NIMBYs get a good neighbour
October 20, 2007
Christopher Hume
The residents of North Toronto may not have invented NIMBYism, but they have perfected it. When Minto announced plans to build two tall residential towers just south of Yonge and Eglinton, you'd have thought the proposal called for babies to be burned in the streets.
Never mind that the complex was across the road from a subway station and a major bus terminal. Forget the fact the city's Official Plan calls for intensification of Toronto's main arteries, which includes both Yonge and Eglinton.
When the scheme was originally unveiled, ratepayers groups banded together, anti-Minto signs went up throughout the area and residents from Oriole Park to Mount Pleasant were arguing that the towers represented not just a threat to their sunshine, but to their very way of life.
Naturally, the case ended up before the Ontario Municipal Board, which gave Minto permission to proceed. Five years or so later, people are moving in to the first of two towers and the sky hasn't fallen in. If anything, North Toronto is better for the advent of the tower.
As is so often the story, the neighbours are their own worst enemy; though North Toronto has evolved from a quiet – no, dull – extension of the city into a wonderfully cosmopolitan district, residents still aren't entirely comfortable with urbanity. And to be honest, it must be pointed out that all those non-descript two- and three-storey buildings that line Yonge are infinitely adaptable. They can house restaurants, stereo shops, diving equipment stores and even strip clubs. They demonstrate the truth of Jane Jacobs's observation that, "New ideas need old buildings."
But like the rest of the city, North Toronto has undergone enormous change. Starting in the 1970s, a number of nasty-looking slab buildings went up at Yonge and Eglinton. The corner also got a mall, and not a very nice one, that remains to this day.
In fact, the '70s and '80s were not kind to the neighbourhood. Whole stretches of Balliol and Davisville were razed to make way for apartment buildings that by today's standards seem hopelessly wasteful and inefficient.
How ironic, then, that the Minto scheme – one of the first designed for urban conditions – should have triggered such an outcry. Fear of change isn't new and clearly there are good reasons to be afraid of the future, now more than ever.
But surely the point is that we must learn to handle growth, and control it, not kill it outright. Given the inevitable development of the TTC lands west of Yonge and Eglinton, and on Yonge north of Eglinton, the need to come to grips with change is imperative.
Resistance is futile.
CONDO CRITIC
THE QUANTUM: In accordance with prevailing fashions, the Quantum consists of a pair of tall, thin towers that sit atop a podium building.
The latter, which in this case is five storeys tall and beautifully clad in stone, creates a streetscape that never existed along this stretch of Yonge.
This means a new sense of urbanity and a strengthened connection between the east side of Yonge at Eglinton and Yonge farther south. Finally, it seems this part of Toronto's main street is a coherent unit. By contrast, the aging Canadian Tire headquarters building across the road reads like a black hole, a dead zone that cannot be brought back to life without starting over from scratch.
Already a bank has moved into the ground floor and it's clear that the completion of the north tower and the plaza between the two towers will transform the area.
Also interesting is the treatment of the top of the tower, which actually lives up to the idea of a crown. Constructed of steel and glass, Quantum brings new elegance and sophistication to its surroundings.
GRADE: B+
