Posts Tagged ‘condos’
[URBAN NOTE] Two blogTO links on development at Yonge and Eglinton
blogTO has had a couple of interesting features about Yonge and Eglinton, the midtown neighbourhood that is boomed. Just yesterday, Sarah Ratchford profiled a new penthouse condo in the Quantum Condos development at 2182 Yonge Street, just south of Yonge and Eglinton.
Just shy of $4 million, this place would be a great option for the shopaholic in your life, as it looks exactly like a boutique where they would sell things like diamond-studded shoes. I want to bash this kind of opulent living, but let’s face it, I’m just jealous. There, I said it on the interwebs. This glittery condo is stunning, the perfect place to dream — and to store your unicorn collection.
The artists’ depictions of the condo’s finished rooms speak of opulence.
Meanwhile, Chris Bateman profiles in images and text the plans for the modernized Yonge Eglinton Centre.
Leading the intensification plans is RioCan’s $100 million overhaul of Yonge Eglinton Centre on the northwest corner, currently home to two stern office towers and a small underground shopping mall. New renderings show the in-progress project replacing much of the grey concrete with angular glass and steel while adding a significant amount of retail space.
The most noticeable changes are happening at street level on the site of the current public square. A new three-storey glass “cube” (their term) will create a new entrance to a renovated shopping area while providing a public rooftop patio in exchange for the open space devoured by its footprint.
The twin office towers will remain but be extensively altered inside and out. When work wraps, both will be several storeys taller and clad in a reflective “curtain wall.” The existing retail space above and below grade will also have been expanded by around 3,700 square metres.
[. . .]
Yonge Eglinton Centre opened in 1974 and currently sees more than 30,000 daily shoppers, according to figures posted on the RioCan site. The development company purchased the property in 2007 and moved its corporate headquarters to the office towers a year later. Since then several minor tweaks have been made to the retail space and parking garage.
Prior to that a similar proposal for a two-storey addition in the space currently occupied by the public plaza was withdrawn in 2005.
The builders were criticized earlier this year for hammering, sawing, and drilling on the site 24 hours a day, disturbing residents of a nearby apartment building. A complaint to City Hall eventually silenced the late night construction and RioCan was denied an exemption to the noise bylaw.
[URBAN NOTE] “Growing Up: Are Toronto’s new condos built to last?”
The Toronto Star‘s Antonia Zerbisias recently wrote about a problem with Toronto’s condos. Are all those glass walls durable over the long term? And if not, will there be any interest in retrofitting these buildings?
Building experts say resiliency and energy efficiency are going out the window with all those floor-to-ceiling glass walls being installed in the city’s towering condos.
[. . .]
Ted Kesik, a professor of building science at the University of Toronto and an outspoken critic of the condo development industry, says he, too, worries that condo developers care more about profits than ensuring their buildings last.
“I feel sorry for people in buildings like that, because those windows are going to fall out in an extreme weather event. There will be water damage. It’s just going to be a mess.”
Even Toronto’s new chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, allows there’s a problem with the windows’ efficiency.
“I share those concerns,” she says. “We need to be talking about this more as a city: how do we ensure that we do build buildings that have resiliency over the long term?”
[PHOTO] Looking south at the condo construction site, Bloor and Bathurst
The former site of Loretto College School, on the southeast corner of Bloor and Bathurst, was announced in 2011 to be the site of the B.Streets Condos. Some towers rise already.
[PHOTO] Aura, looking up, March 2013
I’ve taken several pictures of the Aura mixed-used skyscraper on the northwestern corner of Yonge and Gerrard. (See these photo posts from February 2012, April 2012, August 2012, and September 2012) Part of the prestigious College Park complex, Aura is already doing well even partially completed, with merchants like Bed, Bath and Beyond setting up shop on the ground commercial floors.
And still, the tower continues to rise.
[PHOTO] Looking south at Yonge and Bloor, January 2009
I found this photograph while I was deep in my Flickr archives, taken on a wet cool day in January of 2009 as I was looking south at Yonge Street. What surprised me, when I found the image, in that so little has changed: the Basis condo on the southeast corner of Yonge and Bloor remains unstarted, the Stollery’s on the southwest corner remains, and so on. The only change is that the condo on the left side has been completed.
[PHOTO] Peering through the fence at Aura, April 2012
I’ve posted many photos of the Aura mixed-use skyscraper rising at College Park, downtown on Yonge Street below College (1, 2, 3). This particular photo was taken in April 2012, peering through the fence separating the construction site from the sidewalk.
On Flickr, this picture has 221 views, easily placing it among the top 20. Why is this quotidian scene so popular? I have no idea. You?
[PHOTO] Looking west at the Gardiner Expressway, May 2012
Looking west from the patio of friends in their condo at Bathurst and Lake Shore, past the nascent condo developments, the storied Gardiner Expressway snakes on.
[URBAN NOTE] On the unlikeliness of a park at 11 Wellesley Street West
I’ve blogged a couple of times about how some people living near the vacant government-owned lot at 11 Wellesley Street West want to make the lot, or part of it, a public park. A post at the Toronto Blog
A real estate transaction that was scheduled to close yesterday may dash many downtown residents’ dreams for the creation of a new public park on a vacant Wellesley Street West site surrounded by thousands of existing condo and apartment units, with thousands more on the way. But the local City Councillor has pledged to continue fighting for green space on the location.
Ward 27 Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam told Tuesday night’s annual general meeting of the Church Wellesley Neighbourhood Association (CWNA) that Wednesday January 23 was the scheduled closing date for the sale of empty provincially-owned land at 11 Wellesley Street West. Barring an unforeseen event, she said, title for the land would rest in the hands of its new owner by 4.30 p.m. Wednesday. [Editor's Note: CWNA board of directors member Paul Farrelly posted this update on the CWNA's Facebook page January 26: "Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam has been recently advised by the developer that the transaction will not close until the end of February. A visit on Thursday to Land Registry revealed a new construction lien for $650,000 was put on the property by a construction company on Jan 13,2013, but its not clear whether that has anything to do with the delayed closing."]
Many in the CWNA audience had been hoping Councillor Wong-Tam would announce significant positive developments in her work to obtain at least some of the land for City park space, but she had no such good news to report in her brief update on the subject. She could say only that the City will continue its efforts to secure part of the property from its new owner. The buyer has not yet been publicly identified.
[PHOTO] Bathurst and Lake Shore, looking north (2)
Lake Shore Boulevard is arguably the southernmost of Toronto’s major streets, girdling the coastline of the western two-thirds of Toronto’s waterfront. The intersection with Bathurst Street, meanwhile, is arguably the southernmost major intersection of that north-south street, located squarely in the middle of a rapidly growing condo district.
Douglas Coupland’s Monument to the War of 1812, a controversial public sculpture I blogged about and photographed close-up, is visible to the left of the photo, past the TTC bus.
Compare this photo taken in September 2012, four months later. Construction has progressed since this photo was taken in May.
