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Ramako said:
I drove by CityPlace on the Gardiner tonight, and I gotta say, the development is growing on me. There's a tight and strong streetwall being built along Bremner, and the horizontal white stripes on Luna's podium and red faux-brick on Neo really break up all the glass. I suspect that a streetcar on the divide will make the neighbourhood look altogether urban.

I think it's worth reserving final judgement until this project is complete.
Click to expand...


It takes a condo to make a village
by Marcus Gee
Properly planned and designed projects need not be islands unto themselves

Sometimes you don't have to go very far to find a good story. About five minutes walk from the headquarters of The Globe and Mail at Front and Spadina stands Concord CityPlace, a thicket of high-rise condominiums that will eventually house up to 14,000 people. Year after year I have watched it rise from The Globe's rooftop deck, one sleek tower after another, and as it has grown, my feelings about it have changed.

At first, I thought: Who on earth would want to live there? CityPlace is going up on the old railway lands, a huge tract at the bottom of downtown that stood fallow for years as the city and developers wrangled about what to do with it and scheme after scheme fell apart. For a long time, it was home to a downtown golf course with a towering net to catch golf balls, a sad symbol of a wasted opportunity. It seemed an unlikely place to make a home, with few amenities and no sense of neighbourhood. As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there was “no there there.”

But as the towers rose, it became clear that something cool was happening. The buildings, unexpectedly, are quite beautiful, sleek medleys of glass and steel in a variety of shapes and styles. When you go closer, you find the beginnings of a real neighbourhood, with a supermarket, people walking their miniature condo dogs, couples pushing baby strollers and – officially opened this week – a creative new park designed by Vancouver writer and artist Douglas Coupland. Schools, daycares and public housing are to follow, along with a new library and community centre. There is a there there after all.

It goes to show that properly planned and designed projects need not be islands unto themselves. They can attract shops, restaurants and other facilities and weave themselves into the urban fabric.

There is a bigger lesson, too: Density works. The waterfront condo boom is a boon to the whole city. It is attracting more and more people to downtown living, reducing urban sprawl, helping the environment, making good public transit more efficient, generating millions in tax revenue for the city and producing the best high-rise architecture since the rush of office-tower construction in the core decades ago.

The CityPlace phenomenon is being replicated all across the western waterfront with high-end condo developments such as Malibu at Harbourfront, Tip Top Lofts and ICE. Developer Alan Vihant reckons that between 100,000 and 120,000 people will live in new housing along the waterfront once all the new projects are done, more than the population of Peterborough.

These projects are doing what decades of stalled waterfront renewal has failed to accomplish: Connect the city to lake. The people who live in all those towers can walk to the lake as easily as they can stroll northbound to the theatre district. Eighty per cent of the residents of CityPlace do not drive a car to work.

Even more remarkable, they are thriving on the waterfront despite the Gardiner Expressway. Gardiner haters want to spend billions to tear the elevated highway down, but thousands of condo dwellers are living within spitting distance of the Gardiner without much fuss. Mr. Coupland has even put a giant red canoe in his park, perched on a sloping bluff that overlooks the highway. He imagines people sitting in the land-bound canoe and waving at people sitting in their traffic-bound cars.

Urban planners have fantasized for years about a revitalized downtown with greater density and more urban buzz. They tried to spur it with schemes such as main-streets intensification, designed to line streets with bigger buildings. Nothing much happened.

The change came through a commercial phenomenon: the condo boom. Mr. Vihant says that Toronto is the top condo market in North America and one of the top five in the world. Condos have sprouted not just along the waterfront but in midtown (along Bay Street near College, for example), North Toronto (Eglinton and Bayview) and the eastern downtown (King Street East and environs).

A whole new neighbourhood, Liberty Village, is rising in the west end, and condo builders are focusing now on trendy West Queen West. In the northeast, meanwhile, Mr. Vihant's Concord Adex Inc. (he is vice-president of development) is planning to build another big project, Concord Park Place, near Sheppard and Leslie.

Critics call it the “condofication” of Toronto. They complain that condo clusters threaten traditional neighbourhoods and clog the arteries of an overcrowded city.

In fact, clusters like the one rising on the waterfront are simply a different kind of neighbourhood, busy, dense, vibrant and distinctly urban. In places like North Toronto, strips of condos on main streets exist happily next to quiet, leafy 'hoods of detached houses, no harm done. In places like the waterfront, they reclaim waste land and bring it to life.

Looking at those towers from the deck of The Globe, I no longer wonder why anyone would want to live there. Instead I wonder how neat it would be to live there.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/it-takes-a-condo-to-make-a-village/article1285254/
 
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Well anyone know the next phases of city place...

To me it appears there is the next Phase of Parade and then Signature and it appears it is to be the same design as before.

I can see them going for the moon as it is city place and there buildings always tend to sell well.

The market has improved and they could announce a next phase next summer.

Aura has been the big super tower project and by then it will be U/C and so this could easily do well.

They should keep it affordable like Aura and they should be fine.
 
I don't think Signature will be selling for quite awhile. There's still empty lands left near city place (the land south of TCHC and west of the park). If they haven't bought the land yet, they probably will. There's also the block south of sky dome and near the round house beside Harbourview Estates.
 
Yeah aren't they still building the towers much faster then they originally planed.
 
Well all pre-constructions are never built on time. The tentative date for Parade was February 2010. But it seems now, it will be late 2010 or early 2011.
 
September 12 Pictures

1. Parade and Luna from Brunel Court
3914421504_b7a669d0b4_b.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41002894@N07/3914421504/in/set-72157622226962853

2. Parade from Bathurst Street Bridge
3914445142_eef080e7fe_b.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41002894@N07/3914445142/in/set-72157622226962853

3. Parade from Front Street. Not great lighting, but note that the construction elevator labels stop at 18, so continuing up with their ridiculous superstitious numbering scheme excluding 13 and *4, they are currently working on floor 26 (walls, no ceiling).
3914444746_c6c61c0c24.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41002894@N07/3914444746/in/set-72157622226962853
 
Great updates folks, keep the coming.

Disappointed so far with the fact that the "back and forth" alternating pattern for the inverse balconies so far isn't being used.
 
Automation Gallery said:
It takes a condo to make a village

It goes to show that properly planned and designed projects need not be islands unto themselves. They can attract shops, restaurants and other facilities and weave themselves into the urban fabric.
Click to expand...

Surely he could have picked a neighbourhood-on-the-rise that supports this proposition a little better. A lot of the things he's gushing about with regard to Cityplace are highly debatable.
 
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The website also has the floor plans up now for the "park collection". Only the mid-rise and the tower left with no floorplans on the site.
 
Automation Gallery said:
It takes a condo to make a village
by Marcus Gee
Properly planned and designed projects need not be islands unto themselves

Sometimes you don't have to go very far to find a good story. About five minutes walk from the headquarters of The Globe and Mail at Front and Spadina stands Concord CityPlace, a thicket of high-rise condominiums that will eventually house up to 14,000 people. Year after year I have watched it rise from The Globe's rooftop deck, one sleek tower after another, and as it has grown, my feelings about it have changed.

At first, I thought: Who on earth would want to live there? CityPlace is going up on the old railway lands, a huge tract at the bottom of downtown that stood fallow for years as the city and developers wrangled about what to do with it and scheme after scheme fell apart. For a long time, it was home to a downtown golf course with a towering net to catch golf balls, a sad symbol of a wasted opportunity. It seemed an unlikely place to make a home, with few amenities and no sense of neighbourhood. As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there was “no there there.â€

But as the towers rose, it became clear that something cool was happening. The buildings, unexpectedly, are quite beautiful, sleek medleys of glass and steel in a variety of shapes and styles. When you go closer, you find the beginnings of a real neighbourhood, with a supermarket, people walking their miniature condo dogs, couples pushing baby strollers and – officially opened this week – a creative new park designed by Vancouver writer and artist Douglas Coupland. Schools, daycares and public housing are to follow, along with a new library and community centre. There is a there there after all.

It goes to show that properly planned and designed projects need not be islands unto themselves. They can attract shops, restaurants and other facilities and weave themselves into the urban fabric.

There is a bigger lesson, too: Density works. The waterfront condo boom is a boon to the whole city. It is attracting more and more people to downtown living, reducing urban sprawl, helping the environment, making good public transit more efficient, generating millions in tax revenue for the city and producing the best high-rise architecture since the rush of office-tower construction in the core decades ago.

The CityPlace phenomenon is being replicated all across the western waterfront with high-end condo developments such as Malibu at Harbourfront, Tip Top Lofts and ICE. Developer Alan Vihant reckons that between 100,000 and 120,000 people will live in new housing along the waterfront once all the new projects are done, more than the population of Peterborough.

These projects are doing what decades of stalled waterfront renewal has failed to accomplish: Connect the city to lake. The people who live in all those towers can walk to the lake as easily as they can stroll northbound to the theatre district. Eighty per cent of the residents of CityPlace do not drive a car to work.

Even more remarkable, they are thriving on the waterfront despite the Gardiner Expressway. Gardiner haters want to spend billions to tear the elevated highway down, but thousands of condo dwellers are living within spitting distance of the Gardiner without much fuss. Mr. Coupland has even put a giant red canoe in his park, perched on a sloping bluff that overlooks the highway. He imagines people sitting in the land-bound canoe and waving at people sitting in their traffic-bound cars.

Urban planners have fantasized for years about a revitalized downtown with greater density and more urban buzz. They tried to spur it with schemes such as main-streets intensification, designed to line streets with bigger buildings. Nothing much happened.

The change came through a commercial phenomenon: the condo boom. Mr. Vihant says that Toronto is the top condo market in North America and one of the top five in the world. Condos have sprouted not just along the waterfront but in midtown (along Bay Street near College, for example), North Toronto (Eglinton and Bayview) and the eastern downtown (King Street East and environs).

A whole new neighbourhood, Liberty Village, is rising in the west end, and condo builders are focusing now on trendy West Queen West. In the northeast, meanwhile, Mr. Vihant's Concord Adex Inc. (he is vice-president of development) is planning to build another big project, Concord Park Place, near Sheppard and Leslie.

Critics call it the “condofication†of Toronto. They complain that condo clusters threaten traditional neighbourhoods and clog the arteries of an overcrowded city.

In fact, clusters like the one rising on the waterfront are simply a different kind of neighbourhood, busy, dense, vibrant and distinctly urban. In places like North Toronto, strips of condos on main streets exist happily next to quiet, leafy 'hoods of detached houses, no harm done. In places like the waterfront, they reclaim waste land and bring it to life.

Looking at those towers from the deck of The Globe, I no longer wonder why anyone would want to live there. Instead I wonder how neat it would be to live there.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/it-takes-a-condo-to-make-a-village/article1285254/
Click to expand...

This is a very interesting article, albeit pretty superficial. I think it generally sums up the mood of the non-urbanist agenda folk who view development and the public space without a critical eye. These types of people either like something or they don't and are probably in the majority of people living downtown (or anywhere else for that matter).

Like the writer, my views on CityPlace have changed. Strangely enough, my views went in the opposite direction. When the first 5 towers were being built on Front (and Blue Jays Way) I was thrilled. I recall thing "who wouldn't want to live here? It is close to everything and it is brand new!" My mind changed by the time the next phase was under construction. Still wowed by the density and height, I was particularly disappointed in the neighbourhoods treatment of its ground floors and how it is disconnected from the Toronto street grid. By the time the entire section east of Spadina was complete I felt the area was nothing more than a vertical subdivision found in the outer suburbs.

Indeed, there was no urban context or connectivity. Despite being so close to everything the neighbourhood was devoid of life or really its own identity. It felt like residents only left it to come back came back but never stayed around to make it their own. They work on the other side of the tracks and sleep here.

But it appears that things have changed again. In my mind, the ground floor treatment has improved even if the connectivity has stayed the same. While still disoriented and detached from the Spadina Streetcar, the area West of the main street has shown some positive steps towards that "there there" feel noted in the article. I'm optimistic that once Fort York Blvd is completed and Dan Leckie way is opened that CityPlace will feel less like an island and more connected to the city. Also, nearby intensification has done almost as much to improve CityPlace as has the actual development. By this I mean an improved waterfront, the Fort York Neighbourhood, Bremner/York and the increase in condos in the Entertainment District have pulled Cityplace into Toronto.
 
CSW2424 said:
I'm optimistic that once Fort York Blvd is completed and Dan Leckie way is opened that CityPlace will feel less like an island and more connected to the city. Also, nearby intensification has done almost as much to improve CityPlace as has the actual development. By this I mean an improved waterfront, the Fort York Neighbourhood, Bremner/York and the increase in condos in the Entertainment District have pulled Cityplace into Toronto.
Click to expand...

Realistically,:eek: I dont think you can build this much at one time and expect this part of town all of a sudden to be vibrant. Yeah......i think its going to take at least 10-15 years for all this development, parks, transit and entertainment, to gel together.
 
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