I walk by the Mirvish Village development most days and for me, that's become a good expression of how a lot of development should have been done in the city over the past 50 years. It restores some existing fabric, adds a bunch of density and in exchange for the lost landmark, it provides some new features like the park, the alley of micro-retail, the market area and the mid-block "tunnel" access from Bathurst to Markham .
The prevailing approach at Pape & Danforth is the urban renewal approach: the site and the project is
so important that we need to demolish everything and start over with a blank slate. That's urban renewal in a nutshell.
But the treatment of this site implies that it's not important despite being the future intersection of two transit lines. If this was important, there'd be an effort to mitigate the chaos at Danforth and Pape and reconfigure the bus bay. If this was important you could argue for a Mirvish VIllage style development with restoration of some of the old buildings which would find uses because it's going to be a much busier location. If this was important, there would be an affordable housing component.
Taking the most expedient route suggests that this intersection isn't implicitly viewed as important because it's not important
right now. But it will be an important intersection and in 10 or 20 years some decision-maker is going to be scratching their head and wondering why this location, which is unique among all of the Ontario Line stations, wasn't taken more seriously when it counted.
View attachment 569755
