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AlvinofDiaspar
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From the Globe:
Hotel-condo complex gets committee nod
JEFF GRAY
The developer behind a proposed $400-million, 65-storey, five-star hotel and condominium complex on University Avenue will also partly restore a dilapidated 19th-century building on the site that was one of the city's early hotels and housed a long well-known beer parlour.
A committee of local city councillors approved the plans without debate yesterday, forwarding the project to council this month despite opposition from a group of historians, architects and hotel-worker union activists.
They say the plans from Vancouver-based Westbank Projects Corp. and architect James Cheng will do too little to honour the history of the boarded-up building at Simcoe and Adelaide Streets known as Bishop's Block, which dates back to the 1830s.
But Westbank's plans for a 214-metre tower, approved by city planning staff and the city's preservation board, will restore the two outer facing walls of Bishop's Block to their late 19th-century appearance and keep the building as a free-standing structure on the hotel site.
If approved, construction would start in the summer of 2007.
Craig Heron, a York University history professor who addressed the committee yesterday, said he was disappointed after councillors refused to consider forcing the developer to do more to restore the building's interior.
AoD
Hotel-condo complex gets committee nod
JEFF GRAY
The developer behind a proposed $400-million, 65-storey, five-star hotel and condominium complex on University Avenue will also partly restore a dilapidated 19th-century building on the site that was one of the city's early hotels and housed a long well-known beer parlour.
A committee of local city councillors approved the plans without debate yesterday, forwarding the project to council this month despite opposition from a group of historians, architects and hotel-worker union activists.
They say the plans from Vancouver-based Westbank Projects Corp. and architect James Cheng will do too little to honour the history of the boarded-up building at Simcoe and Adelaide Streets known as Bishop's Block, which dates back to the 1830s.
But Westbank's plans for a 214-metre tower, approved by city planning staff and the city's preservation board, will restore the two outer facing walls of Bishop's Block to their late 19th-century appearance and keep the building as a free-standing structure on the hotel site.
If approved, construction would start in the summer of 2007.
Craig Heron, a York University history professor who addressed the committee yesterday, said he was disappointed after councillors refused to consider forcing the developer to do more to restore the building's interior.
AoD
