Community engagement - excellent! Lots of 3 Bedrooms - fantastic! LEED Certification - sustainable!

Building resulting from months of work in design and functionality charettes - HIDEOUS.

Really, how can so much work be put into such an awful piece of drek? "The architecture of 2500 references that of Frank Lloyd Wright blah blah blah..." - I'm not sure which cultural appropriation is more egregious, this or the Bauhaus Condo. Unfortunate really because aA did a FANTASTIC job on a similar site at Bloor and Ellis Park with 'Home.' (Context, 10s, 2005-6).
 
Community Involvement

Thank you TWM! Hopefully this will be the model of community engagement Tridel will use in all future projects!

AoD

Tridel has been actively employing community involvement over the last few years with a great deal of success (Renaissance, Verve, James Cooper Mansion are examples). Despite some negative comments and views, all our communities have to be win-win-win-win (communities, homeowners, partners/clients, and Tridel). Balancing it all requires a great deal of expertise, experience and talent from many remarkable people from all disciplines in this great city.

Happily, I'm getting great feedback from area residents and real estate agents who've filled out the survey. I've walked the area a fair bit and I think the height and fit will be good. There is a tremendous interest from potential purchasers who want a condominium home in this special part of the city.
 
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thanks for the update TWM ...

I'm personally impressed with Tridel's foward-ness (is this a word?) in approaching and working with the community in the development process, that is truly something you don't see with typical developers in this City, COODOs to your team in taking the 'extra steps' beyond the Planning Act requirements in engaging the community
 
For those who can't read the fine print on the zoning application.

Two buildings, 13 & 16 storeys with 488 total units.

Application number: 09 114473 WET 13 OZ
Planner Ed Murphy: 416 394 8234
 
I'd like to see some renderings of the project before making a comment on this.

Although it appears others have already formulated their opinion very quickly.
I'd like to know why everything in this city, should be some form of aA or Core designed buildings - frnakly I'm getting tired of them.

Reading the post about the working group meetings, it appears Tridel have tried to solve some of the issues of the residents.
 
I'd like to know why everything in this city, should be some form of aA or Core designed buildings - frnakly I'm getting tired of them.

Doesn't the PDF say that its Kirkor?.........
 
I'd like to see some renderings of the project before making a comment on this.

Although it appears others have already formulated their opinion very quickly.
I'd like to know why everything in this city, should be some form of aA or Core designed buildings - frnakly I'm getting tired of them.

Reading the post about the working group meetings, it appears Tridel have tried to solve some of the issues of the residents.

People want aA and Core-designed buildings because these (along with several more) are the best firms in the city. There should be a ban put on Cheddingtonista-esque shlock which is what will otherwise surely end up here.
 
Personally I like how these buildings look. Tridel did its homework, got the residents on board, and they don't need to please every UT forumer to get this built.
 
I'll still hold off my thoughts until a couple of renderings appear.

I am glad to see a working methodology occur which I presume
was without the Design Panel even being involved. You either end
up doing a lot of work at the back end of the design which then
compromises the original intention or try from the onset to build
a consensus.

aA and Core are good firms - no question.
But, they do get very repetitive.
They have a model that works, and they promote it well.
 
2500 Bloor St. Ward 13 Community Meeting

There will be an informal Community Meeting by Councillor Bill Saundercook Thursday, May 28 at 7:00 p.m. at St. Pius X Catholic School, 71 Jane St., to discuss the proposed development of 2490 and 2500 Bloor Street West.

Click here to download notice in PDF.

The 2500bloor.ca website has been updated with the notice as well.
 
^ Thanks Tridelwebmaster for the links. I have a concern with the posting of the archaeological assessment online however. Even though the Stage 1 report identified no known sites of archaeological interest, I think it is best not to disclose the findings of the report til the report is reviewed and cleared by the Ministry of Culture.
 
Outcome of 2500 Bloor St. Ward 13 Community Meeting

[New poster - please be gentle! :D ]
I will not be immediately impacted by development at 2500 and 2490 Bloor W., but I wandered naively into the community meeting last Thurs. out of curiosity. I am not familiar with planning in the GTA. However, I was stunned by the height of the proposed developments. Anyone else who is familiar with the site have any opinions on this? - maybe I have it out of perspective. The planning docs are here.

My take - if you cross the Humber on Bloor heading east, as you approach the top of the hill, the sites are located on your left (north). As such they are on a geographically prominent location anyway as this is some of the highest land in this area of the west end. The highest buildings in the area are opposite the site across Bloor and they are 6(?) stories high - everything else is 3 storeys. The proposed buildings are 16 and 13 storeys max, and the podiums are 10 and 11 storey I think (I'm a psychologist, not an architect so I might not be reading the elevations correctly.)
The land to the north of the sites seems like a particular problem as the land falls away very quickly to residential areas of two storey houses. Trident have done all sorts of shadow studies etc. and have "sculpted and molded" these buildings, but still I can't imagine standing in a backyard which is a couple of storeys below grade of these buildings and looking up at 16 storeys. My neck feels sore thinking about it :D Tridel didn't present any renderings from this vantage point - they were all from somewhere on S. Kingsway.

These two sites are on the Bloor Avenue - and that section has not had its avenue study done yet. Looking at the studies that have been done, I don't see anything higher than 10 storeys as a max. Does the collective expertise of UT think that densification to the degree of 16 storeys @ 2500 Bloor is reasonable/to be expected or do developers play "games"? - I wondered whether Tridel was just pushing high rises in the hope of "splitting the difference" with residents and getting a pair of tall mid-rises in the end. I was really impressed that Tridel had held all these community consultations, but then they kind of ignored all the comments of the various residents groups and proposed really big buildings that don't seem to have any connection with the buildings that are already in the area.
Tridel also want to realign one of the local residential streets to align it with S. Kingsway which produced furor. Maybe traffic control can be used to prevent too much traffic infiltration (new word I learned at the meeting :) )

I am just not sure what to think about the proposal. I know that I hate the look of the buildings, but that it just my uneducated personal opinion. Does anyone know whether the avenue mid-rise study would have any impact on planning decisions about high-rise condo blocks?
 

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