Toronto The Lanes at O'Connor | 25.91m | 7s | EGC | Turner Fleischer

It sucks that bowling alley was demo-ed...we could really use more of em in the city after this medical emergency is done with. This looksike something out of Markham. Not awful...not great, just okay. Though the lights and design are messy.
 
This building demonstrates what’s wrong with Avenues midrise. It’s visible from three blocks into the neighborhood, and hugely visually overwhelming up close. It doesn’t blend in, doesn’t fit the context, doesn’t make for a pleasant streetscape. Why do we build like this?
 
AlexBozikovic said:
This building demonstrates what’s wrong with Avenues midrise. It’s visible from three blocks into the neighborhood, and hugely visually overwhelming up close. It doesn’t blend in, doesn’t fit the context, doesn’t make for a pleasant streetscape. Why do we build like this?
Click to expand...
100%. It resembles a high-rise building built horizontally, probably because building a high-rise horizontally is the only way to make the pro-forma for any of these mid-rise projects to financially work.

The Avenues guidelines is one of the largest planning policy failures in the City of Toronto of recent years. We need new solutions for the Avenues. The pre-fab model is one that holds the most promise I think.
 
Some of these concerns strike me as overblown. The Avenues-style building typically has a metropolitan scale and then steps down to the adjacent low-rise neighbourhood with terracing. These buildings bring density, a mix of uses, and a street wall to places where these features were previously absent or underdeveloped. Over time, the city should allow yellow belt density along the side streets for a more coherent metropolitan built form.

But even if the city doesn't change the side street zoning, the neighbourhood gains greater diversity of housing types for increased vitality. It also gains a more pedestrian-friendly built form where people from the surrounding neighbourhood can walk to the storefronts along the main street for shopping. Essentially, you can give neighbourhoods across the city the "Annex" or "Queen West" or "Junction" experience where people can walk to businesses along a vibrant main street for their daily needs and for night time social activities. Visitors can step off of transit and into storefronts.

Perhaps the scale isn't aesthetically perfect, but the improved built form is a net gain in my books. Toronto doesn't have enough neighbourhoods like the Annex, and you can see that in the demand for housing in the city's "traditional" neighbourhoods in the old City of Toronto. Housing prices are rising beyond the reach of many people who want to live in neighbourhoods like that. It's getting to the point that people are evening moving to Hamilton for the same kind of built form at more affordable prices.

But there's no reason why the walkable main street-oriented neighbourhood can't be exported elsewhere in the city with Avenue-style buildings. NYC has walkable main street-oriented neighbourhoods far out into the boroughs and surrounding cities.
 
Last edited:
junctionist said:
But there's no reason why the walkable main street-oriented neighbourhood can't be exported elsewhere in the city with Avenue-style buildings.
Click to expand...
That’s the promise. But it is flawed, because one building doesn’t make a “neighbourhood.” The surrounding form is low-density and car-oriented.

If this was a highrise with twice the units; a square; and a strip of well-designed retail spaces, then maybe it would get somewhere.
 
I dunno. It seems to be starring across the street from a lot of parking lots, big box stores and depressing outlets. It's almost anything new here would be an improvement here.
 
AlexBozikovic said:
That’s the promise. But it is flawed, because one building doesn’t make a “neighbourhood.” The surrounding form is low-density and car-oriented.

If this was a highrise with twice the units; a square; and a strip of well-designed retail spaces, then maybe it would get somewhere.
Click to expand...

Starting with the acknowledgement that this building is flawed in many respects........

Your initial critique is that it stands out 3 blocks away...........but then you advocate twice the height?

That's a strange solution to this supposed problem.

*****

Further, this building's midrise height won't be isolated for long, it's one of 1/2 a dozen proposals nearby along O'Connor in the same general height range.

Which will give you far more than twice the units.

*****

Critiquing this building for some dubious design choices and serious troubles w/the finishes is more than fair.

But its scale and massing aren't that much of a problem.

I certainly wouldn't object to a bit more granularity of facade facing O'Connor to reduce the 'apparent' scale.

But as sins go, that one is relatively minor here; Aura, this is not.
 
AlexBozikovic said:
That’s the promise. But it is flawed, because one building doesn’t make a “neighbourhood.” The surrounding form is low-density and car-oriented.

If this was a highrise with twice the units; a square; and a strip of well-designed retail spaces, then maybe it would get somewhere.
Click to expand...

You have to let it evolve in that direction bit by bit. High-rise buildings aren't necessary for pedestrian friendliness and community vitality, either. There are very few in the Trinity-Bellwoods or Roncesvalles neighbourhoods, for instance, yet those neighbourhoods are vibrant and pedestrian friendly. Conversely, there are high-rise buildings like these ones all around the city that do little for pedestrian friendliness and vitality.
 
Last edited:
junctionist said:
Some of these concerns strike me as overblown. The Avenues-style building typically has a metropolitan scale and then steps down to the adjacent low-rise neighbourhood with terracing. These buildings bring density, a mix of uses, and a street wall to places where these features were previously absent or underdeveloped. Over time, the city should allow yellow belt density along the side streets for a more coherent metropolitan built form.

But even if the city doesn't change the side street zoning, the neighbourhood gains greater diversity of housing types for increased vitality. It also gains a more pedestrian-friendly built form where people from the surrounding neighbourhood can walk to the storefronts along the main street for shopping. Essentially, you can give neighbourhoods across the city the "Annex" or "Queen West" or "Junction" experience where people can walk to businesses along a vibrant main street for their daily needs and for night time social activities. Visitors can step off of transit and into storefronts.

Perhaps the scale isn't aesthetically perfect, but the improved built form is a net gain in my books. Toronto doesn't have enough neighbourhoods like the Annex, and you can see that in the demand for housing in the city's "traditional" neighbourhoods in the old City of Toronto. Housing prices are rising beyond the reach of many people who want to live in neighbourhoods like that. It's getting to the point that people are evening moving to Hamilton for the same kind of built form at more affordable prices.

But there's no reason why the walkable main street-oriented neighbourhood can't be exported elsewhere in the city with Avenue-style buildings. NYC has walkable main street-oriented neighbourhoods far out into the boroughs and surrounding cities.
Click to expand...
I, too, can't wait for the vitality that the block-long Shoppers will bring here...
junctionist said:
You have to let it evolve in that direction bit by bit. High-rise buildings aren't necessary for pedestrian friendliness and community vitality, either. There are very few in the Trinity-Bellwoods or Roncesvalles neighbourhoods, for instance, yet those neighbourhoods are vibrant and pedestrian friendly. Conversely, there are high-rise buildings like these ones all around the city that do little for pedestrian friendliness and vitality.
Click to expand...
Hundred-year-old, pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods are more desirable than fifty-year-old ones designed for quick automobile movement. News at 11.
 
ProjectEnd said:
I, too, can't wait for the vitality that the block-long Shoppers will bring here...
Click to expand...

The issue of what type of tenants are solicited by developers is one across the City and all development types.

I'm not sure that can be suggested as a flaw unique to this building or to 'The Avenues' planning program.

There is no effective means by which to break-up ownership of large sites/blocks, except and unless the City prioritizes additional blocks being created.

At 223M long, a case could certainly be made for breaking up this block with an extension of Galbraith.


1616093247946.png


But there are an awful lot of such sites across the City, I'm not sure this is a 'top 10' for that kind of investment.

I'm also not clear why a hirise would address this issue in anyway; which was what @junctionist was responding too.

Elsewise, we could endeavour to limit chain/formula retail as other cities have done; I would certainly be a supporter of that.

But again, this is not really relevant to this building's typology/massing.

ProjectEnd said:
Hundred-year-old, pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods are more desirable than fifty-year-old ones designed for quick automobile movement. News at 11.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I get the point here.

Again, what was being discussed was that a Hirise would not lead to addressing the concerns outlined.

It certainly wouldn't make the building stand-out less.

It doesn't address block-size or formula retail.

All it would do is put more people into the same spot while changing none of the less desirable characteristics of the community.
 
It's about effort expended. The Avenues program is so toxic because it's just another way to privilege the primacy of neighbourhoods at the expense of everything else. Our naturally-fine-grained retail strips are things to be valued and cherished, yet Planning - through the Avenues program - sees them as the 'low hanging fruit'. Everyone hates when 10 storefronts get gobbled up and spat out into a bank and a Rexall, but that is the outcome of current policy.

Were we to say 'retail bay widths are 4m, period,' while easing up on height, it's no doubt that you'd get better outcomes. But Planning is so focused on keeping heights down and shadows out of backyards, that what really matters (ped experience) is lost forever.
 
ProjectEnd said:
It's about effort expended. The Avenues program is so toxic because it's just another way to privilege the primacy of neighbourhoods at the expense of everything else. Our naturally-fine-grained retail strips are things to be valued and cherished, yet Planning - through the Avenues program - sees them as the 'low hanging fruit'. Everyone hates when 10 storefronts get gobbled up and spat out into a bank and a Rexall, but that is the outcome of current policy.

Were we to say 'retail bay widths are 4m, period,' while easing up on height, it's no doubt that you'd get better outcomes. But Planning is so focused on keeping heights down and shadows out of backyards, that what really matters (ped experience) is lost forever.
Click to expand...

Let's target those retail bay widths.

Let's also make smaller scale development on The Avenues easier.

As-of-Right zoning for 5 floors (or current, the greater of the two); appropriate similar adjustments for FSI; and lower development charges for small, as-of-right proposals.

Targeting the yellow belt interiors is a different (if important) discussion.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top