Development News

An Esplanade condo development is trying to incorporate social networks to help sell units, and is offering as much as $2,500 in commissions to what they're calling their "virtual brokers."

"Most presales have really targeted the broker community, "says Robert Galletta, managing partner of BlackJet Inc., the ad firm that's orchestrating the campaign, based on a previous contest to name the building. "But what condo developers look for is a database of interested leads, which is what helps them read their sales effectiveness. That's always been the measure of success."

Anyone who provides the sales team a lead that turns into a sale will get $2,500, and their buyer will get $2,500 in upgrades. There are also movie passes for anyone who provides 10 registrants, iTunes gift cards for 25 registrants, and an iPad for 100.

"Beyond Cityzen," Galletta says, "this is something that may transition that traditional marketing model into something more effective."

The planned 36-storey tower, called Backstage, is being built by Cityzen, Fernbrook Homes and Castlepoint at 5-7 The Esplanade.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Robert Galletta

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The first major step in the plan to re-develop Mimico is being taken this week with the launch of a 9-storey condo called Eleven Superior.

Designed by Raw Design for Davies Smith Developments, the project, pending approvals, would be the first new building in the Mimico 2020 plan to develop the small Lakeshore community. (Amos Waites Park is also part of the plan.)

"This is sort of par for the course for Davies Smith," says project architect Roland Rom Colthoff. "They're pioneer developers, one of the first in Mississauga near Square One, they were the first people in the Distillery District with a couple of affordable condominiums, and now this will be the first significant building here for some while."

The brick-exterior building will go up on the corner of Lake Shore Boulevard and Superior on the site of a disused three-storey commercial-residential building.

Colthoff expects that construction will begin next fall or early spring.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Roland Rom Colthoff

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The city's planning department, working with Urban Strategies and Hariri Pontarini architects, have released a Tall Buildings Study that puts forward comprehensive recommendations for how tall buildings should be built in the downtown core.

It should please anyone worried about unrestricted growth in this booming building economy, though people hoping for more building like Alsop's OCAD classroom block will probably be less enthusiastic.

The study concerns itself with what it calls downtown, from Front to Dupont, and Bathurst to the Don Valley. It calls for tall buildings to be restricted to areas it calls High Streets, main commercial thoroughfares, and dictates how these buildings should be designed and spaced.
According to Robert Freedman, the city's director of urban design, the study is aimed at making sure that as downtown builds taller, that the streets remain vibrant."

"We like to think of tall buildings as having a base, a middle and a top," he says, "and within the urban context of downtown, the base should relate very appropriately to the street. Much of the document is about the context that you see adjacent to the street and that really contributes to the street life."

The study includes stipulations that every tall building be designed with a podium that's at least 3 storeys tall, and designed with what the study refers to as "a high degree of permeability" through the inclusion of transparent doors and windows. "At least 60% of the frontage on High Streets between 0.5 metres and 3 metres in height must be glazed and transparent," it stipulates.

The study recommends 17 such regulations.

The city is taking the Tall Buildings Study to the public of wards 20, 27 and 28 for discussion this spring.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Robert Freedman

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Many large buildings have several architectural firms credited with its design, but rarely are their separate contributions as obvious as in the first building to be completed on the new eastern waterfront.

Headquarters for Corus Entertainment, the building at the base of Lower Jarvis Street next to Sugar Beach was designed by Toronto firms  Diamond and Schmitt and Quadrangle Architects and is owned by Build Toronto.

"You do want a harmony between the two," says Quadrangle principal Brian Curtner. "Our goals and objectives were different. They were building an office building for the city and we were trying to create a unique branding location for an innovative broadcast company."

The building's exterior design, which according to Curtner was originally handled by Eberhard Zeidler's firm, fell to Diamond & Schmitt when the building was being pitched to Global TV, according to Curtner. The designs were originally presented to TEDCO, now known as the Toronto Port Lands Company, which handles the leasing and managing of properties for the city.

Curtner says that though there were a couple of changes to the exterior, including an articulation on the facade and an 8th-floor "presentation theatre" and lounge, the designs were developed and executed separately. The result is a fairly ordinary black shell wrapped around a surprising interior of bends and curves, salvaged hemlock wood, transparencies and flow.

As the Waterfront grows -- a new George Brown campus is under construction next door to Corus -- Curtner expects their project to play a definitive role in the new neighbourhood.

"Will Corus be an integral part of the revised east Waterfront? Of course," he says. "They're young and hip and they're going to start demanding the type of life that they don't have there."

Now that the CityTV building is mostly silent, Speakers Corner shuttered and little activity behind its once famous Queen Street windows, the new Corus building may eventually take up its street-involved cultural mantel.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Brian Curtner

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The first seven of a new generation of 20 highway service stations were unveiled last week, all built to LEED Silver environmental standards.

"We had an original idea and came up with a strong, consistent brand," says lead architect Les Klein, of Toronto's Quadrangle, "and we were able to follow through with that with no difficulties whatsoever."

Built by EllisDon and operated by Host Kilmer Service Centres Inc. along the 400 and 401, in addition to being aesthetically consistent, the stations were designed to overcome the anonymity and placelessness highway rest stops often have, incorporating various digital media to display and promote local images and events.

The station's bathrooms use 40% less water than average, and are built with air-tight envelopes to ensure their high-efficiency insulation is able to minimize both heating and cooling requirements.

The stations are also universally accessible, with signage designed by Toronto's Bruce Mau Design.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Les Klein

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Pickering got a major boost last week when it was announced that Ontario Power Generation (OPG) had agreed to rent most of the remaining floors of the as-yet unnamed tower project under construction that will kick off what Pickering mayor Dave Ryan hopes will be a revitalization of the east-end city.

The $50-million project, which is being built with $30 million in provincial and federal stimulus funding by 20 Vic Management, the development arm of the Ontario Pension Board, will also include a bridge over the 401 between the tower and the GO station.

"We're calling it Pickering's Bridge to the Future," says Mayor Ryan, who is confident the construction of the bridge, which should begin by the end of this month, will not greatly affect traffic.

"It's a concept we've had since 1996," Mayor Ryan says. "We didn't have a design, but we had the idea linking the GO station with Pickering Town Centre, which is essentially our downtown on the north side of the 401."

The original and anchor tenant will be the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), which had threatened to move out of Pickering, with its 200 jobs, until Mayor Ryan brokered a deal to build this tower on the south end of what's now the Pickering Town Centre parking lot, to suit their requirements for increased office space.

MPAC is set to occupy in March of next year, with OPG moving in by June.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Dave Ryan

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The city presented its final plan for the redesign of Dundas West from University to Bathurst on Sept. 27.

The public meeting was held at Alexandra Park Community Centre, in the centre of one of the neighbourhoods that's set for a major overhaul from urban hodge podge to a planned and designed streetscape.

The basic idea is to decongest the strip by designating transit only lanes, a sharrow lane meant for bikes and cars, and more space for pedestrians on wider sidewalks punctuated by trees, new street lights and new street furniture, including redesigned ring and posts, newspaper boxes and so-called "multi-publication structures" for non-newspaper publications like the one currently on the west side of Bay just south of Bloor.

According to the city's web page devoted to the plan, the strip of Dundas, one of the city's most distinctively urban, is "vibrant," "hectic" and "frenetic." "But it's also disheveled and chaotic. With some careful attention to detail, it could be so much more."

Construction has begun, with the replacement of watermains along the strip, a process scheduled for completion by the end of 2011. The re-design will begin after the watermains have been finished, and the entire project is expected to be completed in 2012.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Steve Johnston

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The buildings have all been demolished, and the materials all sorted for recycling at the future site of the Hullmark Centre at Yonge and Sheppard.

"Demolition will be complete by the end of this month, which will allow us to get going with the excavation of the site," says Jim Ritchie, senior vice president of Tridel, the developer of the three acre residential commercial complex best known, so far, for having signed Whole Foods as one of its anchor clients.

When complete, the complex will have two condo towers, an office building, retail, and a new path to the subway.

Ritchie expects excavation to take five to six months, and another five to six months of construction for the building to reach ground level.

The first occupancies are expected in 2013.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jim Ritchie


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Work has begun on the $2.2-million repair and upgrade of the railway underpass on Bloor just west of Islington.

According to Mike Laidlaw, the city's acting manager of structures and expressways, "We'll be replacing the sidewalks, making general repairs to the abutments, and putting in some stairways, tying the sidewalk into the TTC commuter parking area."

The work will continue through the winter, with an expected completion in February. At the moment, two lanes in each direction are closed, though Laidlaw expects that for the majority of the construction, only one lane each way will be shut down.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mike Laidlaw

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Last year, when Home Ownership Alternatives was a finalist for the World Habitat Awards, they threw a party on the UN's designated World Habitat Day to let people know, and to celebrate their various partners who helped them provide the city with an entirely new kind of affordable housing.

It went so well, they decided to do it again, and give the city an event at which to announce a major new funding initiative.

"It's an opportunity to bring together various partners and stakeholders and thank them on a day the world should be talking about availability of affordable housing," says HOA vice president in charge of partnerships, Joe Deschenes-Smith.

So on October 4, between 80 and 100 people from various levels of the municipal and provincial development sector will gather at the Enoch Turner School House, where Sean Gadon, director of the City's Affordable Housing Office, will announce the city's $3.5-million support for affordable housing under a new program.

If it goes as well this year as last, Deschenes-Smith says they'll likely make it an annual event.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Joe Deschenes-Smith

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On June 8, a major new development force announced itself to city council.

The Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, which had recently negotiated a $145-million land claim settlement, appeared before council to introduce themselves as new city partners. Though the claim won't be completely settled or paid out for some time yet, the announcement made it clear that the nation intends to buy back some of the land they lost in 1828.

And this past Monday, an audience at Fort York was able to put all this in a little context with a talk by University of Calgary history professor emeritus Donald Smith, as well as Mississaugans Chief Bryan LaForme and Carolyn King, who talked about the facts and repercussions of the January 30, 1929 meeting between the British and a group of Mississauga chiefs, during which, as the talk put it, the "landlords became tenants."

"This is the first of a series of events that we're going to be having at Fort York, put on by the Friends of Fort York, that focus on Toronto and Canada's history, present and future," says Alok Sharma, supervisor of special events at the fort.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Alok Sharma

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According to its architect, what promises to be a significant addition to the city's collection of streetscapes is just weeks away from getting its building permit.

At the moment, Market Street - the strip that runs from Front to The Esplanade on the east side of St Lawrence Market South -- is negligible. It used to be home to an excellent old-school bar and restaurant called The Fish Market, but now, the heritage designated buildings that used to house it and several other businesses are dilapidated and dis-used. The only visible tenant is the LCBO with its small Front Street frontage.

But Paul Obermann, the man behind the revitalization of the Five Thieves at Yonge and Summerhill, figured it deserved better.

"Our approach with how to keep that existing building, which has been patched and altered over the years, was quite a challenging one, made more challenging made by what Paul Obermann wanted to do," says lead architect Michael Taylor of Taylor Smyth. Obermann wants to "open up the whole ground floor of that building, one level below the LCBO, to create a whole new series of storefronts, which he imagines will have restaurants in them."

In this plan, the LCBO will be the major tenant, extending its reach all the way south to the The Esplanade. With them as anchors, Obermann hopes to attract a sort of Mirvish Village type of tenant collection to make the street a destination.

Taylor hopes to get the hoarding up in October, and to complete the whole project, including an entirely new building built in place of an old auto shop on the Esplanade, by late 2011 or early 2012.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Michael Taylor

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Joe Pantalone's mayoral campaign has announced his intention, if elected, to aggressively pursue a green mandate for Build Toronto, the city's arm's length real estate and development corporation.

The deputy mayor would place particular emphasis on green partnerships and development, with Build Toronto encouraging green industrial uses for disused properties in low-income or transitional neighbourhoods.

"This is something to galvanize Build Toronto," says Pantalone's press secretary, Mike Smith. "When you look at these neighbourhoods," Smith says, "these are often post-industrial neighbourhoods. If you pursue the development of green economy, you can let the neighbourhoods transform as they have, maintain their industrial base without bringing in a lot of destructive, polluting industries on the one hand, or going the other way, like Leslieville, replacing good industrial jobs with dead-end service jobs.

"It's a way of looking at sustainability in a wholistic way. It's environmental, but it's also economic and social, and if you take any of those out of the triangle, it's not really sustainable."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mike Smith


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The last of three bridges over the Gardiner to be demolished -- this one on Jameson -- fell this past weekend, closing the expressway from Carlaw to the Humber.

But it's not the end to the closures.

"The work will continue right through till we're finished, says Mike Laidlaw, acting manager of structures and expressways, of the project whose completion date is set for next summer. "After this weekend's closures, there will be a number of night closures as well to erect portions of the other bridges. Right now, we're down to two lanes in each direction. Come the end of October, we'll restore it back to three lanes, and it will remain three lanes for the rest of the work."

Night closures will being on Sept. 28 and run 11pm to 5am until Oct. 7.

The bridges are being replaced, with minor changes, in the same dimensions as the demolished ones. The old bridges had gotten to the point at which demolition and rebuilding was more practical than further maintenance.

The contract to demolish and rebuild the three bridges, including traffic control and all other expenses, was worth $14 million.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mike Laidlaw

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"These garden were in operation in the 70s and 80s and into the 90s," says Councillor Peter Milczyn, of the just-resuscitated Titan Road community gardens. "Around the time of amalgamation, the number of people using it dropped off, and when amalgamation occurred, the garden was shut down."

Then came the Tibetans.

"A couple of years ago, I was approached by a community group, the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre, who were constructing their community and cultural centre across the street. They saw the old sign that says City of Etobicoke garden plots."

Milczyn says he took the idea to city staff, and was met with silence, but after resolving an issue with another councillor who he says had been blocking the grounds use on behalf of one of their constituents, who was using it for storage, the two acres of hydro corridor lands are being prepared to use again. All it will take, Milczyn says, is a little tractor to clear out a decade of overgrowth, and a topsoil top up, to make it ready for the 1,000-plus members of the Tibetan centre, who will also be sharing it with other interested neighbours.

Though Little Tibet is several kilometres away in Parkdale, as a result of these gardens, this Kipling and Queensway neighbourhood will likely take on a greater significance to this exiled community. According to Milczyn, the Dalai Lama will be visiting it and giving the project his blessing next month.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Milczyn

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