Agreed. I used to be kind of wistful about Restaurant Row's time being up – not because the restaurants were very good (they aren't, in the main) or because I go there frequently (I never do), just out of a vague sense of nostalgia and feeling like it's sort of charming. Not any more, though.

The restaurants are mediocre at best, but what is going to replace them on the street? If this ends up being just another couple of banal, 40 storey towers plopped on top on the death mask of some old commercial building with some generic coffee chain and a Shoppers as the retail (the Toronto special), I'll take the sh*tty restaurants.
 
Do city planners consider the close vicinity of surrounding buildings?
Maverick is going to cast huge shadows and block out sunlight to the King Blue North Building.
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They have restaurant spaces on the lower levels, albeit not as many spaces as there are today. It won't be a shoppers.

Hopefully those homely little restaurants will be replaced by a great new RBC or Subway (we need more diverse and exciting retail options downtown!) Or, fingers crossed, maybe it'll be one of those Aroma cafe thingees with lots of napping space for sleepy students...
 
Do city planners consider the close vicinity of surrounding buildings?
Maverick is going to cast huge shadows and block out sunlight to the King Blue North Building.
View attachment 132372

They take into account separation distance between towers but don't care if they cast shadows on to other towers, only parks and public squares.
 
One small consolation for me is that when the project to the east gets going, so will Fred's Not Here. What with all the squawking owner Fred Luk has been doing about the Pilot (over his at-best mediocre restaurant), I won't be sad to see their doors close for good.
Should be sometime this year - one of the other tenants mentioned that they've already been told they have to go sometime in 2018.

So the whole time, Fred knew he wouldn't even be there by the end of the pilot.
 
Never seen this one before! It's nice to see the windows pushed in from the columns etc. It kind of looks like an office building too . By the way what's the colour of the facade?
 
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No balconies at least. Hoping curtain wall for those protrusions, and some nice aluminum framing for the rest. If the architecture is going to be plain, let it at least be high quality.
 
It won't be. Look at the at-grade portions. Cheap, gross window wall. If you can't even spend a bit more on your pedestrian experience, it's impossible to imagine you'll be willing to spend on anything above that.
 
It's no worse than the garbage spewed out by aA, KPMB and DSA. Our only consistently good local firms seem to be HP and Teeple. As a highly visible tourist and media zone this area really should be getting the best architecture out there. This brand of cut and paste shlock wouldn't pass muster in any other city that has aspirations of being an international destination, let alone cities that can already claim to be one.

I dunno, I get tired of repeating the same obvious criticism every time another slab of architectural charcoal gets dumped onto a prominent site in the city; it's a trend that seems to have no end in sight. Gridlock and Look! Another Ugly Condo are the new 2 certainties of Toronto these days.
 
It's no worse than the garbage spewed out by aA, KPMB and DSA. Our only consistently good local firms seem to be HP and Teeple. As a highly visible tourist and media zone this area really should be getting the best architecture out there. This brand of cut and paste shlock wouldn't pass muster in any other city that has aspirations of being an international destination, let alone cities that can already claim to be one.

I dunno, I get tired of repeating the same obvious criticism every time another slab of architectural charcoal gets dumped onto a prominent site in the city; it's a trend that seems to have no end in sight. Gridlock and Look! Another Ugly Condo are the new 2 certainties of Toronto these days.

So do we.
 

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