Development
February 20th, 2010
Brougham, a small village at the corner of Highway 7 and Brock Road in Pickering, doesn’t quite make the usual criteria for a “lost village” - urban sprawl is still far from overtaking the historic buildings, and the village looks much like it did 20 or 50 years ago.
But it is a lost village - or even a bona fide ghost town - in the making, and has been since March 2, 1972. On that date, the Government of Canada selected northern Pickering Township - along with sections of Uxbridge, Markham and Whitchurch Townships - as the site of a new Mirabel-sized international airport that would eventually replace Malton Airport (now Pearson) as Toronto’s primary airport. Brougham - in its entirety - was now the southeast corner of this 18,000 acre (72 square kilometre) land mass that then had to be expropriated. I have touched on the subject of the Pickering Lands before here on Spacing Toronto.
Before the federal announcement, Brougham was a small, yet growing, community, with a school, several churches, businesses and a community hall. Commercial House, pictured above, is one of only a few roadside taverns left in the GTA. Today, Brougham is largely by-passed by the extension of Highway 407, which skirts the southern boundary of the airport lands.
When the brakes went on in 1975, Brougham and the huge parcel of Class I farmland to its north and west was frozen in time, owned by the Government of Canada and rented out to farmers and residents (many of which were the former land owners). As only minimal repairs were taken on by the landlord in anticipation of future construction, many houses - of which quite a number appear to be exurban ranch houses built in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s - were simply vacated and boarded up. Approximately one-quarter to one-third of all houses in Brougham are now vacant.
February 11th, 2010
Ryerson University announced Wednesday that architectural firms Zeidler Partnership Group of Toronto and Snohetta of Oslo, Norway have been hired to design the school’s new Student Learning Centre at the corner of Yonge and Gould. The hiring represents a significant step forward in the university’s marquee plans to redevelop the Sam the Record Man site.
While a complete plan for the site is still at least a year away, the architects were on hand to talk about their previous experiences and their initial ideas around the project. Their collective resumes are very impressive. Snohetta’s CV includes the new Library of Alexandria and Oslo’s National Opera. The firm is currently working on the September 11th memorial museum in lower Manhattan, the King Abdulaziz Centre for Knowledge and Culture in Mecca and new university libraries in Ohio and North Carolina. Toronto’s Zeidler architects have been involved in international projects in Tel-Aviv, London’s Canary Wharf and Seoul. Right now, they’re working on the revitalization of the Union Station rail shed.
It is clear from this selection that Ryerson views the site as an opportunity to do something special both for the school and for the city as a whole. Lead architects Tarek El-Khatib and Craig Dykers made clear that they too understand the potential for the site and the intricate role it will play in linking the campus with the city, while further enhancing the vibrancy of Yonge Street. To this end, the architects acknowledged that the building will have retail along Yonge Street and will attempt to keep up with the round-the-clock liveliness of the area. “The context is extremely important…there’s a great movement to create this public environment around Dundas and the whole force of it is creeping up the street,” said El Khatib. “There has been also some great efforts at changing the character of Gould Street so that is going to become a very important players in how the ground floor works.”
The architects created a video of a visit to the site and their consultation with students on what the new centre should be:
December 1st, 2009
A “milestone day in the effort to revitalise Toronto’s waterfront”, according to John Campbell, President and CEO of Waterfront Toronto, as the design for the Parkside development was unveiled. Although the item was held in Council earlier in the day and an initial press conference with the architect and Mayor Miller was cancelled, the design is expected to be approved by the end of the current session.
The mixed-use development, designed by internationally-renowned architect, Moshe Safdie, with developer Great Gulf Group, will be a premier residential and commercial building of approximately 36-storeys, rising from a 38-metre high podium base. It will also be the first private sector development in the East Bayfront neighbourhood . Sitting at the bottom of Lower Sherbourne Street, facing Sherbourne park, the tower will extend from Queens Quay, to the South, to Lake Shore Boulevard, to the North. The new building will join the future Corus Entertainment headquarters and the new George Brown College’s Centre for Health Sciences in the first stages of this large scale redevelopment plan.
November 12th, 2009
I recently attended a community meeting regarding the redevelopment proposal for 2055-2057 Danforth Avenue, at the intersection of Danforth and Woodbine. This site, empty since 2001, is slated for a 12-storey condominium with retail space at the ground level. The reason for the community meeting, held by Councillor Sandra Bussin, was because of a rezoning application for the site, which would allow the developer the extra building height.
Prish Jain, of TACT Design, presented the concept for the new building, showing its footprint on the overall site, with its affect on sun and privacy for the local residents. This was followed up with remarks by Leontine Major, Senior Planner, City of Toronto Planning Department and then a question and answer period. The gathering, which attracted about 50 attendees, was a chance for the local residents to raise concerns on specifically the height of the proposed building. The current bylaw allows for five-storeys, while Toronto’s Official Plan suggests a density of nine-storeys for this area.
October 22nd, 2009
1545 Eglinton Ave West by Kevin Steele
A few weeks ago I wrote about the project to create a new comprehensive zoning bylaw for Toronto. In an effort to dig deeper into this huge project, I’ve focused my attention on one important section — “Commercial Residential“, the section that will govern main streets outside the central core of the city — including both old main streets like Queen and Dundas, and newer arterials like Finch and Eglinton. In other words, it will have a profound impact on some of the most visible parts of the city. (Note that it does not apply to the “Kings” areas beside the downtown core around where King meets Parliament and Spadina, which have their own separate zoning category).
The mandate of the zoning bylaw is not to reshape zoning in the city, but rather to translate the multitude of existing bylaws into one consistent code — although it can select the best practices of the old zoning.
The Commercial-Residential (CR) category embodies the “mixed-use” concept for main streets where buildings have commercial uses on the ground floor, and residential uses above. However, since past zoning varied widely, the CR category is divided into three “standard sets” to roughly continue the previous conditions: #1 is for the centre of the city, #2 covers mostly the older City of Toronto main streets, and #3 applies to suburban arterials.
The meat of the standards begins at section 40.10.40.10, where it sets maximum heights in each section, respectively 16, 14 and 11 meters (roughly 5, 4 and 3 storeys) unless there’s a previous maximum height specified (unfortunately the website does not provide the promised height overlay map, just a kind of random map of zoning areas). This largely makes sense and seems to maintain roughly the existing guidelines. (One thing missing from the current guidelines is the “step-back” at the top of buildings to allow sunlight onto the street, but apparently that will be added to the next version). For standard set 3, the expectation is that Avenue studies will be done for suburban arterials that will allow taller heights and more mixed uses.
But then part (4) of this section describes how to determine the “Base Building Height”, and says it’s equivalent to the street’s Right-Of-Way (ROW), that is, the distance between property lines (so including street, sidewalk, and sometimes some setback on public property).
What’s weird is that most main street rights-of-way in the old part of the city are 20 meters or more, that is, about 6-7 storeys. And in the suburbs, they tend to be 30-40 meters, which is roughly 9-14 storeys. That’s a lot taller than the height allowances specified in the preceding paragraphs.
Furthermore, if you keep going, you find that later sections regulating setbacks, etc, all refer to this taller “base building”. And they all have sections that specify requirements for tall towers built over these base buildings, too.
What gives?
October 15th, 2009
Spacing contributor Ian Malczewski spent September 30 - October 3 in Niagara Falls at a joint conference held by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners. He is sharing some of the lessons he learned there and reflecting on their implications on public space, livability, and sustainability in cities.
Like most people interested in Toronto’s heritage, I harbour a bit of bitterness; perusing the Toronto Archives or learning about failed battles to preserve historic structures will do that to you. But amendments to Ontario’s Heritage Act in 2005 changed the landscape for heritage preservation, giving planners and municipal governments new tools with which to preserve the character of our cities.
A session at the OPPI / CIP conference on this subject, entitled “Saving our Cities: Contemporary Approaches to Heritage Planning,†piqued my interest. It was lead by Antonio Gà³mez-Palacio of the Office for Urbanism and architect Phil Goldsmith, who have worked on a number of heritage-related projects together. Although heritage often appears to be an issue of saving significant buildings, there is another, equally important conversation that I feel often gets short shrift: the preservation of intangible heritage.
October 13th, 2009
Spacing contributor Ian Malczewski spent September 30 - October 3 in Niagara Falls at a joint conference held by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners. He is sharing some of the lessons he learned there and reflecting on their implications on public space, livability, and sustainability in cities.
The first session I attended at the OPPI / CIP conference was called LEED-ing by Design. The purpose of this workshop was to educate planners about Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - Neighbourhood Development (LEED ND), which, according to the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), aims to “integrate the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national system for neighborhood design.†Knowing a bit about LEED Building certification (as well as some of its critiques), I was curious to see what design elements would apply at the neighbourhood scale.
August 20th, 2009
David Sucher’s City Comforts is a little gem of a book. First published in 1995, it’s a collection of the small details that make urban spaces work, illustrated with black-and-white photos …
July 21st, 2009
Yesterday, I wrote about a poorly designed pedestrian connection between the YRT/Viva bus terminal and the Langstaff GO Station.
But there are examples of how a very suburban GO station can be designed to coexist with big-boxes and connections with local transit. Milton demonstrates a very pragmatic (though still far from an urban TOD ideal) way to do this.
The GO Station in Milton, once located at the far end of town (where I am sure, land for parking was essential), now finds itself in the centre of what in 2006 was Canada’s fastest growing municipality (53,000, up 71.4% from 2001). Milton held that distinction because in the decade before that, the town had zero growth. The construction of water mains from Lake Ontario has allowed the quick growth.
There are three big-box complexes in Milton, two next to the 401 near Steeles and James Snow Parkway, and one next to the station, whose primary tenants are a LCBO and a Loblaws Superstore. The new commercial complex was built in a field next to the GO station, with a new circular road providing local access to both. Two sets of traffic lights provide safe pedestrian crossings between the two (with very short waits for a walk signal). A new bus loop connects the recently improved local transit system and the GO Transit 401 and “Train-Bus” routes, with a minimal walk between train and bus. Here, there’s a potential to minimize unnecessary trips. One actually could walk over, grab some groceries or booze, and go back to the parked car (having waited out the mad rush out of the lot) or ride Milton Transit (whose hub is the GO station) home.
Train platform right next to bus platforms and bike shelter.
Here’s what GO Transit could do with its huge, suburban parking lots: as it builds parking garages, replace surface parking with complementary retail, like grocery stores, a Tim Horton’s, a dry cleaners (the kiosk in Brampton’s station is an example) even provide space for a daycare that busy commuters could drop their children off and pick them up without an extra car trip. It would make transit more convenient and reduce extra car trips, a practical and pragmatic solution. There’s some lots, like Guildwood, that would also be suited to high density housing, perhaps even affordable homes.
July 5th, 2009
Spacing is working hard on the summer-fall 2009 issue but we need a little help from our readers (again). Our editors are trying to locate semi-finished and/or recently finished suburban developments in …
