Toronto Aura at College Park | 271.87m | 78s | Canderel | Graziani + Corazza

The lights are fabulous, and also do a nice job rectifying one of the many egregious architectural errors of the building, which is the light horizontal band at the top of the building that separates the curved section from the rest of the building, and make it seem like a plopped-on afterthought. The lights instead emphasize the curve, and their staggered bottom ends provide more of a sense of integration to the upper part of the building.

It's kinda sad that this thing looks best in the dark...
 
I finally saw the lights Friday evening. They definitely give the building that pop that it doesn't necessarily have in the daytime.

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr

Aura by Marcus Mitanis, on Flickr
 
Awesome photos Marcus ^. On a side note, I hate how companies are able to acquire multiple advertising spots on Toronto Life Building and completely spam it with the same ad. It's a waste of space considering the amount of black used in Lexus' particular ads. They've essentially turned the entire signage frontage into one big advertisement. It's been like that for the past month or so, and has been like that before with different advertisers on several occasions. smh.

Anyway, fuzzy photos of the lights yesterday:

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There is something like 40 retail spaces on the market (not including private listings) for this development. The retail space in this building seems to have a real tough time leasing out...
 
david-realtor said:
There is something like 40 retail spaces on the market (not including private listings) for this development. The retail space in this building seems to have a real tough time leasing out...
Click to expand...

This is what happens when they subdivide a large retail footprint into 40+ units which many are essentially the size of broom closets. The basement retail space is very uninviting and has many of the same types of shops (cell phone case stores, tiny convenience stores, etc). I understand the idea was to kind of recreate the feel of the shops on Yonge St in an underground setting but the execution was terrible. There is no signage for the shops outside on the street, so a lot of people walking buy probably don't even know what's down there. The connection to College Park is also horrible so I doubt theres much foot traffic from there.

I think it would have been better if they just left the space undivided and had another big retailer move in.
 
I wonder how low the prices on those units will drop before someone starts buying them up and consolidating them. If you could get four or five adjoining units you might be able to do something with them, though you'd still have the problem of foot traffic.
 
I do not think consolidating units will do much if anything at all unless you are talking about consolidating half the retail space for someone like Whole Foods, Metro etc. I do not think purchase price, rent or even size of unit is a major factor as there is quite a few units well under 400 sq-ft that have been sitting on the market for well over a year. Some have been relisted half a dozen times, I recall seeing some as small as 200 sqft. The problem is that unlike Marshals or RBC the public walking on Yonge do not necessarily go into the basement shops ( I personally would not). The quality of the stores are far from "world class" i.e cell phone shops, dry cleaning etc etc. For the sake of the people running the businesses in the building I pray once the building has more occupants the stagnation will lift but realistically I do not see it happening, when you look at the numbers as a Realtor its very alarming to say the least. I read about a landlord offering 6 months of free rent to attract tenants which is essentially unheard of in this part of Toronto. Most of the spaces that are for lease have been sitting for so long that they are on the market for both sale and lease.
 
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