Church & Wellesley - Yorkville - Annex : Development News

Robertson Davies Park, named after the internationally known author of Fifth Business, will get a revitalization as part of a new condo project from Brandy Lane Homes.
 
Described by The Globe and Mail as “non-descript expanse of grass bordered by train tracks” when it was named after the novelist in 2007, the park is right around the corner from the Oakland condo where Davies lived for 15 years. About a year ago, when Brandy Lane got involved with the project, at Avenue and Cottingham, president and CEO David Hirsh knew he wanted there to be a strong relationship between the nine-storey building and the park.
 
“With urban life having such a lack of green space, we thought that doing some park improvements would be very helpful to the neighbourhood and our residents. That’s part of our development agreement with the city,” says Hirsh. “Having the building ground itself in green we thought would be a beautiful thing.” The plan includes more trees, walkways and benches for the park. An earlier (and taller) proposal for the site, which went before the city back in 2011, upset some neighbours who feared they’d lose trees during construction.
 
The building itself, named The Davies after the park, will have 36 residences and eight penthouses. Designed by Daniel Cowling at SMV Architects, the building is intended to be iconic, yet fit comfortably into an established neighbourhood. A stone façade tracing undulating balconies, which have wood-grain on the undersides, is intended to conjure the tony style of Forest Hill and nearby Upper Canada College.
 
“It was really important for it to have a real sense of presence, place and a sense of arrival. We didn’t go for the typical glass building which has become a bit too prevalent in the city as far as I’m concerned,” says Hirsch.
 
The sales office opened early this summer, with construction expected to begin this time next year.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: David Hirsh

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
 

When Casey House was established in 1988 as Canada’s first stand-alone treatment facility for people with HIV/AIDS, the founders talked about opening a day program which would welcome non-residential clients could just drop by. “But they were so overwhelmed and exhausted [by the AIDS crisis], they had to put a pause on that,” says current CEO Stephanie Karapita.
 
Now, after more than decade of serious planning and fundraising, Casey House will finally be offering a day health program in a new 58,000-square-foot facility being built adjacent to its current premises. A ground-breaking ceremony this week marked the beginning of a construction project at the corner of Jarvis and Isabella streets which will see an existing 1875 heritage mansion renovated and integrated into purpose-built facility designed by award-winning architect Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Architects.
 
The new building will finally give Casey House the space to offer a day health program in addition to in-patient and home-care programs. But amidst the new modern design—which doubles the existing space and doubles the number of clients Casey House can serve—the new building had to maintain the feelings of compassion that’s been so closely connected to the original and current building at 9 Huntley St.
 
“Our goal all along has been creating a place that’s beautiful and warm and home-like,” says Karapita, “and when you walk in the front door of the new Casey House, the very first thing you’ll see is a living room with big, huge fireplace, just as in the case of our building today.”
 
The fireplace is not the only element that connects the new building to the old one. When the move happens in 2016, some of the stained glass will move, too, as well as the tradition of lighting a candle in the window whenever a patient dies.
 
But to meet the news of the new day health program, there will be lots of new spaces, including a nursing clinic, a physical therapy room, massage rooms, an art therapy room and a number of meeting rooms. A narrow outdoor area that allows patients to socialize, has been dubbed the “sliver courtyard.” Casey House has raised $8.7 million of the $10 million it’s contributing the project.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Stephanie Karapita

This weekend, a three-day symposium at the University of Toronto's school of architecture has set itself the task of redefining the way city's are conceived.

Michael Piper, an assistant professor and the organizer of the After Empirical Urbanism symposium, defined one core challenge as an explosion of the concept of urbanism.

The term “urbanism” started out, he said, comprising just city planning, urban design and architecture.

“But in the mid 1970s, for various reasons, the field began to expand,” he said, “into ethnology, anthropology, data analysis. It's become very complex, loaded with a series of other things, instead of just studying the physical space of cities, you'll study the people who live there and their cultural backgrounds. This is all very good, but with all this observing and civic engagement is that we've lost the idea of how to design. So what we're going is try to take all these empirical practices and how to make them operative and more design sensitive.”

The symposium, which is open to the public, has invited people from these many different disciplines and practises, who usually hive off into conferences of their own, to discuss how the future of thinking about cities might incorporate all their areas of expertise without losing track of the basic responsibility of urbanists, which is to make cities, rather than merely analyze them.

Piper says that in the 1970s urbanists, inspired by thinkers like Le Corbusier, began overhauling cities in ways they had not been overhauled since Hausmann re-did Paris. The result was much brutalist concrete and housing projects that have since been deemed disasters both by urbanists and the general public. He gives as an especially egregious example the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St Louis, Missouri, built in 1954 and demolished as early as 1972, but Chicago's Cabrini-Green or Toronto's own Regent Park would serve as well.

Urbanists were ambitious and optimistic in those decades, thinking that their ideas were better than ones that had come before, and willing to sacrifice heritage and history on the altar of the new and Modernist.

“These practices have come from the failure of modernism,” Piper says, referring to the disparate state of contemporary urbanism. “We can't design the whole city, so let's just look at it. What we're saying is you can't design a city like the Modernists tried to, but it does not mean we can't attempt to think on a large scale or to think through design.”

Talks and presentations over the three days, from Feb. 27 to March 1 at 230 College Street, include “The Use and Misuse of History,” “Fictions of the Ordinary,” and “The Bias of Data.”

Entry is free.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michael Piper




 

Toronto is a city filled with real estate mystery. Do you remember that big old building on Bloor near Spadina that was vacant for decades before becoming the big, blue BMV that it is today?

Nite-Caps By the Castle is another one. Nested up on Dupont Street just east of Spadina the north side of the street, it’s less prominent than the former Hungarian restaurant on Bloor was, but much weirder. Its design was, until recently, comprised of weathered wooden planks armouring a low-slung structure redolent of some sort of beach-head bunker, has been vacant for the better part of two decades. Before the short-lived Night Caps with its little button-blue round sign on a stick, it was a sushi place, though good luck finding anyone who’s ever seen the inside of it in either incarnation.

But now, it’s being garbed in bright, new white plaster, making it look a little less On the Beach (1959) and a little more Logan’s Run (1976).

And though there’s been a for-rent sign on the thing for years, City Realty’s brand new signs seem like they actually mean it.

Stay tuned for updates on this charming little piece of urban absurdity.

Writer: Bert Archer

The city now has a street named for a living, gay man.

It may be a global first. But we don’t actually know if it’s even a Toronto first, because the city doesn’t keep track of such things.

But whether it’s a first or not (according to city officials, Toronto has permitted street namings for living people since 2013), it’s certainly a cause for celebration.

Sky Gilbert is the 61-year-old writer of more than two dozen plays and five novels and co-founder of Buddies in Bad Times theatre, a mainstay of LGBTQ theatre in the city for 36 years.

The lane named for him runs beside the theatre.

Gilbert was born in Connecticut and now lives in Hamilton and teaches at the University of Guelph. He has been known for decades for expressing strong and often unpopular opinions related to sex, sexuality and theatre. A recent post on his blog, for instance, lists 10 things wrong with audiences at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, including “They are fat,” “They are ugly,” “They don’t know how to raise their children,” and “They have no idea what David Mirvish has done for them.”

Gilbert’s forthrightness has often been mistaken for egoism. It’s worth noting that there’s no mention on his blog of the street now named after him.

According to Bruce McPherson, the city’s manager of surveys, Gilbert’s name was put forwad by the Church Wellesley Neighbourhood Association.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Bruce McPherson, Lyne Kyle

If anyone knows of any other streets or laneways in the city named for LGBTQ people, please let us know, and we'll amend the above story to record and reflect.

This is what Tom Ryaboi thinks: “One area I think all cities can improve on is how they use the tops of their buildings. Toronto has recently implemented a green roof bylaw, I think this is a good start. Most buildings that I have been to still don't do anything productive with their roof.”

He’s not an urban planner, or an eco-activist or architect. But he’s got a perspective few can boast, and one he’s spent his short career trying to share.

He’s a high-rise photographer.

This doesn’t mean he takes pictures of high-rises, though with all the developer bucks being made in this city over the past decade and more, there’s a possibility that might be more profitable. Tom -- who was born in Vaughan, spent his 20s in the Annex and has never lived in a high-rise -- takes pictures from high-rises, looking out, and down.

“While I was filming City Rising,” he says, referring to his four-minute and 14-second 2012 film, “I would often sit on a roof for many hours while the camera was time-lapsing and I would ponder things.”

His point of view is reflected in his photography, which was recently on display as part of a promotion for the Canary District development, and much of which is readiy viewable on his website.

Perspective is often hard to come by in a city changing as profoundly and as rapidly as this one has been recently. It’s often difficult to do it justice in words. But Ryaboi’s images - contemplative, vertiginous, triumphal, beautiful — offer just that: views from a city that didn’t exist a decade ago, and glimpses of the city that will exist a century from now.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Tom Ryaboi

The corner of Yonge and Bloor was known for decades as Canada’s main intersection, where two of its biggest streets meet in its biggest city.

But things haven’t been good there for a long time, and even in Toronto, its centrality has been usurped by Yonge and Dundas, Bay and Bloor, and even Queen and Spadina.

But looking at One Bloor East go up, I wonder if things aren’t snapping back to where they should be.

It was meant to be Canada’s tallest condo, but that fell apart. Aura, a little bit south on Yonge, took that honour. But it doesn’t relate to the street well at all. At least not yet. It’s out of scale, its mass overbearing, more appropriate to a much bigger street in a much bigger, and darker, city. Give it 20 years, maybe it’ll fit right in.

But One Bloor, designed by Hariri Pontarini, looks good already, its curves a welcome relief from the rectilinearity that has beset this city’s condo boom.

This week, it reached the 26th floor, and the curtain wall is going up, giving us a better sense of how it’s going to look.

The tower-and-podium show City Hall has imposed on all development has resulted in an almost unbearable degree of homogeneity in our buildings. But Hariri Pontarini show here how it can be done better. Working within restrictions and guidelines has always been a boon to the more talented, engaged artists and designers of every generation, ones who are also not constrained by unreasonable, unworkable budgets. It seems like Great Gulf decided to make a showpiece. I’m glad someone finally did.

We’ll check in with this one a little later. It’s been going up at roughly a storey a week, which would put the topping-off right about this time next year.

Writer: Bert Archer

Five St. Joseph is a big project, and an ambitious one.

We’ve written about it several times in this space as an example of the sort of civic responsibility, enthusiasm and creativity a developer can evince.

A big part of that is the Yonge Street frontage and what the developer has chosen to do with it.

If you walk up or down Yonge Street south of Bloor these days, you’ll see a lot of those black and white signs alerting you to development applications. Most of them are for towers, and most of the towers are proposed to be quite big. It’s a safe bet that in a decade or so, Yonge Street will be well on its way to becoming the sort of canyon we tend to associate with cities like New York and Hong Kong. How that canyon is constructed, however, is still up in the air. And we have in front of us two models: Aura on College and Five St. Joseph.

The developers of Aura on College chose to demolish the old two- and three-storey structures that have characterized Yonge Street for the past century and more to up the scale ante, replacing them with a massive podium and a sort of super-awning that, at the moment, looms over the street. That mass, which includes a Bed, Bath & Beyond and one of Madonna’s Hard Candy gyms, could either just be darkening a strip of the street. or pointing to a new model for the Yonge Street of the future.

A kilometre or so north, Gary Switzer of MOD is going another route. He’s not only keeping the facade of the old building at 5 St. Joseph that he’s building a tower on top of — that’s become fairly common in this town — he’s keeping the buildings on Yonge Street, too, both in structure, and purpose. It’s staying small-scale retail.

A sign went up on the Yonge Street hoarding recently indicating that one of the first tenants to sign up is Aroma, the Canadian-owned branch of the Israeli cafe chain that’s been sprouting up all over the city.

Aroma spokesman Daniel Davidzon thinks it’s all “amazing.”

“There is enormous density and significant residential growth in an already bustling neighbourhood,” he says. “The restoration and heritage components are stunning, as is the scope of construction. The engineering needed to bring this project to fruition is especially brilliant.”

Though Aroma has received no word on timing yet, Davidzon figures the cafe, complete with corner patio, will likely open in 2015.

Councillor Wong-Tam, whose ward this sensitive Yonge Street trench is in, is currently shepherding all those development applications through council, making deals with developers to forge the new Yonge Street. If the Aura model wins out, we’ll be in for a massive shift, our kids not quite believing our quaint stories of a small-scale commercial strip. If Switzer’s notions take hold, however, the Yonge Street those kids grow up with will have a comprehensible and visible link to the one we did. It’s revolution versus evolution. Stay tuned.

This citywide lane-naming project is turning out to be more significant than it seemed at first.

For the most part, downtown streets were named ages ago, by people whose priorities and frame of reference were often quite different from ours. Two major aboriginal roads were kept as Toronto developed, for instance, but named for an ale Etonian buddy of John Simcoe’s who was an expert on Roman roads (George Yonge) and a house that was named for an army buddy of the guy who built it just north of Bathurst (Major Davenport).

But these lanes are all about us, and a good number of them are looking to redress some of the oversights of those original street namings. Like Wabenose and Chechalk lanes in the Church Wellesley neighbourhood, named a week ago Friday.

When Connie Langille, chair of the Church Wellesley Neighbourhood Association’s heritage committee, was given the task of coming up with names for local laneways, she made a call.

“I contacted Carolyn King, past chief of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nations, for name proposals and permission,” she says. “Each request needed the approval of their council.  Wabenose and Chechalk were the names submitted. Garry Sault, an elder, kindly explained the meaning of the names. Wabenose means the one that greets the morning, as when you lift your face to the sun for morning prayers. Chechalk is of the Crane clan. They spread the word of the people, tell the stories.”

Both men were signatories of the Toronto Purchase, by which the British acquired the land Toronto is built on. It turned into a contentious claim that was finally settled in 2010 for $145 million.

Until this month, there were a total of five streets named for aboriginal people, according to Brian Hall with the city's engineering services: Doctor O Lane; Oskenonton Lane; Sloping Sky Mews; Tom Longboat Lane; and Longboat Avenue. There are also 19 streets named more generally along aboriginal themes, but these include one ceremonial sname for part of Lower Jarvis (Warriors Way), and seven that include the word "Indian."

A closer look at the signs reveals something no other named lanes have.

“The banner above the names is very significant,” Langille says. “Banners are reserved for districts, etc. only. The first answer I heard to my inquiry was ‘No’.  Ultimately to have the banner read ‘Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation’ I needed to request the exception and have it approved at city council.”

There aren’t many streets or lanes with aboriginal names in this town, and locals were querulous.

“Neighbours were a little unsure at first,” Langille says. “Why native names? How do you pronounce them? But after getting a brief history, they are proud to have our lanes named after two great figures in history.”

Another lane in the district have been named for architect Macy Dubois, and one in the offing will be named Biscuit Lane for Brown’s Bakery, which used to be on the associations strip of Yonge, where Mr Christie first started baking cookies.

“Every lane we name adds to the stories of our neighbourhood. People are connected by the telling of the stories,” Langille says. “It is good.”

Langille also works at Oolagen Community Services, itself re-named two years ago for the Cree term for "where the flowers grow."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Connie Langille
Photo: Heritage Toronto

A decade after the idea was first bruited, Yorkville has a gateway.

It's just about finished now, just where Bay runs into Davenport, in a convenient blank space in front of Jesse Ketchum Public School, leftover after the realignment of the intersection.

"The site was chosen in response to the community's request for a gateway into the 'Village of Yorkville'," says Lara Tarlo, the urban designer with the city's planning department responsible for the gateway. The re-alignment of the road at Bay and Davenport created a normalized intersection and "resulted in open space in front of the School and opportunity for a gateway."

Though the gateway is outside the boundaries of the Bloor Yorkville BIA, they were consulted, and are generally in favour of what is now the most prominent identifier for the neighbourhood.

"Generally, it is a gateway to the community, so it is good to have it identified with the signage, which has been installed," says Briar de Lange, the BIA's executive director. "It was [an unattractive] and rather non-descript space prior to the construction, so adding streetscape improvements and greenery to the area is certainly welcome."

According to Tarlo, the project was shelved for lack of funding a decade ago, and was revived when the decision was made to fix the intersection, at which point a working group including the Bloor Yorkville BIA, the local residents' association, Councillor Wong-Tam, city staff, transportation services and a cycling group formed and met over the course of a year to work through the options and details.

The budget was $160,000, and it should be completed by the end of June or beginning of July.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Lara Tarlo, Briar de Lange

It may seem like the old school on Hazelton being turned into a condo has disappeared. But, apparently, it's coming back.

A big selling point of the low-rise building at 36 Hazelton – other than the fact that Mark Wahlberg bought a unit – was the facade of the old St. Basil's Catholic school that stood there. But if you walk by today, you'll just see the skeleton of the new place – it's final form just filled out recently – with no sign of the old brick.

"As with many adaptive reuse projects, the challenges were many," says Les Klein, principal at Quadrangle, the King West firm behind the project. "They included keeping the heritage facade in place while building a new building (above and below grade) behind it; access to the site for construction. This required moving a portion of the heritage facade away for the duration of the construction process to allow access to the rear of the site."

As far as Klein is concerned, the facade, which should be back in place next year, is the key to the building.

"Change in communities should be organic," he says. "While the original use of the school was long out of date, its physical form provides a tie to the community’s historic roots. The new condominium points to the future of the neighbourhood, while being grounded firmly in its rich past."

Given both the scale and the high-end nature of the building, the owners of the unbuilt units demanded quite a bit of say in how their homes were being constructed.

"There were no 'typical' floor plans, and there were no 'typical' units. Each unit was an individually designed luxury home for a very sophisticated clientele," Klein says. "While each unit design has changed under the guidance of its owners, the building has such a strong character that it is able to accommodate the individuality of its owners without losing its identity or coherent design intent."

Klein expects 36 Hazelton, developed by Alterra and built by Zinc construction, to be ready for its new owners by 2015.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Les Klein

Though regularly ranked first in the country, the University of Toronto's law school has long suffered from a lack of physical identity. It's tough to find, for one, and when you do, it just seems a scattering of buildings with nothing tying them together other than the impressive earnings of its graduates.

Hariri Pontarini hopes to do something about that.

Working with several extreme restrictions, including space and money (odd, that, given the aforementioned alumni earnings), Michael Boxer, the lead architect, has pulled together an agglomeration he hopes will fix the problem, and give the school a more coherent relationship to its surroundings, both academic and urban.

"We started with this idea of pillars," Boxer says, "reinterpreting the columns from Flavelle House. The portico and those pillars in red brick are one of the first things you see as you're driving south, and we set the new building behind it with a sheer glass, mirror-like surface to reflect the old building and the sky, and have the syntax of that orderly symmetrical column grid. The portico columns are like the front teeth, the foremost columns, and there's the offspring, smaller derivatives that then spin through the site at more of a filigree. Off of Philosophers Walk you see the same thing, there's an echoed portico with four columns. The materiality is trying to echo the traditional masonry construction.

"There's a crispness to the glass and detailing, but at the same time there's robust stone pillars and textured masonry base that's going to be very heavy and of the earth."

Seen from above, the buildings seem a little smushed together, but Boxer says that it won't affect students and others who use the buildings.

"The massing might appear challenging at different levels," he says, "but internally, and the way you'll experience the building at grade, they should work well together."

Hariri Pontarini has been working on its designs since 2000, a reflection of the complexity of the project, which includes dismantling much of a late 1980s, early 1990s addition, which itself enveloped an expansion from the 1950s, much of which is being uncovered after decades during the process.

"It's almost like a snake that eats a frog," Boxer says, referring to the newly discovered relationship between the two previous projects.

"What we're doing is remodelling the 1980s addition for the expansion, and so there's three layers of renovation that's going on there. As they undo parts of the 1980s addition, they're discovering the 1950s remnants that are inside the 1980s body. The 1980s structure kind of piggy-backed and grabbed as much of the 1950s structure as it could."

One of the main aspects of the brief from the school was to create a social centre for the school.

"The school as it stood was a bit in disparate pieces," Boxer says. "A part of the faculty is located in Falconer, across the courtyard, and the community wasn't being fostered, so we developed this idea of a forum, the central heart of the scheme right next to Flavelle House. The main entrance of Flavelle leads under the house to a large central space to a skylight, and from there, it springs off to a new crescent wing, to take advantage of the site, to hug Queen's Park Crescent, we're as close to the property line as we're allowed to be there."

Though there have been some slow-downs related to what Boxer refers to as the "surgical" demolition required, he expects the job to be finished within two years.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michael Boxer

It looks like by 2015, a family may finally be able to live in a Bay Street condo.

The Cresford tower, compellingly named 1000 Bay, that's going up where Bistro 990 used to be is prominently advertising the availability of three-bedroom units in a market where such things are still rarities.

The work of councillors Adam Vaughan and Kristyn Wong-Tam, both of whom are strong proponents of what they call family-sized condos, has played a large role in this, though one would hope that so, too, has some recognition on the part of developers that occasionally people with children wwant to live downtown for under $1 million.

You wouldn't have thought it would take them quite so long to catch on.

The 32-storey tower, designed by glass-tower-cobbler Peter Clewes, will have 458 units, of which 33, according to Clewes' firm Architects Alliance, will be three-bedroom.

The site, which also included a parking lot bordering on the University of St. Michael's College at U of T, is in the centre of the condo core and across the street from several of the 1980s condos, including 1001 Bay, that minted Bay Street as the city's premier condo strip.

Writer: Bert Archer