Now it's grimly austere. Not exactly an improvement.

Ahh, I see. All reasonable contingencies accounted for.

Possibly a mere holdover over the area's more industrial past, pre-big box.

Oh, I totally agree! The Portlands is destined to be a decidedly "mixed use" for a very long time yet.

Man, I dunno. Sounds like you have a problem with Chinese anything.

I'm sure that's the case. But for the time being it looks dismal and coldly punitive.

Long run indeed. Gotta get rid of the cement plants first. Lots of dust on that stretch of Leslie. I'm not sure patio-goers would appreciate that or the constant truck noise. We're a long ways out from making this a destination strip. But I'm glad to see the park going in, it will offer a nice...

Yes, windows on the sides would indeed be nice. Kind of odd that they didn't think to provide them - or thought about it and decided to skip the idea, for whatever reasons. Blank facades like that strike me as lost opportunities.

Nice. I like the setbacks and the massing, but I find myself wishing that brick cladding would go all the way up, at least on the front facade. The switch to a lesser/cheaper cladding as you climb feels like a value-engineered cliché by now.

Sure... we'll see what shakes out. But I have to say, film and television production studios aren't exactly known for their beauty here in Canada. They tend to look pretty utilitarian and drably industrial. Just saying not to expect much in the way of aesthetics. I wish it were otherwise, but...

Disagree. Bearing in mind it's only a pie-in-the-sky rendering, that olive/forest green bounces very nicely off of that reddish brick.

That's some cool stuff right there. Hope it all sails through. It's a large patch of land that's close to the core - ideal for film and television projects. Basin and Pinewood are important not least because nearby are plenty of nice places visiting directors, producers and talent can stay while...

This is perhaps slightly off-topic, but it seems to me this is part of a larger set of conditions wherein we have people demanding improved public goods while not necessarily wishing to pay for them. Our oft-cited "shabby public realm" is the direct result of an insufficient tax base (and, I...

Looks good, but I'd expect tremendous push-back from locals. Port Credit, down by the water anyway, feels like the Beaches - a bit of a cottage/village vibe historically.

We could certainly do with more like that! In this town we seem to lack the political will.

In other news, the sky is falling.

Yeah, my thinking too; early days yet. It's going to be a massive development for this side of the Don.

Agreed, but if as this is a mixture of office and residential, it won't just be workers who live elsewhere; there will be a contingent of folks who have at least some sort of stake in living there. And yet... the massing as it's proposed is daunting; not a lot of meaningful variation.

Guess time will tell. All the incoming development along Eastern, from this site all the way over to Coxwell, certainly increases the pressure on existing schools.

I stand corrected! So to generalcanada's point, it would certainly make sense for a school in the immediate area.