular. "When you call somebody a nice guy, you call him Chico, so we said Chi-Ko-Roo. Why not?"

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Gilmar Oprisan

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].

The Toronto City Summit Alliance's commercial building energy initiative, the tenant segment of Greening Our Workplaces, part of the larger Greening Greater Toronto, will kick off on March 26, a little more than 24 hours before Earth Hour, with a meeting between Brookfield Asset Management and its main tenants at First Canadian Place, including the Bank of Montreal and Bay Street law firm Gowlings.

"Brookfield is committed to the sustainability of its Toronto properties and has registered all of its buildings with the LEED EB:OM program," says Stefan Dembinski, Brookfield's senior vice president of asset management for eastern Canada. "We understand that many of our tenants are seeking to reduce their environmental impact and as a result we are looking to partner with them to achieve our mutually beneficial sustainability goals."

According to the TCSA, who will be presenting the business case for commercial greening at the meeting, the initiative includes retrofitting, reducing carbon emissions, and ensuring that the whole thing is driven by both landlord and tenant.

According to TCSA, commercial buildings account for more than 30 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the GTA, consume 37 per cent of the city's electricity and 17 per cent of its natural gas. They suggest that one of the major barriers to improving commercial building efficiency is a lack of communication between landlords and tenants.

The March 26 meeting will be the first of five such meetings between major commercial landlords and their Toronto tenants.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Stefan Dembinski,Brookfield; TCSA

The gay village strip of Church Street has been chaining up over the past few years, adding Ginger, Subway and Hero Burger to its longstanding Starbucks and Timothy's. The most recent addition, due to open this week or next, is the 15th Pizzaiolo in a space occupied for decades by Bigliardi's steak house, one of the last pre-gay business to survive on the strip.

"He had a good run," says new Pizzaiolo partner (and co-founder and former co-owner of of Manchu Wok) Michael Craig, of George Bigliardi. "From what I understand, he was ready to retire."

The new Pizzaiolo will be 2,200 square feet with 15 employees, one of the biggest in the city.

"We like to have three being built at any point in time," Craig says, pointing to another one coming up a few blocks away at Yonge and Wellesley, and another at 588 Danforth.

Founded by Luigi Petrella 10 years ago, Pizzaiolo started licensing its brand three years ago and has since expanded at a rapid pace, and may soon be adding its first location outside of Toronto, on Oakville.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michael Craig, Pizzaiolo

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

Before the dinosaurs, there were the bats. From its opening in 1988 until they were overwhelmed by Libeskind's pretty new box for the old bones, the Royal Ontario Museum's Bat Cave was its consistently biggest draw.

But a recent renovation, completed last week, is aimed at giving the T-Rex a run for its money. Much of the reason for the renovation was simply the exhibit's age, according to Bat Cave curator Burton Lim. "It's an open exhibit," he says, "so things get dusty and dirty over 22 years."

The renovation also includes new video screens, a documentary filmed by ROM curators in Jamaica this past January at the St. Clair cave that originally inspired the Bat Cave, and new flooring made to resemble a stone floor to replace the old brown industrial carpeting.

Funding came in part from a $2.75-million federal government grant that covered several gallery projects, and from private donors, including Thomas Kierans and Mary Janigan.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Burton Lam, ROM

The latest residential addition to the West Queen West neighbourhood got underway this past week with the demolition of a vacant warehouse at 2 Gladstone, next door to the Gladstone Hotel.

In its place will be an 8-storey, 54-unit condominium adding a total of 38,000 square feet of residential space to the booming strip, estimated to cost $18 million. The building will be environmentally friendly  but will not, according to the developer, be applying for any of the increasingly popular LEED certifications.

"To be quite honest, making these small buildings work financially is difficult," says Streetcar Developments vice president Jeanhy Shim, who explains that many buildings costs are fixed, whether the building in question is 8 storeys or 58, meaning the costs in smaller buildings have to be spread over fewer units. "So the having to add the cost of LEED, to be honest, is quite onerous."
(Outside agencies have estimated that LEED certification can add as much as 5 per cent to the cost of small scale projects such as Streetcar's.)

Despite this, however, 2 Gladstone will feature dual flush toilets, low VOC paints, low-flow faucets, locally sourced and produced materials, a green roof, bicycle storage, and a Zip or AutoShare facility.

And, as the name suggests, 2 Gladstone will, like every other Streetcar project according to Shim, be on a streetcar line.
The building is slated to be ready by October, 2012.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jeanhy Shim, Streetcar Development

It's been an odd project, a housing assessment and referral centre for the homeless in the middle of the city's entertainment district. And it's been made even odder by the fact that it's been on the build for more than three years. According to city staff, there have been some structural problems with the planned smoking space on the roof. According to Councillor Adam Vaughan, whose ward it's in, the problem is with the city's ability to manage its capital projects.

Vaughan says the official word is that it will be completed soon. "Officially, it's a matter of weeks, which is usually code for a matter of months." But he says he expects it will be finished before summer, complete with the rooftop terrace, which he refers to approvingly as "a private amenity space, like the condominiums in the area have," and a small public parkette in front.

The building will also house a 40-bed shelter for single men who, according to the city's manager of partnership development and support Patricia Anderson, "for whatever reason are reluctant to use the emergency shelter system."

According to Vaughan, the project has cost a little under the $10 million the federal government advanced for it, with a little under $5 million to purchase the building and property, and about $4 million so far for its extensive renovation.

The assessment and referral service is currently being run out of 67 Adelaide Street East while the city waits for the completion of Peter Street.

 

Writer: Bert Archer

Source: Patricia Anderson, Adam Vaughan

After a greater than average degree of secrecy and a not unrelated greater than average degree of anticipation, Origin, chef Claudio Aprile's latest restaurant, will open next week, according to Paul Oberman, president and CEO of Woodcliffe Corporation, which has been in charge of the restoration of the 105 and 107 King East location at the southeast corner of Church.

The easternmost of the two is one of the oldest buildings in the city, built between 1836 and 1841. Both 107 and 109 were the site of one of early Toronto's great unsolved murder mysteries, when a dead man was found slumped against the back wall in the laneway. In the 1960s, the upper floors of 107 were known as The Pit and were where Toronto artist Tom Hodgson, known for his wild parties, kept his studio.

"The space has been designed uniquely for him," Oberman says. "It's not a conventional design. He's been very personally involved in every aspect of it. It's been fun."

The  year-long restoration, which Oberman describes as a combination of restoration and adaptive reuse, included putting in full basements for the two buildings and opening up the walls inside to bring the two spaces together. "We're just scrambling now to complete the terrace, now that the weather is upon us," he says of the wraparound patio space for the corner lot.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Oberman

Type Books is not moving out of Forest Hill. A posting at Quill & Quire's blog that mistook an Avenue for a Road (Toronto's always confusing the two Spadinas) got some Forest Hilliers in a tizzy about their bookstore, owned by Joanne Saul, moving downtown into a space across the street from, of all places, the El Mocambo.

But they are moving, just not that far.

"We're moving to 427 Spadina Road," says Saul, "just about a block north." The reason, she says, is that their current place at 394 Spadina Road is too small. "Type's mandate is really about trying to have events and trying to host book clubs and book launches. We have a literacy group and story time,' she says, and, along with the larger Queen Street West location across from Trinity Bellwoods Park, she wants Type to be "a community hub, and we haven't been able to do that up here, because it's so small."

The new space, previously occupied by Ecco Shoes, is about 1,200 square feet, double the space Type currently occupies.

Streetcar Developments, the company known for injecting much of the recent condo energy that's been pulsing through Corktown, just opened sales for their latest project, Sync Lofts, across the Don.

"This is our third development between Carlaw and the DVP,' says Jeanhy Shim, Streetcar's VP of sales and marketing (*and former president of condo consultancy Urbanation). "Like all the neighbourhoods we build in, we're expecting this neighbourhood to improve, and expecting to help with that improvement."

The site at the corner of Queen and Carroll is currently a parking lot and before that was a small shopping plaza that Streetcar demolished when they acquired it five years ago. It's across the street from their Edge Lofts.

Sync will be a $30-million, 8-storey building with 98 suites, priced from $179,900 for the studios to just under $500,000 for the largest, which are 946 square feet. Seventy-five per cent of the units sold just this past week, according to sales manager Man Ling Lau. "They're calling us the next King West," she says.

Construction will begin later this year, with occupancy currently set for July, 2012.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Streetcar Developments, Jeanhy Shim