RC8 said:
It's not nostalgia, it's seeing potential when it's in front of you. The warehouses on the site could be turned into fantastic spaces if preserved properly.

What we have down at King is a landlord who has not made the most of what he has because he wants to tear it all down. We shouldn't allow this. What he wants to do is outside of the official plan, in violation of heritage guidelines, and would - if approved - set a disastrous precedent for the preservation of every other warehouse in the King-Spadina neighbourhood.

I really love the Gehry design, but there's so many problems with this proposal that I can't see the city saying 'yes' to this. It would just be poor planning to allow it in this epoch.
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I cannot help but think of the wonderful stretch on King between Spadina and Bathurst.
 
RC8 said:
Again, it's not about nostalgising anything, but rather realising that those buildings are very valuable and irreplaceable, and can as a matter of fact be brought back to life.

People wanted to demolish Toronto Union Station too, and Old City Hall as well. We didn't, not because those buildings were in particularly good condition, but because they retained enormous potential.

The King St. strip can be made accessible and safe without the need to completely erase all the buildings. It can also be built upon without the need, once again, to raze the whole thing. Those buildings are currently not being used to their full potential, far from it.
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But where your argument goes off track, in this endless, boring debate, is that the warehouses on King are /not/ in fact "very valuable and irreplaceable".....and they are not at all in the same league as Union Station or Old City Hall....the way you word it is disingenuous in the extreme.....no one with an ounce of honesty can compare these run-of-the-mill warehouses with Union Station and say they are equally important...

No offense, but you and the other preservationist types show what I would call a profound lack of perspective in the debate about Mirviish Gehry....you completely discount the other half of the equation - what we will be getting - and focus only on the small sacrifice that we need to make.....

Mirvish-Gehry will be an immensely important addition to the City of Toronto when and if it gets built, and if you can't grasp that, if you can't see the entire picture - with both sides of the equation - what will be lost and what will be gained, then there is probably no one who can help you....
 
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diminutive said:
The Smithsonian's point wasn't that Penn Station deserved to get demolished or something, it was that people nostalgize it in its peak. By the 1960s the PRR was carrying less than a 1/10th of what it was carrying a few decades before, the railroad was verging on bankruptcy and the original station was extremely expensive to maintain.

In hindsight, we can all look at Penn Station's impressiveness and MSG's utter... ugliness and think 'wow, what a bunch of idiots.' It wasn't quite the case of aesthetically oblivious vandals tearing down an otherwise perfectly suitable building, though.

Likewise, you can conspiracize that the current buildings haven't been used appropriately because Mirvish wants to demolish them, but you're ignoring the impracticalities of the current structures. It's ridiculous to not have accessible street presences, for instance.
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Well, this *does* reinvoke my "what if Penn Station were replaced by Mies?" question. Plus my contention that if one were to transpose UT back 50 years, the grumbling would be less over the demolition than over the quality of the replacement.

But somehow, it still strikes me that you're overplaying the "historical nostalgia" angle--especially given that those who led and advanced the crusade on behalf of Penn Station were looking well beyond nostalgia, and perhaps even "liberating" the preservationist notion from the reactionary-nostalgist stigma it held in the High Modernist years. Indeed, they were by and large the sort who'd be derided as "elitists", then as well as now--and it's that elite cachet which in fact spurred the post-Penn preservationist revolution.

And the upshot of all that is, relative to your statement

The grim fact is that, designation or no, few Torontonians recognized or celebrated these warehouses before Mirvish proposed demolishing them. People may not have been hostile to them, either, but they were just a mundane, banal part of everyday life.
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I'd counter-argue that said warehouses are *more* "recognized and celebrated", even in their so-called mundane banality, in 2013 than Penn Station was in 1963. And the simple fact of their municipal designation proves it--whereas no such thing existed for Penn Station in 1963. But you can blame Penn Station on the fact that they *are* designated/recognized/celebrated at all--and, the fact that an awful lot of people accept and take for granted that they're "designation-worthy", simply by virtue of Mirvish having maintained them for all these years. (Or, if you still want to push the "few Torontonians" angle--well, as per my comment on the original save-Penn-Station movement being a bit "elite", plus ca change.)

And therein, I suppose, lies the problem--at least in the eyes of the "has the heritage movement gone too far?" crowd.
 
yyzer said:
But where your argument goes off track, in this endless, boring debate, is that the warehouses on King are /not/ in fact "very valuable and irreplaceable".....and they are not at all in the same league as Union Station or Old City Hall....the way you word it is disingenuous in the extreme.....no one with an ounce of honesty can compare these run-of-the-mill warehouses with Union Station and say they are equally important...

No offense, but you and the other preservationist types show what I would call a profound lack of perspective in the debate about Mirviish Gehry....you completely discount the other half of the equation - what we will be getting - and focus only on the small sacrifice that we need to make.....

Mirvish-Gehry will be an immensely important addition to the City of Toronto when and if it gets built, and if you can't grasp that, if you can't see the entire picture - with both sides of the equation - what will be lost and what will be gained, then there is probably no one who can help you....
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Though to revisit the play-on-the-emotions re "TD Centre vs what it replaced", may I forthrightly counter-offer this: when it comes to those conditioned along the heritage/psychogeo/urb-expl "existing conditions" axis of urban appreciation, yeah, fine with the TD Centre. However, had the TD Centre *not* been built and we still had the fabric it replaced--fine with that, too. Said contingent is *beyond* unilaterally bemoaning such so-called lost opportunities--or maybe, said "lost opportunities" are configured along the lines of "could've been kept" rather than "could've been built"; but, still. The TD Centre came when it could've; but, heretical as it might sound, had it *not* come, it wouldn't be the end of the world, or the end of Toronto--at least according to that perspective...
 
yyzer said:
But where your argument goes off track, in this endless, boring debate, is that the warehouses on King are /not/ in fact "very valuable and irreplaceable".....and they are not at all in the same league as Union Station or Old City Hall....the way you word it is disingenuous in the extreme.....no one with an ounce of honesty can compare these run-of-the-mill warehouses with Union Station and say they are equally important...

No offense, but you and the other preservationist types show what I would call a profound lack of perspective in the debate about Mirviish Gehry....you completely discount the other half of the equation - what we will be getting - and focus only on the small sacrifice that we need to make.....

Mirvish-Gehry will be an immensely important addition to the City of Toronto when and if it gets built, and if you can't grasp that, if you can't see the entire picture - with both sides of the equation - what will be lost and what will be gained, then there is probably no one who can help you....
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However I think you have failed to entertain the thought that perhaps the 'other side' of the debate is precisely concerned with what we're getting, and that it is understod that sacrifices need to be made. It however takes on a different form. To protect these buildings from demolition does not mean that we don't get anything. This is precisely the way that preservation should not be thought about. Think about the gains we make by not erasing our hertiage buildings; physical manifestations of our past and spaces and structures that will probably never be built ever again. These are the sort of things that cannot be bought. This way of looking at it can even appeal to the those UT-investor types. If we're inclined to listen to Florida, these types of situations, like the one before us, might even be in favour for preservation as engines of economic growth and innovation.
 
yyzer said:
Mirvish-Gehry will be an immensely important addition to the City of Toronto when and if it gets built, and if you can't grasp that, if you can't see the entire picture - with both sides of the equation - what will be lost and what will be gained, then there is probably no one who can help you....
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An immensely important addition to the City of Toronto could be built here while respecting every rule in the current development and heritage guidelines for the area, and with the blessing of the planning department! Instead, Mirvish has come up with a scheme that, if approved, will put the whole neighbourhood at risk.

You need to think about the impacts beyond the site in question. Buildings don't exist in isolation.
 
adma said:
Though to revisit the play-on-the-emotions re "TD Centre vs what it replaced", may I forthrightly counter-offer this: when it comes to those conditioned along the heritage/psychogeo/urb-expl "existing conditions" axis of urban appreciation, yeah, fine with the TD Centre. However, had the TD Centre *not* been built and we still had the fabric it replaced--fine with that, too. Said contingent is *beyond* unilaterally bemoaning such so-called lost opportunities--or maybe, said "lost opportunities" are configured along the lines of "could've been kept" rather than "could've been built"; but, still. The TD Centre came when it could've; but, heretical as it might sound, had it *not* come, it wouldn't be the end of the world, or the end of Toronto--at least according to that perspective...
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This logic goes both ways, though. Toronto doesn't need the TD Center or Mirvish-Gehry or such, but it doesn't need these warehouses or Union Station or whatever.

Look at NYC; it's still a perfectly cultured and impressive city even though they replaced Penn with the hugely ugly MSG. Cities are ultimately about people, not buildings, and most will get on just fine regardless of whether or not they draw the biggest starchitects or preserve every warehouse.
 
RC8 said:
An immensely important addition to the City of Toronto could be built here while respecting every rule in the current development and heritage guidelines for the area, and with the blessing of the planning department! Instead, Mirvish has come up with a scheme that, if approved, will put the whole neighbourhood at risk.
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At risk? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? They're not building a firework factory...
 
diminutive said:
This logic goes both ways, though. Toronto doesn't need the TD Center or Mirvish-Gehry or such, but it doesn't need these warehouses or Union Station or whatever.

Look at NYC; it's still a perfectly cultured and impressive city even though they replaced Penn with the hugely ugly MSG. Cities are ultimately about people, not buildings, and most will get on just fine regardless of whether or not they draw the biggest starchitects or preserve every warehouse.
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And yet, we're in an era when, believe it or not, a certain guarded revisionism is working on behalf of the "ugliness" that replaced Penn Station.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/r...8bcd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&_r=0

And just as well, *old* Penn Station in its bedraggled 50s/60s twilight doesn't come off nearly as badly as you're portraying it--indeed, I can see present-day heritage/psychogeo-axis beholders finding it more intriguing than depressing or disgusting.

(And in fact, the "more intriguing than depressing or disgusting" principle might as well apply to the heritage/psychogeo-axis perspective at large. Which is why these breathless claims on behalf of "greatness" vs some notion of Hamilton/Buffalo stagnation sound so flaky to my ears...)
 
The more I think about this debate the less it adds up. Something else is at play, Tall Poppy syndrome. There's a constituency aggravated that some accomplished people have decided to do something audacious. This seems like a perfect opportunity to teach them a lesson they'll never forgot, a bit of hog-town humble pie. Some of these objectors see themselves as smarter that M/G if less appreciated.

City planners are miffed. M/G can't have it all! They must build shorter, or they must incorporate some crappy warehouses. We must have some fingerprints on this! We can't serve up a city block on a silver platter after all...

If I were M/G I'd be thinking there are a lot of people eager to see me fail. Maybe I should just sell this block to Allied and use proceeds to buy an entertainment company. Watch critics hide their chagrin.

Fortunately for us M/G are city builders rather than keyboard critics.

Just when Toronto is on the verge, in typical Canadian style we get cold feet.
 
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buildup said:
The more I think about this debate the less it adds up. Something else is at play, Tall Poppy syndrome. There's a constituency aggravated that some accomplished people have decided to do something audacious. This seems like a perfect opportunity to teach them a lesson they'll never forgot, a bit of hog-town humble pie. Some of these objectors see themselves as smarter that M/G if less appreciated.

City planners are miffed. M/G can't have it all! They must build shorter, or they must incorporate some crappy warehouses. We must have some fingerprints on this! We can't serve up a city block on a silver platter after all...

If I were M/G I'd be thinking there are a lot of people eager to see me fail. Maybe I should just sell this block to Allied and use proceeds to buy an entertainment company. Watch critics hide their chagrin.

Fortunately for us M/G are city builders rather than keyboard critics.

Just when Toronto is on the verge, in typical Canadian style we get cold feet.
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buildup said:
The more I think about this debate the less it adds up. Something else is at play, Tall Poppy syndrome. There's a constituency aggravated that some accomplished people have decided to do something audacious. This seems like a perfect opportunity to teach them a lesson they'll never forgot, a bit of hog-town humble pie. Some of these objectors see themselves as smarter that M/G if less appreciated.

City planners are miffed. M/G can't have it all! They must build shorter, or they must incorporate some crappy warehouses. We must have some fingerprints on this! We can't serve up a city block on a silver platter after all...

If I were M/G I'd be thinking there are a lot of people eager to see me fail. Maybe I should just sell this block to Allied and use proceeds to buy an entertainment company. Watch critics hide their chagrin.

Fortunately for us M/G are city builders rather than keyboard critics.

Just when Toronto is on the verge, in typical Canadian style we get cold feet.
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No, this is about discussing the potential flaws of the project and how they can be resolved, instead of the rah-rah-build-it-now-stop-whining we've been hearing on this forum.
 
What if m/g comprimised and offered to preserve the east building but not the others. The deal would have to include a large plaque at the front entrance stating something like the following:

I, Frank Gehry, designed this building with the inclusion of the brick facade only by request of my dear friend David Mirvish. this was not part of my vision for this structure.

I in no way endorse the incorporation of facadism in architectural design and believe it to be a horrible injustice to artistic integrity.

P.S. I, Frank Gehry, really, really hate this awful portion of the building but please enjoy the rest. Oy, the things people do for a friend.
 
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