The ground floor plan is worth examining. The retail configuration is awkward. Neither of the two plazas proposed will be successful.
The northeast plaza is built around an existing Pizza Pizza, which presumably is going to go eventually. But the open space is super awkward as a result. The retail in tower B (which is a weird configuration to begin with) is cut off by a row of trees. That retail strip becomes what, back-of-house? If this becomes a full public square, one side of it will always be dead. And the bulk of the space, at the corner, will have no program and no focal point. Useless.
The southwest plaza, shown in the render, is no better. For activation it relies on that one wedge-shaped retail unit in Tower A, which they are showing as a Café with outdoor tables. Maybe. But the rest of the tower A facades at grade are blank. And the retail units shown in the other tower make no sense.
To be fair this seems typical for suburban masterplan projects. But the ingredients of a successful plaza are pretty clear: seating, a focal point for people’s attention, and active uses. The fact that Toronto gets this wrong almost every single time… Is unfortunate.
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