City Building : Development News

This week council considers two possible fates for the Gardiner Expressway east of Jarvis: removal at the long-term cost of $461 million or a so-called hybrid rebuild of the elevated roadway at a long-term cost of $919 million.
 
How did it come down to these two options? Toronto has debated what to do with the Gardiner since before it was built between 1955 and 1964. Back in the 1990s, it was the western section that was under more scrutiny and in 2000, the city seriously considered burying the section of the Gardiner between the Canadian National Exhibition grounds and Yonge Street. In 2006, it was estimated that it would have cost $1.5 billion to bury the whole thing—a bargain compared to the options council is now contemplating.
 
Michael Meschino, principal of Entuitive engineering firm, holds out hope that the city will eventually come around to the idea that going underground is the best option. In the last few weeks, he’s been trying to drum up support for a concept, a collaboration with Chicago-based architects Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, that came out of a 2010 design competition by Waterfront Toronto.
 
“We’re talking about what to do with the Gardiner east of Jarvis, but the Gardiner runs across the entire city and everything east of Dufferin Street is elevated, so when you make a decision east of Jarvis, you’re going to affect what you can do west of Jarvis, which runs right through the city core,” says Meschino.
 
Entuitive’s proposal would put the Gardiner into an underground tunnel east of Jarvis. Traffic would come out of the tunnel east of Cherry Street and onto a bridge across the Don River to connect with the Don Valley Parkway. Lakeshore Boulevard would be moved north, up against the rail lands. The benefits, as Meschino sees it, are clearing a large amount of new space for new waterfront development, as well as maintaining a direct connection between the Gardiner and the DVP.
 
If you keep an elevated Gardiner, Meschino says, “you’re going to develop parcels of land but you’re not really going to develop a community. What we want to do is push all that northward and push Lakeshore Boulevard northward to make one community.”
 
The plan works best on the assumption that the downtown section of the Gardiner would eventually be moved underground. Critics don’t like the fact that the Gardiner is elevated downtown, goes into a tunnel for just two kilometres and is then elevated again to cross the Don, which is one of the reasons the idea was rejected. The price tag, estimated in 2010 to be about $1.6 billion, also makes it a harder sell, though Meschino says the freeing up of a large amount of quality development land could be used to offset the cost.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Michael Meschino

With two-way traffic on Queens Quay finally opened this week, the downtown section of Waterfront Toronto’s pet project is about to be unveiled.
 
The ground broke on the revitalization of Queens Quay back in 2012, creating a mess of construction and detours along the waterfront for the last couple of summers. But the dust is about to clear to reveal new streetcar tracks and relocated roadways, as well as new bike lanes and snazzy pedestrian walkways. On June 19, the city will celebrate the official reopening of the stretch of Queens Quay between Bay Street and Spadina Avenue.
 
“We did a site walk with one of the [stakeholder] committees last week and it was overwhelming positive, people are excited about getting this street opened up and seeing this vision materialize,” says Mira Shenker, communications manager at Waterfront Toronto.
 
A few small fixes won’t be complete until after the Pan/Parapan Am Games. Toronto Hydro still has to install power cables into underground ducts. Until then, about 20 of the new 56 signature streetlights on Queens Quay will be temporarily replaced by aluminum poles and overhead powerlines, and six event power stations for the use by the Waterfront Business Improvement Area for events will be temporarily covered with boxes. Additional trees will get planted when Toronto Hydro is finished its work.
 
There’s even more good news for cyclists. The Martin Goodman Trail from Yo-Yo Ma’s Toronto Music Garden to Stadium Road, where cyclists can continue onto the existing trail through Coronation Park, will be open by the end of June.

Going east from Bay Street, Shenker says the Martin Goodman Trail along Queens Quay to Parliament should be open by early July, connecting to the existing trail that continues eastward.
 
“We just want to make sure that all the work at all the intersections is complete before we open the trail to traffic,” she says. “We’re addressing the lack of signage and potentially even fencing to indicate that the MGT is closed (for safety reasons) between Lower Sherbourne and Parliament until then.”
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Mira Shenker

At the community meeting over the redevelopment of the former home of the World’s Biggest Bookstore, locals expressed concern about more than the density and design of the proposed 35-storey building.
 
Lifetime Developments has applied to turn the prime location at 20 Edward Street, between Bay and Yonge, into a mixed-use building with a three-storey commercial base and one-storey mezzanine. The proposal, which includes 629 residential units, would require changes to height restrictions for the flight path for Sick Kids Hospital helipad. There are five loading spaces proposed with direct access from the laneway to the north, a laneway, says Ward 27 Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, that’s already in heavy use.
 
“There’s also concern about what kind of retail they will be attractive, whether it will be sensitive to the environment on Yonge Street,” says Wong-Tam.
 
Ward 27 has been hit with an avalanche of development applications over the past few years, particularly along the Yonge Street corridor. While much of the public debate has focused on building height and what the exteriors look like—sheer glass towers versus playful post-modern articulation—Wong-Tam worries that there hasn’t been enough focus on what the buildings are doing at street level, the impact on transportation and the impact of years of construction on neighbourhoods.
 
“The residents and business owners know that development is part of downtown life but they’re asking for better consideration of traffic movement, for complete streets and for opportunities to improve the public realm and urban conditions, including open spaces like parks and civic squares. That constantly comes up,” says Wong-Tam. “They’re also asking for more affordable housing. How is it we can add more and more density in the downtown core and not consider issues such as housing?”
 
Wong-Tam says the developers alone are not responsible for these frustrations. She says the planning process often doesn’t ask the right questions.

The site plan approval for 20 Edward Street is still under review.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Kristyn Wong-Tam

As the owner of the Matador Ballroom on Dovercourt Road renovates the legendary location, Toronto City Council has adopted a couple of motions that throw wrinkles into what might happen at the property.
 
Last year owner Paul McCaughey told media he was planning to turn the former music venue, which he had bought in 2012, into a high-end event space. The property was built in 1915 and for decades was used as an assembly hall with residential space on the second floor. As the Matador Club starting in 1964, the venue hosted the likes of Johnny Cash, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. By the time the Matador closed in 2007, it was known as an after-hours club.
 
This spring city council voted to advise the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario that issuing a liquor licence for the Matador, “is not in the public interest having regard to the needs and wishes of the residents, and that the registrar should issue a Proposal to Review the liquor licence application,” reads the backgrounder on the motion brought forward by Ward 18 Councillor Ana Bailão. “Neighbouring residents and the local councillor’s office are concerned that the operation of a licenced entertainment facility, including, but not limited to a concert hall and special event facility with a capacity of 804 patrons will negatively impact neighbouring residents.”
 
Meanwhile, Bailão also successfully got a motion adopted to have the city move to designate the property as a heritage building.
 
“The building features a beautiful interior that was recently discovered as part of renovation work by the current owner,” states the backgrounder. “The local community is aware of these unique heritage characteristics and would like to ensure that the historical richness of this property is protected, regardless of future change of use and/or development,” states the motion.
 
The Director of Urban Design will evaluate the property for potential inclusion in the city’s Heritage Registrar and report back to the Preservation Board and Toronto and East York Community Council.
 
At one point, just after the Matador closed, the city considered expropriating the property, demolishing it and turning it into a parking lot.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: City Council

With demolition almost complete, construction is expected to start soon on the Kingston&Co condos in Scarborough.
 
The eight-storey, 160-unit development from TAS is designed by Teeple Architects, the firm behind the Sherbourne Common Pavilion, Pachter House and the new GO Pedestrian Bridge in Pickering.  With the city calling for more mid-rise developments on Toronto’s main avenues, the condo would add a modern mid-rise touch to an otherwise mixed bag of buildings along Kingston Road in the Upper Beaches. A 2010 report identified the area as a particularly tricky place to turn into a comfy neighbourhood.
 
“The current retail function is not in the form of main-street type retail but rather in the form of plazas, malls and freestanding buildings, which are primarily vehicle dependent,” states the report. “This is the most difficult Avenue portion to plan for with particular concern regarding phasing of the developments and the ability for the mixed-use developments to support retail.”
 
Kingston&Co, which recently won a BILD Award for best suite design, takes over the site of the former Alpine Hotel, which closed in 2011. Unlike so many new downtown project, the building also aims to be family friendly, with larger unit sizes.
 
“There’s a shift in sensibility where people are choosing to live in multi-unit style neighbourhoods,” Mazyar Mortazavi, President and CEO of TAS, told participants at a BILD experts symposium at University of Toronto’s Innis College earlier this month. “People want to live in a village and at the heart of it is a community.”
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: TAS, City of Toronto

The city is moving ahead with plans to reinvigorate an underloved neighbourhood close to the Wilson subway station.
 
The Tippett Road area, which runs from Allan Road to Wilson Heights Boulevard north of Wilson Avenue and from the Allan to Champlain Boulevard south of Wilson, is one of seven designated regeneration areas in the city. The plans would convert the area, about 12.6 hectares, from primarily employment lands to mixed use, including residential.
 
“Maybe it makes sense to make this little pocket, right at a subway station, a mixed-use area rather than employment, because there aren’t employment uses there right now,” says senior planner Cathy Ferguson.
 
The effort was in part triggered by two development applications to build several high-rise residential developments on Tippett Road. Several new residential buildings have already gone up or are under construction in the area. Last week City Council voted to direct staff to begin discussions with landowners about the impact of new development in time to report back for the June 18 Growth Management Committee meeting. Planning staff are also meeting with Affordable Housing staff to develop a program to deliver as many as 200 affordable rental and ownership homes to the community as part of any regeneration.
 
If Tippett Road becomes more residential, it would call for a layout for new streets, parks and open spaces, a transportation strategy, planning to ensure an appropriate mix of uses and appropriate density. Height limits are also a concern because of the proximity to Downsview Airport.
 
Build Toronto, which owns the TTC commuter parking lots on the west side of Tippett, would also be a player in the regeneration.
 
After staff report back from their flurry of meetings, the city will hold a public hearing on the proposals. Ferguson says the regeneration may take 15 to 25 years to come to fruition.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Cathie Ferguson

This week the Ontario Municipal Board will hear the details of a proposed settlement in a dispute over the development of a Liberty Village property that the city wants to designate as having special heritage value.
 
Kevric Real Estate Corporation wants to build a new eight-storey office building on Atlantic Avenue with retail and service commercial uses at grade. The existing five-storey office building (which spans addresses on Atlantic Avenue, Liberty Avenue, Hanna Avenue and Snooker Street) would be renovated for office uses, with retail and service commercial at the lower levels, while the existing boiler house on Liberty Street would be turned into a restaurant. Kevric originally proposed a new two-storey retail building at the corner of Hanna and Liberty, but has since offered to replace it with a POPS (Privately Owned Publicly-Accessible Spaces) as part of a compromise with the city.
 
The city says the development application includes a significant retail and restaurant component that does not conform to the Official Plan and has put forward an offer of settlement that would give the city a better say in how the property is redeveloped. Last month the city also filed notice to recognize the property at 40 Hanna as historically significant.
 
“The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company Complex (1905, with additions in 1907, 1912 and 1913) is an early 20th century industrial complex comprised of three attached factory buildings and a separate boiler house with a smokestack… valued as an important example of early 20th century industrial architecture in Toronto that is particularly distinguished by its scale, the vintage painted signage, and the landmark brick smokestack on the boiler house,” states the notice. “The associative value of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Factory is linked to its designers, particularly Henry Simpson, the versatile Toronto architect who received the commissions for the original factory (1905), the complementary addition (1907) and the detached boiler house and smokestack (1912) while completing other significant projects in the industrial area adjoining King and Dufferin (now Liberty Village).  The site is also associated with local architect J. L. Havill, who designed the large 1913 addition to the factory prior to his recruitment as the Imperial Oil Company's head designer.”
 
The property is already listed on the City of Toronto's Inventory of Heritage Properties, adopted by City Council on June 16, 2005. Kevric has already agreed to maintain the entire boiler house building with a glazed connection on two sides to the new eight-storey building, allowing for the boiler house to be viewed as a whole building.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: City Clerk’s Office

Slowly but surely, the city is making some progress on intensifying its cycling infrastructure.
 
This month city staff are expected to recommend that the separated cycle tracks on Richmond and Adelaide streets, installed last year, should be extended to Parliament, connecting them with the Sherbourne track that’s the main north-south route in the city’s downtown eastside. The Richmond and Adelaide tracks, still pilot projects, are two of the city’s most visible new routes, though they peter out when they hit the Financial District.
 
Further west, the Environmental Study Report for the extension of the West Toronto Railpath is expected soon, looking at how the path should be extended beyond its current southern terminus at Dundas West terminus to Queen and King streets. On the waterfront, the Queens Quay reconstruction will connect the Waterfront Trail across Toronto’s central waterfront area between Bathurst and Parliament streets.
 
Meanwhile, the city has launched a survey to help develop a new 10-year plan for Toronto’s cycling network.
 
“The survey lets Toronto residents provide input on the objectives and criteria for selecting the routes that will form the cycling network,” stated Councillor Jaye Robinson (Ward 25 Don Valley West), chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, in a news release this week.
 
The plan aims to connect gaps in the existing cycling network, expand the cycling network into new parts of the city and improve the quality of existing networks. The survey asks residents to rank priorities: create new routes or improve existing routes? Build bikeways that support practical trips like work commutes or build bikeways that support recreational cycling?
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Jaye Robinson

The temporary North St. Lawrence Market will be open soon… south of the South St. Lawrence Market.
 
This month, workers are busy erecting a pre-fabricated steel-and-fabric building in the parking lot at 125 The Esplanade, that will be home to merchants and shoppers while the old market building is demolished and replaced.
 
Built in 1968 to replace a 1904 building, the existing single-storey building is no great beauty. The new $91-million building, designed by Adamson Associates Architects and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, will be five storeys at 120,000 square feet, and include provincial courts as well as a much fancier incarnation of the existing farmer’s market.
 
But that building is not expected to be complete until 2016. As well, an archeological dig will take place at the site between demolition and construction and may throw off the timeline.
 
Meanwhile, the temporary structure will be just 11,700 square feet and will include only the basics: an indoor water supply, washrooms, electricity, heating and air conditioning. Natasha Hinds Fitzsimmins, communications consultant with the City of Toronto says both the farmer’s and antiques market will move into the temporary building. The 40 participants of the market’s cart program, who sold jewelry and crafts, are not so lucky; the program is suspended until the new permanent building open.
 
The hours of operation will remain the same: Saturdays from 5am to 3pm and Sundays from 5am to 5pm. During the weekdays, the space will be available to rent for other functions.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Natasha Hinds Fitzsimmins

Last month’s Ontario budget contained another promise to build a new downtown courthouse that would consolidate as many as five locations into a single facility.
 
“The new facility will enable more effective and responsive delivery of justice services and increase access to social justice programs in the city,” states the budget document.
 
Brendan Crawley with the communications branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General told Yonge Street Media that the ministry and Infrastructure Ontario have “begun working with a consultant to conduct surveys, environmental assessments and soil testing on the site. At this point, decisions about which specific court locations will be included in the courthouse have not been made.”
 
The province is using Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP) for the project which may give the contract to design, build, finance and maintain (DBFM) to a private firm, with the request for qualifications happening in summer 2016, followed by the selection of short-list bidders and a request for proposals. “While it’s too soon to give precise timelines, other similar Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP) courthouses have taken five to seven years to build and become fully operational,” says Crawley.
 
One thing that’s pretty much certain is the location—a government-owned, 1.63-acre site bounded by Chestnut Street, Dundas Street West, Centre Avenue and Armoury Street. Currently a parking lot, it’s directly north of the Superior Court of Justice at 361 University Avenue. The judges, lawyers and other courthouse staff there will hardly have to adjust their commutes.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Brendan Crawley

John Street’s pedestrian zone opened for the summer this week.
 
Planters and seating areas will take up a lane of traffic on the east side of John between Queen and Adelaide streets until October 19, allowing passersby and the neighbourhood resto-bar patrons to hang out more comfortably along the strip. The one big difference from last year’s pilot project is that the zone now stops short of the corners of Richmond and Queen.
 
“One observation we had last year was to make it easier for cars to make the turn,” says Janice Solomon, executive director of the Entertainment District BIA, which is operating the zone at a cost of about $80,000.
 
Two students from OCAD University will work art magic on two Muskoka chairs, which will eventually be available for sitting on, while a third student will make art on the street’s surface. Although the main goal is to make for a pleasant pedestrian passage, the BIA is open to the idea of hosting events in the space. “We’d welcome conversations with cultural organizations that are interested in doing something, but we wouldn’t want people to feel squeezed,” says Solomon.
 
The temporary zone also warms people up for the long-term plan for John Street as a cultural corridor linking institutions like the Art Gallery of Ontario, north of Grange Park, TIFF Bell Lightbox on King and the Rogers Centre south of Wellington. The street would eventually get widened sidewalks and boulevards, a gentler curb from the sidewalk to the street, more greenery and more public art. One of the reasons the summer closure covers the two blocks it does, says Solomon, is that the sidewalk is particularly narrow there.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Janice Solomon

Over the past few weeks, passersby at King and Spadina have been watching a slow reveal as the ramshackled building at the northwest corner is restored to a version of its former glory.
 
The Global Village Backpackers hostel closed more than a year ago and now the former meeting place of the young and the restless is being turned into something much more professional and stylish. The 20,000-square-foot listed heritage property, acquired last summer by Allied Properties Real Estate Investment Trust, is being repurposed to host a marketing suite for The Well development, a café, a restaurant and offices for key tenant Konrad Group.
 
“It will be a spectacular space,” says Hugh Clark, vice president of development for Allied Properties.
 
Until now, the property’s been devoted to hospitality. Built as the Richardson House Hotel in 1875, it became the Falconer Hotel in 1906 and the Spadina Hotel in the 1920s, before eventually becoming Global Village Backpackers in 1997. The interior renovations will open up the small hotel rooms to become a grander commercial and office space, while the exterior renovations will restore a heritage look to both the southern and northern wings.
 
“The southern building in particular has many layers that have been added over the years, the most recent being the blue wood siding,” says Clark. “What you’ll see is when we’ve done the full restoration of the façade, the southern building will have more of a Tudor style. On the northern building we’ve already peeled off many layers of paint to expose the red-orange brick.”
 
Jedd Jones Architects did some of the design, while Gensler used historic photos to come up with the restoration plan for the wooden southern building.
 
The Well Joint Venture, a partnership between Allied, Diamond Corp. and RioCan, is expected to move into 3,000 square feet of the southern building in in June. Other tenants are expected to occupy the building this fall. Allied also plans to redevelop the surface parking lot immediately to the north of the building.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Hugh Clark

Sometimes you have to go indoors to radically reimagine what can be done with the outdoors.
 
The Gladstone Hotel’s Grow Op, which opens Thursday for a four-day run, invites landscapers, gardeners, students, artists and place-makers of all sorts to explore how design can enhance the sustainability and the enjoyability of our outdoor urban spaces.
 
Certainly there’s increasing pressure to push the limits. Yards in newer urban developments are smaller, if they exist at all. Parks and other exterior spaces are getting squeezed amidst more and more intensive downtown development. So using the confines of hotels-sized lobbies and corridors to propose landscaping solutions and experiments is not such a farfetched idea.
 
“It’s an important challenge for designers of outdoor spaces,” says Victoria Taylor, who has curated this year’s exhibitions with Graham Teeple and the help of Britt Welter-Nolan. Principal at VTLA, Taylor one of the event’s cofounders. “Especially in Canada, we think we have so much outdoor space, we don’t do anything with it. But we should still consider the aesthetics, the ecology and even the economy of our outdoor spaces.”
 
Many artists who have shown during Grow Op’s three-year history have spread their wings beyond the confines of the hotel. The group Play the Walk, which advocate for exploring neighbourhoods with childlike delight, has hosted expeditions through different city spaces since Grow Op 2013. “They’re an alternative to Jane’s Walk that’s more ad hoc,” says Taylor.
 
This year, a group of students with the University of Toronto Master’s of Landscape program will exhibit bee-nest boxes they’ve designed for several specific species of bees. After the show, the boxes will go into community gardens across the city. “Then the science will start and the students will see if their designs will attract the bees they’ve designed it for,” says Taylor.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Victoria Taylor

Five new retailers opening in Etobicoke’s Sherway Gardens shopping mall signal the early stages of the mall’s multi-phased, $550 million expansion.
 
“Preppy-bohemian luxe” US designer Tory Burch is first out of the gate. Cosmetics maker LUSH, shoe designer Vince Camuto, jewelry and watch retailer Thomas Sabo and Canadian fashion label Rudsak are also making their Etobicoke debuts over the next few weeks. Some of the stores will be located in the existing property while others will be in the most completed parts of the redevelopment.
 
“At Sherway Gardens we are writing the next chapter in retail and we are delighted to share our growing space with some of today's most influential brands,” stated Andy Traynor, the mall’s general manager. 
 
Sherway’s north expansion, set to open this September, will feature a new flagship Harry Rosen, a relocated Sporting Life and a new food court. Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom will open stores there 2016 and 2017. The reboot will add an additional 210,000 square feet of retail space to the centre, bringing the total size to 1.3 million square feet.
 
But it’s not just Sherway that’s getting ritzier. As serious shoppers know, four of the GTA’s best known malls are currently in some sort of flux.
 
Sister Cadillac Fairview property, Toronto Eaton Centre, is also getting a Saks Fifth Avenue this fall and a Nordstrom store in the fall of 2016. Saks will bunk with Hudson’s Bay in the historic Queen and Yonge building, which is currently being renovated to make room. Nordstrom will share the old Sears space at the north end of the mall (formerly Eaton’s, if you’re keeping track) with other smaller retailers.
 
Another Nordstrom location will open at Yorkdale Shopping Centre, owned by Oxford Properties and Alberta Investment Management Corporation, as part of that mall’s $331 million expansion, which started in January 2014 and is expected to be completed in the fall of 2016. About 25 smaller stores are also part of the expansion.
 
Not to be outdone, Mississauga’s Square One, owned by Oxford Properties, is expanding to the south, with 113,000 square feet devoted to the first Simons in Ontario and another 120,000 square feet for a flagship Holt Renfrew. That expansion, expected to be complete in the spring of 2016, will cost $237 million.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited, Vanessa Jenkins

When the University of Toronto’s iconic John P. Robarts Library was completed in 1973, two pavilions flanked the enormous main building: the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and the Claude T. Bissell Building.
 
But on the Huron Street side, there was supposed to have been a third pavilion, which was never built.
 
When Diamond Schmitt Architects studied Robarts for the first phase of a $65-million renovation of Robarts—a phase which maximized the study space inside the triangle-shaped library and brought in more light—they uncovered breakout panels that were intended to connect to the unbuilt third pavilion on the loading dock side of the building.
 
“There is no plan that anybody can find anywhere, but there is a diagram in the opening-book brochure that shows a dotted line where that third pavilion was supposed to be,” says Gary McCluskie, a principal at Diamond Schmitt. “As part of that renovation work we started working on a plan for what could be built on that west side of the building.”
 
The discovery turned into an idea. The development application for the new Robarts Common expansion, about 56,000 square feet over five storeys, was filed earlier this month. And so more than 40 years later, Robarts will finally get its third pavilion.
 
But while original plan was for a 500-seat classroom/special events room, the new building will instead provide 1,222 seats of study space. The free-standing structure, which will connect to the main building via bridges over the loading dock, also shuns the brutal concrete architectural style that has made the original building so famous—or infamous, as the case may be. The five storeys will have a much more contemporary look that recognizes Robarts dramatic style without replicating it. Metal facets will mimic the metal on the existing building. There will be lots of glass, but blinds and fretting on the glass will reduce the amount of light that comes out of the building.
 
“What was really engaging about this project was finding the ways we could be similar so it fits in but is of our time today building for something that’s serving a new purpose,” says McCluskie.
 
Rest assured, since the new build is on the Huron Street side, the building’s striking resemblance to a turkey or peacock, when seen from the George Street side, won’t be affected.
 
If everything goes according to plan, construction could start next winter with an opening two years after that.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Sources: Gary McCluskie and Larry Alford
Photo Credit: University of Toronto