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