Toronto Theatre District Residence & Riu Plaza Hotel | 156.05m | 49s | Plaza | BDP Quadrangle

September 15th:

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And that has now been ratified by City Council at its July meeting. I have updated the dataBase numbers to reflect a 48 storey-high tower now, at one metre higher than the standard Entertainment District cutoff of 157 metres. The Planning Department considers the proposal to be overdevelopment of the site, and not simply for the one-metre-over, but to a great deal for the total size of the building on the lot. FSI of the ask is 26.33 times the lot. Not sure what number they want it down to. Planning also wants the building's design to better acknowledge the heritage designated Commodore Building to its immediate west.

While opposing this at the Ontario Municipal Board, this is one of the projects where the City is still trying to negotiate the proposal down to something they can accept in advance of the hearing. The pre-hearing to determine the parties involved has supposedly already happened on the 5th of this month. The full hearing date has not been posted on the OMB's website yet.

While I have not crunched the numbers (it would take a weeks-long if not months-long study to collect all the data—although maybe it's all in a City database which could just spit out a report on request), it is my feeling that a higher percentage of zoning amendment applications are going to the OMB these days, possibly owing to the City's growing confidence following some recent wins at The Board: with the Tall Buildings Guidelines now available to cite, the City has prevailed over some significant fights where they considered the proposals to be overdevelopment, the original plan for Grid Condos and 412 Church being two examples.

That's not to say that the development industry are ignorant of what they are up against: they don't go to The Board with proposals that they think they cannot win. Every team tweaks the proposals to the max they believe they can get, and if they're worth their salt, they're right.

There are piles of hearings coming up. If the City and Plazacorp do not come to a settlement in advance of the hearing, we'll see how this one fares in some months' time.​

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From an outside perspective it seems as though applications have not been getting approved nearly as often as they were say a couple years ago. Maybe it just seems this way because they have not had a marathon type meeting like that one back in 2014? But it definitely feels like there are a number of proposals that are just sitting around with no new updates. Am I imagining this?
 
I cannot prove it without a study, but that would mesh with my feeling that the City seems more confident about turning down proposals that they feel represent overdevelopment.

I have more of those to report from July Council. Coming up!

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I m glad to hear that i will be redesigned.
It was really ugly!
I want to see it more adapted to the neighborhood and other building style.
:)
 
Developers have been continually pushing for more density possibly from overpaying for these sites. The average FSI for an infill tower proposal of late is just incredible. Perhaps, this is the city pushing back.

There no incentive for developers to deliver on the more varied tower massing that everyone here wants. For example, Chrysler and Empire are products of stronger shadowing controls in Manhattan.
 
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Higher FSI's aren't inherently bad. As you know, they're just a metric used to calculate the proportion of building to site. In that sense, they're something that we should be getting more and more used to, especially if things like your quote below actually matter:
We do have developments that take the concept of varying the design of the street frontage/podium to some degree.
Click to expand...

To me, taller buildings on smaller sites are precisely the way to ensure a varied pedestrian experience while balancing the spatial needs of a growing city.
 
With 87 Peter St structure going up and two other high rises proposed this one included. This city block is going to be real dense. Does anyone know how close these buildings will stand apart from each other? It looks like a few feet haha!
 
This building is proposed to be 15 metres, tip-to-tip, from 87 Peter (page 5 of the planning rationale). The two buildings would look past each other, 87 Peter being south of this one.

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From the OMB website:
Mediation 23 Jan 2017 10:00 AM Ontario Municipal Board (Toronto) 16th Fl, , 655 Bay Street, 16th Floor Toronto ON M5G 1E5

Hearing 20 Mar 2017 10:00 AM Ontario Municipal Board (Toronto) 16th Fl, , 655 Bay Street, 16th Floor Toronto ON M5G 1E5
 
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