There are plenty of perfectly fine low-rise and mid-rise buildings next to here, east until to St George. Google Street View image:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&sour...IkWWy4JnNn8EUaxF3aoeBA&cbp=12,115.72,,0,-5.05

West of here until Spadina is pretty unremarkable, but that's about four buildings. Why not tear those down and put up a lower-rise building? Why should there be a 40-storey mid-block precedent set for this side of the street at all?
 
Irishmonk said:
The great mid-rises, though, are further west. The stretch of College between Spadina and Huron is one of the crappiest sections of the entire street. I don't think a clutch of nicely designed 30-40 story buildings would be any worse than what currently exists there.
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I think it would be very much out of place because the midrises set the tone for the stretch of College between Spadina and University. College between Spadina and Huron has gems like Lillian H. Smith Library and that five storey grand midrise building neighbouring the U of T press building. Yes, it has those unattractive two storey buildings but they should be redeveloped to a midrise scale. A change to 30-40 storey high-rises would be incredibly abrupt. Even the CAMH building is only about 14 storeys and it feels out of place.

A building this high also definitely affect a lot of the low-rise neighbourhood to the south in a bad way.
 
West of here until Spadina is pretty unremarkable, but that's about four buildings.
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Actually, I was referring to the midrises west of Spadina in my earlier post; I should've been clearer.

College between Spadina and Huron has gems like Lillian H. Smith Library
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My bad, I thought LHS was east of Huron. And I agree, it is a gem.

I think an 8 story midrise between the LHS and Spadina with some facedectomies thrown it would be ideal. Unfortunately, that's not the proposal as it stands. I think a trimmed down U of T tower (max of 30 stories) would be acceptable. If a swarm of condo tower proposals follow in its wake, well, they can be dealt with case by case. If it ends up being a high rise zone, well, that's life in the big city. I just don't think this block is special enough to deserve extra protection when other lowrise/midrise districts like Yorkville, Distillery, et al have suffered a similar transformation with little opposition.
 
I don't know what the proper height would be for this development, but it is pretty much on Spadina, which has to be the widest street downtown without skyscrapers on it (Cityplace excluded). I would be really surprised if we didn't see some more development applications on Spadina from the College node down to King street, hopefully keeping many of the lovely brick buildings intact like Five is planning to do. This development could be the one that sets a 20-25 story precedent for the node. The CAMH building is 13 stories, I believe.
 
Tulse said:
CAMH (and the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry before it) is fully affiliated with UofT, but I don't know if UofT actually owns the building. You're probably right that this building is too valuable to be torn down, although the lower-rise former Addiction Research Foundation building (which also houses CAMH offices) would I think be a strong candidate for redevelopment. (That would be a shame, actually, since I quite like the very modernist ARF building.)
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ARF's surprisingly unappreciated--one of the most distinctly "late Corbu-esque" ensembles in Toronto (though in a way that makes it the most "York-like" thing in the U of T zone--and it's also redcarded by the way it doesn't address Spadina Circle).

Oh, and re the Spadina-Huron stretch of College: when it comes to mid/high-rises, maybe it's more a matter of context than street, esp. if we're dealing w/the south as opposed to the north side...
 
adma said:
it's also redcarded by the way it doesn't address Spadina Circle
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To be fair, practically none of the UofT buildings on Spadina provide an inviting face to that street (I suppose Graduate House is literally oriented toward it, but there is nothing about that building that is inviting). Spadina is the edge of campus, and I think that UofT likes everything facing inward, both literally and metaphorically.
 
Let's knock down every building (including house) south of College St, East of Spadina and West of Yonge and build highrises. Oh, keep McCaul and Baldwin Village, but bulldoze the rest. They're all rubbish, filled with rodents and roaches and bedbugs....
 
I Lol-ed like crazy. I think someone's got sex on their mind far too much.

I'm being half serious here--part of me likes the old buildings; the other part imagines the future where much of downtown feels like a large city, not some provincial hick town.
 
urbandreamer said:
I'm being half serious here--part of me likes the old buildings; the other part imagines the future where much of downtown feels like a large city, not some provincial hick town.
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and part of me wonders why you bother posting stuff like this. how many times a day do you need to draw attention to yourself? i know you're an 'edgy iconoclast' and all but still.........
(yawn)
 
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