JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
From Friday's Globe and Mail
The dismal little parking lot at 66 Temperance St., at the heart of Toronto's financial district, occupies one of the most desirable building sites in Canada. It's got location galore, with centres of corporate power, entertainment and government just steps away. It's also got strong architectural context: The tall buildings in the neighbourhood demand that whatever is put up there be grand and urbane, and a visible sign of Toronto's large ambitions.
Yet the place has long suffered under a kind of jinx. Developers have come and gone, building nothing. Several tall-building schemes have been proposed for the site in the past several years, but all were scuttled for one reason or another. After acquiring the property in 2003, high-profile Toronto developer Harry Stinson toyed with a skyscraper condo-hotel project for about a year, then withdrew it because, he told me, "It was not sufficiently sexy [in concept] to carry the sales." Mr. Stinson's next design — Sapphire Tower, a daring blue glass cylinder soaring 81 storeys from grade and joined to a 62-storey building — was shot down by city council.
These days, however, the luck of 66 Temperance seems to be on the upswing. Though the politicians have not yet approved Mr. Stinson's sweeping redesign of Sapphire Tower, the revised plan has so far enjoyed smooth sailing through the bureaucracy. Barring further troubles, the parking lot will probably soon be bulldozed to make way for a svelte and unusual new condominium tower.
Crafted by Peter Turner of the Toronto firm Turner Fleischer Architects Inc., the new Sapphire Tower will rise 62 storeys from Temperance Street, with its topmost storeys notched back in a ziggurat pattern of terraces. A rakishly angled fin will surmount the building, which in most other respects is a traditionally boxy composition sheathed in a shimmering blue glass curtain wall.
What's different, and most interesting, about the structure is the layout of its suites. Mr. Stinson has decided to defy conventional wisdom about downtown apartments — that they have to be small — and has amply furnished his building with two-storey condos the size of a free-standing home in any upper middle-class district of the city. There are one-bedroom apartments, 759 square feet in area, currently for sale at about $450,000 — the lowest price in the building. But the more typical suite features three bedrooms and a den, and comes in at between 2,200 and almost 2,500 square feet. In different configurations, these larger apartments are on sale for between about $1-million and $1.5-million — hardly an unusual price any longer for comfortable living in Toronto's current housing market. For clients who want even more space, Sapphire Tower will offer 4,300-square-foot penthouses at the top of the building, starting at $3.5-million.
Mr. Stinson is betting that an increasing number of high-earning Torontonians no longer see the condominium apartment as merely a place to start (and end) their home-owning lives. The spacious, family-sized products he is offering at Sapphire Tower invite people to spend their whole lives in downtown apartments, with the security, comfort and convenience such living arrangements provide. (Sapphire will feature a 24-hour market, a daycare, and several floors of small condominium offices, starting at $99,000. And in a welcome move, the architect has put all the parking — six storeys of it — below grade.)
Many Torontonians will be watching this project to see if the developer wins his wager; I, for one, hope he does. Toronto will know it has come of age as a great city when affluent home buyers have the widest possible choice of housing options.
In this mix, there should be large freestanding houses in suburbia for people who want them, of course, but also large family-sized apartments in the urban core for those who don't want the commute, and who appreciate the pulse and sophistication of downtown.
That said, I find myself disappointed by the conventional shape and reduced height of the current Sapphire Tower scheme. Mr. Turner's previous design — the 81-storey glass tube with a globular anti-sway device on top — was stunning, and would have made a fine contribution to the Toronto skyline.
But our city council, worried about a finger of shadow that would pass over Nathan Phillips Square from time to time, was having none of it. Hence, the pared-down version now being taken to market.
Somehow, official Toronto must get over its fear of heights. But just as urgently, it should get past its anxiety about shadows. The downtown of every large modern North American city offers a complex, entertaining, ever-changing show of light and shadow, and that's something to be glad about. Everlasting daytime brightness is something we expect out on the prairie, but the landscape of cities is something else — and some day, Toronto will learn how to celebrate the difference.