Church & Wellesley - Yorkville - Annex : Development News

The student population's not going up, but this tiny, expensive school in the Annex is finally getting a $10-million addition to replace its long-standing portable classrooms.

"It's a three-storey addition to an existing building,” says Royal St. George's College chief financial officer Andrew Whiteley, "with a drama studio in the basement, an art studio in an attic, and the two floors in between a classroom and a seminar room."

The project is now above-grade, with structural steel in place.

Adjacent to the space is a new garage, with a green roof that will serve as a student play space.

The student population of Royal St. George's, which teaches students in grades three to 12, is 426. The work, by architects Joseph Bogdan and Associates, managed by Triaxis, began in June 2011 and will be finished by the end of August. The costs are being covered by fundraising and a long-term mortgage.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Andrew Whiteley

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A tower on a forlorn stretch of Bloor Street East is getting a $10-million renovation to liven the place up a bit.

"The building really turned into a bit of a dog," says Chris Fyvie, a broker with Colliers who's handling the building. "They weren't investing any money into it. It was the last place you would show; you would show it if you had a client with a really limited budget."

Work is already underway, with common areas on the 12th and 19th floors completed to show prospective tenants. According to Fyvie, landlord Greenwin is looking for tech companies and smaller businesses. They'd also like media companies; Fyvie points out the building's extreme proximity to the Rogers campus. Suites as small as 1,690 square feet are available.

The price will be in the low $30s per square foot.

The 20-storey tower, built in 1972, current has about 80,000 square feet of vacancy out of its total 272,908. Fyvie says there are negotiations afoot with one major potential tenant who might take a sizeable portion of the building, potentially including the lobby.

There's an open house for brokers on March 29 to show them the new 365.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Fyvie

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Yonge Street's going vertical, and Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam figures it's got something to do with a generational shift among the people who own it.

"I think that for Yonge Street, for a long time it's been multi-generational ownership, parent to child, parent to child," says the Ward 27 councillor and former real estate agent with Coldwell Banker. "I think that in many instances, the children are no longer [interested in] operating these businesses."

Yonge Street south of Davenport, along with most of Bloor, the Danforth and Queen Street, have not kept pace with the intensification of the core, keeping to their quaint, two-, three- and four-storey selves. But Wong-Tam's started to notice a tidal shift on Yonge.

"I've had many pre-application meetings with third-generation property owners who are bringing in developers with whom they've structured deals," she says, adding that these days, "applications in Ward 27 seem to start at 40, 45 storeys."

Some of these families are prominent property holders, like Hong Kong-based holding company Chen and Sons, and others own one or two storefronts and are looking to maximize the profit on their generations-long investments, while allowing Yonge Street to grow up.

As Wong-Tam has said before, she's ambivalent on the issue of Yonge Street's imminent verticality. As a former real estate pro, she likes good development, but at the same time, she talks about walking down Yonge on a recent afternoon during this unseasonably sunny spring.

It was, she says, "really illuminating for me, to see all those people lining up for patios with sun. It's not shadows in parks or shadows in backyards, it's shadows right on the street, on patios, that matter." And soon, there'll be many more of them.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristyn Wong-Tam

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Six years after launching Madison Avenue Lofts, Burnac is about to launch South Hill on Madison, a seven-storey sister condo next door at 377 Madison.

The new building, which project manager (and one of the "Bur" or Burnac) Zach Burnett says will be higher end, will have 159 units, including 10 townhomes, in about 120,000 square feet. Selling prices will be in the neighbourhood of $600 a square foot, with units ranging from 400 square feet to just over 1,000.

"Our feeling at Burnac is that the landscape of the real estate market has changed quite a bit," Burnett says, "so Madison Avenue Lofts had a lot of units of 1,200 to 1,600 square feet, where South Hill is going to average 750 to 800."

If sales go according to plan, Burnett estimates ground will be broken in a year to 18 months.

South Hill will occupy the remaining 40,000 square feet of the original 100,000-square-foot lot that is visible from Dupont Street at Madison, but is on the north side of the tracks, between the Annex and Forest Hill.

The building, whose exterior will have art deco references, is designed by architect Paul Northgrave, who overhauled the old Hydro building that became Madison Avenue Lofts.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Zach Burnett

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The Sutton Place won't be called the Sutton Place anymore.

Despite some pretty high-value name recognition, at least among the pre-Millennial set, Lanterra co-founder, president and CEO Barry Fenton says they'll be choosing a new name for the refurbished property when it opens in 2014.

Speaking to Yonge Street in a car on the way to the airport to check out British hotels for some design hints, Fenton says, "We have the right to use it, but I think we're going to come up with a new concept, a new name." They have a few names in mind, but when pressed, Fenton says, "We can't reveal all our secrets."

Fenton says the negotiations with the vendor, presumably a representative of the Ho Family Trust that owns the dwindling Sutton Grande group of hotels, lasted five months before going firm in November.

Lanterra will be adding nine storeys to the original WZMH-designed tower at the northeast corner of Bay and Wellesley. Fenton says he's eager to play with a rare square tower after building so many point towers, with the encouragement of City Hall.

"You get more units per floor,” he says.

Lanterra will launch their sales in June, and will start construction, including a new exterior, by the end of the year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Barry Fenton

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Adam Vaughan held what he's calling a "telephone town hall" at the end of last year, with results revealing the development priorities for one of the city's most populous wards.

Questions were framed in terms of the current budget negotiations. Responses indicate that 34 per cent of residents consider public transit to be their top priority, followed by 26 per cent who list "children, libraries, recreation, nutrition and childcare," ahead of the 15 per cent who said affordable housing was the most important thing to maintain and cultivate.

People in this densely populated ward also figured the best way to pay for all of this was by tapping drivers. About 48 per cent of them suggested the city bring back the vehicle registration tax; 32 per cent were in favour of road tolls.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

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Nominations opened this week for the 2012 Green Toronto Awards, though the most interesting category from the 2011 edition has been dropped.

Last year, the awards expanded to include a green homes category, aimed at individuals who had done something remarkable to or with their own homes.

"It wasn't our strongest category," says Jessica Chow, co-ordinator for the city-sponsored awards. "We don’t know why. We noticed a lot of them were, 'Oh, I recycle in my home.' It wasn't really what we were after."

So this year, it's been folded into the more general green design category, where individual homes will now compete with eco clothing, green roofs and other design innovations.

Nominations can be submitted here until midnight on Feb. 6. Winners will be announced in March.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jessica Chow

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If you want to get a condo built fast, have a celebrity buy into it.

It looks like Mark Wahlberg's purchase of a unit at 36 Hazelton has increased the rate of sales of the rest of the units by enough that ground is being broken this spring, ahead of its most recent schedule.

Thirteen of the five-storey building's units have now been sold, leaving five remaining opportunities to be the Entourage producer's neighbour. The condos range in size from 1,073 square feet to the penthouse, which Wahlberg looked at but decided against, that will be 4,693 square feet.

The building, an expansion of the disused St. Basil’s Separate School, is being built by Alterra and Zinc. It was designed by Quadrangle, with Holbrook and Associates as the landscaper.

Writer: Bert Archer


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In a little more than three weeks, you'll be able to buy liquor in Maple Leaf Gardens for the first time since the building end its role as a licensed big league sports venue in 1999.

On Dec. 6, the LCBO will be opening what it's referring to as its Carlton and Church location on the upper level of the retail complex that the extremely aged among us still recall as the site of many of this city's most emotionally intense moments.

The entrance will be off of Carlton Street, and according to Karen Mortfield in the LCBO's communications department, it will be a barrier-free store, with elevator access, five checkouts and 4,000 square feet of retail space, including a 1,300 product-strong Vintages section.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Karen Mortfield

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"We’re not tearing down walls and starting from scratch," says Alan Black about the Bloor Cinema renovations going on now until the end of the year. Black is senior manager of client services at Hot Docs, which will be operating the cinema when it reopens. "The general idea is to embrace the curves in the building, embrace its heritage."

The words will come as a relief to the century-old cinema's fans, who may have been justifiably concerned, in light of the rash of rep cinema closings, that "closed for renovations" might be code for "going out of business," or "closed for transformation into a multiplex."

Hariri Pontarini are the architects in charge of the restoration and renovation. In addition to ground-up work like 783 Bathurst and Great Gulf Dallas, they're the firm responsible for Atom Egoyan's Camera and the proposed Alliance Française expansion on Spadina Road.

In addition to a new and bigger screen, the seats on the lower level are being replaced with what Black describes as "bigger, more comfortable" ones, meaning the capacity will be reduced slightly, to 750 from 840. The balcony seats are being refurbished (and more importantly, retained), the concession stand is being redone and the façade is being extended to meet the street, bringing the box office indoors. Black says there will also be a complete technical overhaul, replacing the audio system and allowing the Bloor to show digital films.

The Bloor Cinema was bought several months ago by Blue Ice Films, which in turn is owned by filmmakers Steven Silver (The Bang Bang Club) and Neil Tabatznik (Shake Hands with the Devil).

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Alan Black

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The plans went through a few incarnations in this picky—or as Councillor Adam Vaughan describes it, "extraordinarily democratic"—Annex neighbourhood, but as of this week, Taddle Creek Park is officially open.

"The neighbourhood secured the funding for this park as part of the settlement for the One Bedford condominium," Vaughan says of the $800,000 the half-acre park's rehabilitation cost. "The Parks Department went off without talking to anyone. The park they came up with was a wonderful and astonishing design, but the community was not comfortable with it. It was a very modern design, very high-end design, and there were 10 different neighbourhoods where you could have dropped it and they would have said 'Wow,' but the neighbourhood is a heritage community."

So they demanded the city go back to the drawing board, which they did, to the neighbourhood's general satisfaction. But in the meantime, a piece of public art was commissioned from Maritime sculptor Ilan Sandler. He produced something akin to a vase or a jug, woven out of four kilometres of steel rod to mirror the length of the now submerged creek from which the park takes its name. As Vaughan explains it, the sculpture's antique shape disconnected it from the unrealized modern design for the park, and its modern design set it at odds with the park's ultimately more traditional design.

"It's like the Archer in Nathan Philips Square," Vaughan says. "Most people hated it [when it first went up], but if you tried to move it now, they’d lynch you."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

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The old Four Seasons hotel will soon be a condo tower, and since Camrost-Felcorp are doing it, it will even continue to look like the old Four Seasons.

"We're going to respect the brutalist architecture of the building," says founder, president and CEO David Feldman, 
"and in that regard also the classical nature of the interiors of the existing Four Seasons building."

An earlier plan, by Menkes, would have seen the demolition of the building and the erection of two towers high enough to cause concern for the north-looking vista of the Ontario legislature. Under Camrost-Felcorp, the vista will be staying put.

They're even hiring the building's original architect, WZMH (formerly The Webb, Zerafa, Menkes, Housden Partnership), to work alongside interior firm The Design Agency on the project, which Feldman estimates will cost about $250 million.

When the refurbishment is done in early 2014, which will include retail, restaurants and maybe a bar at street level, units will be available in the $300,000 to $500,000 range.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: David Feldman

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The provincial government announced last week that Toronto Grace Health Centre would receive all the funding it needed for a complete overhaul.

The hospital, which caters to the chronically and terminally ill and is run by the Salvation Army, has 119 beds, a number it will maintain after the renovation. But significantly, according to Glen Murray, the Ontario Minister for Research and Innovation who announced the funding, "It's keeping all 119 beds active" throughout the renovation.

"Basically, it's a rebuild for the entire building," Murray says of the Bloor and Church hospital, built in 1909, and the setting of Allan King's 2003 documentary, Dying at Grace. "On the concrete skeleton of the old building, it will be rebuilt floor by floor into a brand new hospital." According to Murray, the hospital has set aside some money of its own � equivalent to roughly 10 per cent of the cost of the rebuild, which staff at the hospital are referring to as a "decanting" -- to begin preparations immediately before sending out the request for proposals for the project next summer.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Glen Murray

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Lanterra has submitted an application to build two 58-storey towers on a seven-storey podium on Yonge Street between Maitland and Alexander.

The mixed-use plan calls for the current buildings, with their typical Yonge Street storefronts, to be demolished.

"My own personal reaction is that I'm not sure about the topography on Yonge Street," says ward councilor Kristyn Wong-Tam, "because the built form and the missing reminds me very much of what we've seen on Bay street, which has created that canyon street, and given the nature of Yonge Street, where we see three, four maybe five storey in some cases street wall expression, I have to worry about going too tall."

No detailed renderings of the Peter Clewes design have yet been shown to the city, and so Wong Tam is reserving judgment on that front.

The planning committee's report is due by the fourth quarter of the year, after which a public hearing on the subject will be scheduled.

Wong-Tam says that this application is just one of many similar ones she has either seen or heard are coming for the Yonge Street corridor.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristin Wong-Tam


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The playground in Sibelius Square in the heart of the Annex is about halfway through its major overhaul.

First conceived about five years ago, the reconstruction is significant for more than the extra fun bits it'll afford local kids.

"When I came in, Sibelius Square was the only park people were working on," says Adam Vaughan, who's been councilor for the ward since 2006. He then proceeds to list the parks that have since followed suit, including Bellevue Square, Taddle Creek Park, Margaret Fairley Square, Vermont Square and Little Norway. And like Sibelius, the working groups went to the residents, and in the cases of playgrounds, to the children to find out what they wanted.

"One of the things we're hoping is that if the kids had a role in creating the park, it will be the same kids who make sure it won't get vandalized when they're older," Vaughan says, "because it's their park."

The new playground is being split in two, with one section for older kids sectioned off from the younger kids' area by a concrete climbing wall.

The bust of Sibelius, which gave the park its name, is being moved from the edge to the centre of the green space, where it's to be surrounded by a flower garden.

Work on the playground is expected to be completed by Labour Day, with upgrades to the rest of the park, including new paths and benches, scheduled for next summer.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Adam Vaughan

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].