As has been mentioned many times, there is an Entertainment District height limit, especially imposed for John Street west to Spadina, beyond which towers have not been allowed to go higher. While it would be *nice* to have varying heights within the area, the OMB instance that if one tower gets 157 metres, they all get 157 metres has rendered any wishful thinking regarding a staggered skyline there moot.

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It's not necessarily an 'OMB insistence', it's a legal principle regarding precedent heights set by previous projects. The way our appeals system worked until recently was that if one thing got permission, others would receive that same permission. Hence, Festival Tower at 157m = (nearly) everything else at 157m.

It would be very difficult to produce an opinion that fairly denied 157m to a subsequent applicant if the others had previously received that permission.
 
Sure it's insistence. The OMB saw anything a few blocks away as similar for legal precedence, whereas the City saw only the adjacent properties as similar, and had a 'clothesline' drawn from the Financial District down to Spadina, trying to drop the buildings a few floors at a time as they moved west. The City didn't do this to try to create a more varied (and therefore theoretically more attractive) skyline, but to ensure that the area west of Spadina, where the City wanted a lower scale character maintained, would not be threatened by tall towers.

(The area west of Spadina does seem to be protected nevertheless: the OMB seems to be happy with Spadina as a dividing line between 47 storeys and 19.)

So the OMB sees the city in large blocks, while the Planning Department understands it in smaller parcels. With the OMB's insistence on larger areas making up areas of commonality, we're getting tabletops.

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"Drew a clothesline" is one way of saying they didn't really do much at all. Sure, policy says 'will decrease in height' but without specifics such as a length, beginning and ending height and slope of the 'clothesline', it's not really applicable in the way the city intends. Spadina, conversely, is certainly a hard boarder. On one side, you get this, on the other you get that. It's therefore easier for the board to 'fairly' say that the street is an acknowledged line of division. But even that isn't easy: SQ got 14 storeys while 170 Spadina, closer to the street and with general support from groups like the GRA, only got 12.

The other thing the Board tries to do is prevent appeals to a higher divisional court. Without quantitative evidence from planning (eg. height, slope of the 'clothesline'), it's hard for them to say 'you get this' but 'you only get that'.
 
May the OMB can excuse the developer from the 157 meter height bylaw. By creating a clause that if you're developing more than one skyscraper on a huge chunk of land. One tower can be altered in height in exchange of taking away from the other. This will create a more dynamic skyline not a limited height one!
 
The one thing I don't understand is how the precedence made its way down to Bisha and Mercer street? These were zoned significantly less than around Festival.
 
cd concept said:
May the OMB can excuse the developer from the 157 meter height bylaw. By creating a clause that if you're developing more than one skyscraper on a huge chunk of land. One tower can be altered in height in exchange of taking away from the other. This will create a more dynamic skyline not a limited height one!
Click to expand...

It's unclear if developers would go for this arrangement over two towers of equal height. It's also just a skyline. It's not that important to the people that live in this community. They can't really appreciate the skyline from inside of it
 
Urban planning in this city is an embarrassment. So, yeah, let's create the St. Jamestown look with all towers (which already have dubious architectural merits) at the same height. And then we complain we have a city that looks the way it does. Most of our developers are bottom of the barrel profit maximizers in detriment of everything else; and City Hall (who should truly steer things here) keeps driving this ship fools like there are no issues. On top of that, architects are really beggars (versus choosers, developers), so they will design what the are told: the cheapest. An outrage!
 
Boy you said a mouth full !! But it seems to be true with the same colour, style, and height look in the skyline. Don't surpass the BMO Tower in height you might offend them!
 
157m may be the height limit in Entertainment District but that didn't stop Mirvish from getting two 270m+ towers approved.
 
You lost me at St Jamestown. It's unfortunate as I'm sure you made some points that I share.
 
thedistresaerw1032-jpg.134512


This kind of thing with the renderings really annoys me. I know that almost all projects exaggerate, but this is excessive.

For one, they plant nice trees to the south of the project--there is a delivery access alley there and there is no space. They also make the buildings look way higher than they are, and make adelaide look like a quaint residential street to the north. Eff off, there is no point in even doing renderings if you arent going to make some attempt to make it look like the building will look like.
 
Those renderings has the most confusing and messed up context. It's like they shuffled all the buildings around in the Entertainment District.
The location of the pool buried deep between the two podiums looks pretty dark and depressing.

I don't get the twin towers with different podiums. Just like their Musee development, it's a jumble of different styles that looks not quite right. Speaking of which the beige podium will probably be the similar chunky brutal precast similarly used at Musee.
I hope the towers will retain the subtle two tone metallic bronze metal cladding, and not VE'ed to spandrel.

It actually reminds me of the Tour de Canadiens condo building (phase 1) in Montreal.
 
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