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From the Star:

'Massive' plan to revamp troubled Lawrence Heights
Plan to be unveiled Thursday envisions a do-over for 138 hectares around Lawrence Ave. and Allen ExpresswayComment on this story »
Published On Thu Feb 25 2010
Donovan Vincent
Staff Reporter

The troubled Lawrence Heights public housing project is about to get a makeover bigger in scope than the massive Regent Park redevelopment underway downtown.

A "preferred option'' for redeveloping Lawrence Heights – sometimes dubbed The Jungle – calls for creating a pedestrian-friendly community with nearly 10,000 units of mixed-income housing, new parks, retail and schools.

To be unveiled Thursday, the plan is part of a larger project to remake the neighbourhood around Lawrence Ave. W. and Allen Rd. – including revamping two subway stations, tearing down and rebuilding the Lawrence Square shopping plaza to make way for an extended road and new housing, and possibly covering a section of the expressway.

In total, the swath targeted for the Lawrence-Allen Revitalization covers 138 hectares, stretching from Bathurst to Dufferin Sts. and Lawrence Ave. W. to Highway 401.

The housing part of the plan mirrors the Regent Park revitalization, but fewer tenants would be affected. About 7,500 tenants lived in Regent Park before that revamp began, compared with 3,500 now at Lawrence Heights.

At 26 hectares, Lawrence Heights itself is similar to the 28 hectares of Toronto Community Housing property at Regent Park. Add to that the four hectares occupied by the plaza.

The plan comes after 18 months of consultation with the community, which has seen its share of gun crimes and drug problems. Rather than continued concentration of social housing, and the social ills that accompany it, the city hopes to go to a mixed-housing model in the revitalization.

No dollar figures for the proposal were available Wednesday, but given the scope of the project it will be in the range of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

"It is massive,'' Howard Moscoe, the local city councillor, said in an interview Wednesday, calling the proposal a "unique opportunity to rebuild a section of the city that's in bad need of rebuilding.''

Three city planners are working full-time on the proposal, and the city has also hired a consulting firm.

The first shovels could be in the ground by late 2011, but completing the project could take up to 25 years.

Newly appointed Toronto Community Housing CEO Keiko Nakamura will join Mayor David Miller, Moscoe, and other officials to make the announcement Thursday at Lawrence Heights.

Among the specifics to be unveiled:

Extending Marlee Ave., which runs parallel to Allen, north beyond Lawrence Ave., where it currently ends at Lawrence Square. This would be made possible by tearing down and redoing the plaza.

Possibly "capping'' or covering part of the Allen at Lawrence. This idea is being explored to increase pedestrian accessibility and "tie both sides of the Lawrence Heights community back together,'' according to Moscoe. Results of preliminary studies will be revealed.

A redesign of the Yorkdale and Lawrence West subway stations is also getting serious thought.

"We want the new development to be subway-oriented,'' Moscoe said.

Rebuilding old public schools, in addition to creating new Catholic schools, of which there are currently none in Lawrence Heights. A large percentage of students at Our Lady of the Assumption school near Bathurst and Lawrence come from Lawrence Heights and must be bused in.

Moscoe said the plan is to get input on the proposal from residents and others in workshops slated over the next week or so.

The proposals will be further refined, culminating in a secondary plan that would go to North York community council sometime in June.

A developer would be chosen at some point.

Like the Regent Park makeover, buildings will be torn down and residents will have to be relocated until the new subsidized units are rebuilt on site.

Currently, there are 1,200 such units in Lawrence Heights, and all must be replaced.

Also like Regent Park, money from sales of condominium units and other forms of market housing will be used to finance the huge redevelopment.

Originally, Toronto Community Housing wanted 9,500 units of mixed housing on the Lawrence Heights "footprint," but the city shaved that to 7,500, saying the larger number would make it too dense.

Toronto Community Housing has also redeveloped its Don Mount Court housing project in the city's east end into mixed housing.

"With the Lawrence Heights revitalization, Toronto Community Housing is doing more than simply replacing housing," the housing agency said in an email Wednesday.

"Our vision is to reshape the Lawrence Heights community to improve the lives and living conditions of all residents."

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/art...plan-to-revamp-troubled-lawrence-heights?bn=1

AoD
 
Redeveloping Lawrence West and Yorkdale stations? I don't know if I'm down with that. Those are two of the most beautiful, retro-futuristic, sexy, and wonderful public buildings in Toronto.

On the other hand, I personally volunteer to demolish Lawrence Square!
 
I hope that LED lights will allow the return of the computerized lights at the Yorkdale station. The original lights were neon lights, which burnt out.
 
MTown said:
Redeveloping Lawrence West and Yorkdale stations? I don't know if I'm down with that. Those are two of the most beautiful, retro-futuristic, sexy, and wonderful public buildings in Toronto.

On the other hand, I personally volunteer to demolish Lawrence Square!
Click to expand...

Exactly, we need to preserve these great stations and restore them. Yorkdale Station fortunately has recognized heritage status, but not Lawrence West. If modifications are necessary, then they should be done very sensitively. It would be absolutely foolish to mess with Lawrence West's orange pavilion. These are some of the architectural strong points of the system.
 
I think Dupont and Eglinton West as well as Lawrence West should have status.

Dupont's my personal fave!

Thanks Alvin for the the link to the press release and maps (I love maps!).
 
Basically, the only 1978 Spadina-line stations which might not merit status are the two designed "in-house": Wilson and St Clair West...
 
Excuse my ignorance, but I don't frequent this part of the city. I'm wondering how residents get to the respective subway stations on foot. For example, to get to the Lawrence West station from the north, does one have to cross Lawrence and the Allen offramp nastiness, or is there some way to get to the station underground? I know this aerial view isn't supposed to be the plan or anything, but as it is it looks really bad from a pedestrian standpoint.
 
jswag said:
Excuse my ignorance, but I don't frequent this part of the city. I'm wondering how residents get to the respective subway stations on foot. For example, to get to the Lawrence West station from the north, does one have to cross Lawrence and the Allen offramp nastiness, or is there some way to get to the station underground? I know this aerial view isn't supposed to be the plan or anything, but as it is it looks really bad from a pedestrian standpoint.
Click to expand...

No, there is a walkway under Lawrence from the north side.

I know there was talk a few years ago that the Lawrence station would be move north and more centre under Lawrence.

Maybe the reason they stop construction on the new elevator over a year ago.

As for the plaza, it been dead for years and an eye sore.

Building over this ditch would hide that big mistake and reclaim land that can be a park or housing.
 
adma said:
Basically, the only 1978 Spadina-line stations which might not merit status are the two designed "in-house": Wilson and St Clair West...
Click to expand...

While I can agree with Wilson, St Clair West has a certain something that I like. I think it's the cavern-like space at the bus bays. It feels like you're God knows how deep under the ground. I always felt like I was in some odd post-apocalyptic underground civilisation or on another planet whose surface wasn't the most hospitable. I like that about it at least. It's not much to recommend it though.
 
At a glance, the plan looks great and is bigger than I thought it'd be...not only could it add almost 5000 residential units, it seriously rejigs the road network, it includes Lawrence Square, it includes the food bank (nee Brebuef, nee Bathurst Heights), consolidates the "park" around all those towers-in-a-park into a few real parks, buries the Yorkdale to eastbound 401 on-ramp and on top of it runs a new road all the way up and around to Baycrest, etc. It is a tiny bit of a shame that it'll be surrounded by houses and not especially integrated with the beefier/more urban spots nearby like Bathurst & Lawrence, Baycrest, Dufferin & Lawrence (which could also see some serious redevelopment), even Yorkdale, but perhaps the redevelopment will be infectious and spread (though, if anything, the houses will only be replaced by McMansions). If the forum still had an *evil* emoticon, I'd suggest slaughtering everying along Marlee to create a more urban spine along the Allen and make Glencairn's collector actually work for his salary.
 
The plan looks okay. It still has a "towers in the park" feel to it that I cannot place. I think master-planned developments in Toronto could get away with building more units with fewer greenspace. Personally, I would have rather seen a layout and scale like the rowhouse development that replaced Don Mount, but this is still a step in the right direction.
 
The streetgrid is probably the most disappointing part of the scheme - granted there can still be "subgrids" embedded within the superblocks but in general the feel is rather coarse - more Cityplace than St. Lawrence/Regent Park/West Donlands. They really need to spell out just how these superblocks are organized internally.

AoD
 
The street grid actually almost perfectly matches the block lengths of the neighbouring subdivisions. Mabye not ideal, but certainly contextual. I'd want to see one more road cross the Allen immediately south of Ranee, though, instead of having 4 culs-de-sac. Punch Rondale over to Stockton, or punch the extended Ridgevale through to the extended Blossomfield. With the Allen running through the middle and with limited street connections to adjacent areas, the street grid is somewhat constrained and they've done a decent job. It'd be less coarse if there were more townhouses instead of 8-12 storey complexes.

Hipster Duck said:
The plan looks okay. It still has a "towers in the park" feel to it that I cannot place. I think master-planned developments in Toronto could get away with building more units with fewer greenspace. Personally, I would have rather seen a layout and scale like the rowhouse development that replaced Don Mount, but this is still a step in the right direction.
Click to expand...

I also got that feel at first, but the amount of greenspace they'll actually end up with will be less than what appears to be rendered:
- a continous series of huge, bulbous, and perfectly deep green trees are plopped into the drawing along every street, blocking out the roads and sidewalks (the public roadways themselves are likely underscaled and should take up more land in reality).
- the buildings all have interior courtyards of grass (will they all get built this way? unlikely)
- only rough 'white box' massings are portrayed, but the final footprints will not be that compact - they'll have backyard patios and garage entryways and balconies and spots where trucks pick up garbage and ventilation grates, and so on that will fill all that green up with stuff.

edit - Imagine what the rendering would look like with green roofs...you'd think it was a flat field unless you switched to the 45 degree view.
 
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But ur right...i wonder if students would be interested in making the commute from Lawrence Heights to York U ...even with a subway or the other post secondary schools downtown.........
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To answer that question, I deliberately chose to live at Eglinton and Marlee with roomates, and take the subway up to York every day. It's only about 40 minutes to get there, and probably even less from Lawrence Heights. Marketing the area to students is a great idea, as I know plently of classmates who wish to get their own 'student pads' but don't want to live in the godawful suburbia surrounding campus. As well, if the redevelopment actually works, it should have a more urban feel, without the price that the U of T folks pay to live in the Annex. ;)
 
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