Should the Queens Park view corridor be preserved?

  • Yes

    Votes: 168 43.3%

  • No

    Votes: 145 37.4%

  • Don't Know

    Votes: 15 3.9%

  • Don't Care

    Votes: 60 15.5%
  • Total voters
    388
Kind of amusing how a large pack of Forumers have the good sense (unlike me) to stay out of a thread where praise for 1 St. Thomas is going unchallenged.

Without going into it further, suffice it to say that 1 St. Thomas is NOT universally acknowledged to be the cat's pajamas: it's a very debatable point.

Caveat - your 3 requirements for what constitutes a good building are all valid, but how new projects rate in each regard will always be subjective: splitting the scoring into the three sections will not make the process objective and will not necessarily lead to consensus on this forum.

42
 
Is the fact that 51 and 61 storeys at the corner of Yorkville and Avenue is way too high something we can agree on in this thread?

I'm sure it will be a nice design, but those heights just make no sense to me in that location. I can see how the Four Seasons got away with it on bay. It's an open corner that could use some density, relatively close to The Bay and CIBC towers, 18 Yorkville, not to mention 1 Bloor, with commercial towers to the south. It's closer to Yonge st which is being built up significantly. Sort of like the spine of the city. But as you move towards Avenue you're getting right into the low density Annex area, and in no way could a 61 AND 51 storey tower be justified.

To be frank, I think the design should be limited to about the higher (maybe a touch higher) than the tower of the Prince Arthur. No more no less
 
caveatemptor said:
I certainly never intended to put in an a pedestal. It just appears to be the highest quality project to come around in a while.

I'm gonna shoot over to that thread now for more info.
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I happen to like it quite a bit myself as well. It's sort of like what the Regency should have been (although I'm hoping if they add lots of greenery on the balconies it might turn out ok as well. I'll hold of final judgment until it's complete)
 
caveatemptor said:
Some of the conversion projects are amazing and represent fantastic infill gentrification and ecologically speaking probably a great re-use of material, but none of them appear to suggest to the outside world anything along the lines of 'hey, look what they are doing up in Toronto!'. Perhaps we need Richard Florida to qualify that statement.
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Methinks that Richard Florida would more likely point to the Gladstone/Drake scene or the whole way the Jane Jacobs legacy has blossomed into next-generation Torontopianism (Spacing et al) as an exemplar of "hey, look what they are doing up in Toronto"...
 
Maybe, you're crazy, maybe you're not, lol. But these are all just opinions, who cares. I love hearing other peoples view on things.

I'm going to hold off final judgment until I see renderings, but 61 stories is very tall. It's gotta be about 2+ times the hight of the current hotel.

Yorkville in general is supposed to be a low rise neighborhood. A place people can just go to and walk around aimlessly. Avenue is not Yonge st, and I still think just a little bit taller than the PA is justifiable. Lets say 5-7 stories taller tops. enough to be the main draw of that corner, but not enough to look like the developer is completely pimping the corner out.
 
Development application has been withdrawn. A new proposal is likely to be submitted in the coming months.
 
/\ Indeed...

Annex Planning Meeting
Date: July 28 2008
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
Location: Tartu College, 310 Bloor St W (at Madison)

Please join Councillor Vaughan to hear about the proposals and provide your feedback. The proposals include:

- Tartu College, 310 Bloor St. W. (at Madison)
- 277 Davenport Rd. (at Bedford)
- 21 Avenue Road (tentative)
- 200 Bloor St. W. (E of Bedford)
- A proposal to create a public lane north of Bloor, from Bedford to Prince Arthur

I probably won't be able to attend - could someone else get some pictures of the proposals?
 
urbandreamer beat me to it -- anybody want to post their predictions about the 'new' proposal for this site?

My prediction: a single 40 storey building, much wider than the two point towers of the earlier proposal. I understand that the earlier proposal was withdrawn because of the expected opposition from those who did not like its height at that location, so the proposal to be unveiled next week will probably be significantly shorter but wider (to keep as much of the total floor area as possible).
 
My prediction... a private doggy park accessed by member$hip proximity card.

Or... one 60 storey tower designed by KPF or KFC... tower on the N/W corner and terraced podium on the rest of the site... 8 storeys stepping down to 3 storeys, north to south.
 
/\ Interesting proposition Mongo. A large, 40s slab would, however, create larger shadows than a thin 65s tower would. The knee-jerk NIMBYism of Yorkville residents should be taken with a grain of salt since taller, thinner towers end up being less imposing than a shorter, fatter ones. My only issue with this vision is not the potential height, but the destruction of the original Four Seasons building which would add 6+ months of construction time and would relieve us of one of our prettier PIP concrete towers.

I say bring on a tall, slender, sexy tower and leave the sycophantic pandering to the L.M.D.C.
 
ProjectEnd said:
/\ Interesting proposition Mongo. A large, 40s slab would, however, create larger shadows than a thin 65s tower would. The knee-jerk NIMBYism of Yorkville residents should be taken with a grain of salt since taller, thinner towers end up being less imposing than a shorter, fatter ones. My only issue with this vision is not the potential height, but the destruction of the original Four Seasons building which would add 6+ months of construction time and would relieve us of one of our prettier PIP concrete towers.
Click to expand...

Six Months! I'm thinking at the very least a year depending on the method of demolition - the demo could be far more interesting to watch then any recent new towers that have been built in Toronto.

I expect that there will be a lot of public hostility to virtually any proposal brought forward on this site. The total development envelope will have to be very substantial for the developer to have any chance at a profit given the site acquisition costs, demolition costs and both hard & soft costs associated with the construction/planning/marketing etc... not to mention the significant risk associated with a high-end project, with extended timelines due to the demolition phase which could take over a year as well as the uncertainty in the general economy and more specifically the real estate sector.
 
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