Toronto 34 Maitland | 183m | 56s | Hazelview | Turner Fleischer

You're right to point out that Toronto does a better job than Boston, but we shouldn't take that as evidence that we're doing enough. Although I'm thankful that Toronto makes an effort to retain exterior facades, it's also true that 99% of these 'saved' buildings end up at the city dump.

The Concourse Building may look like it's still there but it's really just a nod to what once existed. 2 exterior walls are better than none but at the rate we're going the only intact heritage interiors will be photos in a book at Indigo.


Beautiful exterior but 99% of the Concourse Building was destroyed

2017 .... EY Tower & Concourse Building Facade .... 100 Adelaide Street West .... Toronto, Ontario by Greg's Southern Ontario (Catching Up Slowly), on Flickr
 

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NorthshoreCity said:
I certainly agree that more should be done to retain historical interiors but at the end of the day I would much rather have the building facade than nothing at all. Below are 3 examples in Boston that were recently demolished. Had these been in Toronto I'm sure that the facades would have been retained.

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330 Boylston Street, demolished 2022.

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258 Huntington Avenue. Built 1916, demolished 2022.

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543 Commonwealth Avenue, demolished 2019.

By no means am I saying Boston doesn't care about historic preservation, the city has as much historical architecture as it does due to some of the measures in place. That said, when compared to Toronto, they're doing a pretty bad job by allowing developers to start with a clean slate on a large number of projects. Not much is changing either, these buildings were all approved for demolition this week too:

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I'll refrain from going off on a further tangent but my point is that things might seem better elsewhere but those in Toronto should be thankful for the level of preservation that is considered for historic building facades.
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Wow! Toronto would cherish these buildings in this city for thier facades today!
 
isaidso said:
You're right to point out that Toronto does a better job than Boston, but we shouldn't take that as evidence that we're doing enough. Although I'm thankful that Toronto makes an effort to retain exterior facades, it's also true that 99% of these 'saved' buildings end up at the city dump.

The Concourse Building may look like it's still there but it's really just a nod to what once existed. 2 exterior walls are better than none but at the rate we're going the only intact heritage interiors will be photos in a book at Indigo.


Beautiful exterior but 99% of the Concourse Building was destroyed

2017 .... EY Tower & Concourse Building Facade .... 100 Adelaide Street West .... Toronto, Ontario by Greg's Southern Ontario (Catching Up Slowly), on Flickr
Click to expand...
99% of the Concourse Building was unusable. It wasn't wanted as office space anymore, (owners have to maintain buildings, if not, they gradually crumble, so they have to be able to rent the space at a decent rate), and no-one could afford to adapt it for housing; for one example, it's worth reminding people that washrooms in the Concourse Building were all either a half flight above or below whatever level you were on, meaning it was an accessibility nightmare that would have been very expensive to bring up to code. In the end, we have been left with a beautifully rebuilt exterior and a lobby that saves some impressive features, so I'm not bothered by what happened here, and not sure what the point is of making an example of this one.

Anyway, on Maitland Street, we have some lovely older residential buildings that are not in danger of not being rentable. This is simply a case of a landlord knowing that if they can get it upzoned, they can make a lot more money on that same land. More housing on that same land will play some part in easing our housing crisis, like every build does. Is that worth losing some lovely older large apartment suites (which will be replaced by new, generic, far better kitted-out for modern living suites of the same size) to get all the new condos? Until we allow three or four units on every property in the yellowbelt, we're going to be asked this question again and again, as we have few other ways to address the housing shortage at the moment.

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Storey count changed from 61 storey to 56 storey. Height changed from 197.75m to 183.00m. The total unit count changed from 529 units to 532 units. The total parking changed from 93 parking to 102 parking. The total bike parking changed from 656 bike parking to 584 bike parking.

www.toronto.ca

Application Details

www.toronto.ca www.toronto.ca

Rendering taken from the arch plan via rezoning submission.

@Northern Light ;)😉😉

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Lets see what @Art Tsai has brought us...........

From the Planning Rationale - Addendum:

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Comment: Better, but still not good, most of all not as good as leaving this building alone. But an improvement all the same.
 
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