Residence College Hotel new Lecture Hall (90 Gerrard St. W, 2s, DSAI)

[androiduk]

Couldn't find an existing thread on this. There's an application in to demolish the 19 storey hotel/residence building at the corner of Gerrard & LaPlante/Elizabeth and put up a new building.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

 

[Towered]

Good.

 

[taal]

meh why?

It's a perfectly good building, isn't this an office building though?

Anyway, unless there are plans for significant intensification this shouldn't go ahead.

 

[adma]

It was built as a nurses' residence (I think) around 1970; had various incarnations subsequently incl. an International Youth Hostel. Above-average Brutalism...

 

[egotrippin]

That's a pretty big building for demolition. Seems very wasteful, and I don't care if the general public dislikes Brutalist buildings (seems like an irrelevant statement, but could you imagine if a ~20 storey pre-war building was being proposed for demolition nowadays?) If anything in this cluster is going to redeveloped it should be the parking garage just north of 90 Gerrard.

 

[Observer Walt]

It was built as a nurses' residence (I think) around 1970; had various incarnations subsequently incl. an International Youth Hostel. Above-average Brutalism...

It ws a nurses' residence back in the days when it was still considered appropriate for hospitals to provide those. The property is still owned by Toronto General. Any redevelopment would seem likely to be a pretty big project.

 

[maestro]

It surprises me to no end TGH didn't build a ton of underground parking with the latest additions and instead chose to expand the above grade parking garage. They only have so much land to expand.

 

[College Park]

I doubt the government would approve the costs of a deep excavation for an underground version of their parking garage. The garage was expanded somewhere around 2004, and with the landscaping on the Elizabeth frontage, it works. Besides, with all the taller buildings around it (and a new one coming) a small bit of airspace isn't a bad thing.

I am surprised that this residence would go, but then again, I was surprised the St. John's ambulance building on Wellesley went.

 

[Archivist]

When this building was built (Mathers & Haldenby), it was featured in Canadian Architect and other journals, and in fact was a finalist in the Massey Medals for Architecture in 1970. I have to say, though, I don't mind the heavy sculptural qualities of the building on it's upper stories, I've always thought it was atrocious at the ground level, holding itself away from the city as if we were an icky thing, or perhaps protecting the nurses within from some outside menace.

 

[Automation Gallery]

http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

This might be a better map.....http://issuu.com/cfives5/docs/2010---downtown-property-map

 

[androiduk]

Here's the actual application. Maybe someone else knows how to get at the New Building application that's listed.

http://app.toronto.ca/ApplicationStatus/details.do?folderRsn=2599100

 

[androiduk]

^ Actually, I found it. This doesn't make any sense at all.

http://app.toronto.ca/ApplicationStatus/details.do?folderRsn=2464741

 

[urbandreamer]

Sounds like they're just gutting the first level and putting in a lecture hall.

 

[androiduk]

^ Right you are UD. The first sentence of the app. makes it sound like the whole building but the 2nd sentence would confirm your observation. Sorry if I upset anybody.

 

[jallan71]

Well, here's hoping that the construction of a new lecture hall might actually solve some of the ground-floor issues with the building. Like Archivist, above, I've always found the real problem with this building to be the way it meets the street - or doesn't as the case may be. But maybe they'll build out a bit, and figure out a way to connect the building to the street more effectively -- perhaps even some bold new technology, like windows!