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A community meeting was held Monday evening at the Church of the Redeemer to announce the plans for the next phases at Camrost Felcorp's makeover of the current Four Seasons Hotel, a site which the chain will move out of when the new Four Seasons opens one block to the east later this year. The existing 31-storey tower, completed in 1971, is planned to be converted to residential condominiums, and has sold very well. Camrost Felcorp proposes to replace the rest of the complex, essentially a three storey concrete podium fronting on Yorkville Avenue, Avenue Road and Cumberland Avenue with new 10 and 39-storey towers. The design is by the same firm that designed the exisiting building, WZMH Architects.
Monday's meeting, held earlier than normal in the process - before the Planning Department has declared the application complete, and before the department is ready with a preliminary report - was the first chance for the community to consider and discuss the new proposal.
Before we look at this proposal, a brief recent history of the site is in order. The previous owner Menkes planned to tear down the existing structure entirely and replace it will two new condominium towers. They had planning permission to build a 133 metre tall south tower, and a 127 metre tall north tower. Those towers were contoversial for their height at this location as they would have impinged upon a clear vista of the Ontario Legislative Assembly building in Queens Park when viewed from the south. Menkes ultimately decided not to build here and sold the site.
Camrost's proposal retains the existing north tower, which is 99.99 metres tall. Their plan for the south tower is 125 metres tall, 8 metres shorter than the previous proposal, and it will therefore impinge less on the OLA view from the south. Just how far south one must be from Queens Park to see the tower rise over the OLA roof was not declared at the meeting.
Camrost also proposes to add a 10-storey building to the Yorkville Avenue frontage, east of the existing tower. Owing to setbacks on higher floors, those standing close to the building on Yorkville Avenue will only see it as a 7 storey structure.
Heres is how that building is proposed to look:
The next two renderings follow the podium around west, and then south:
You can see above the base of the new tower proposed for the corner of Avenue Road and Cumberland Avenue. Wide sidewalks and public art are proposed here. Below, a view of the towers as proposed from the west, exisiting converted tower on the left, new tower on the right:
A section view below of these two towers shows that the proposed separation is generally 20 metres, 5 metres narrower than Toronto tall building guidelines. The separation is as little as 16 metres when some balcony elements are take into account.
The following four views give an idea of how the new 39-storey tower (the frosted plastic model) fits in with the neighbourhood's current built form. The 10-storey Yorkville Avenue tower is not modeled.
This complete proposal represents 16.8 times lot coverage, up slightly from the 15.9 times coverage which was approved in the previous plan. It would feature 883 units across the three buildings, and proposes 223 parking spaces. The 39-storey tower has about 800 square metres per floor, whereas the City prefers point towers of 750 square metres per floor or less.
UrbanToronto really likes the 10-storey Yorkville Avenue building and the podium for all three buildings, although we are not sure why the podium design for the south tower does not also feature the distinctive canted columns of the north tower: comparatively, the proposed circular pillars look somewhat unworthy. Neither are we sure about the proposed size of the south tower: unsurprisingly most community members in attendance believe it is far too big, and they would like to see it much smaller. We might like to see it somewhat smaller, and we suspect that the Planning Department may ask for some refinements and reductions to it. It will be a few weeks before the preliminary report is available.
To get a look at more plans for the complex, visit our dataBase entry linked below, or join in the discussion in the associated Forum threads.
| Related Companies: | Egis, Multiplex, WZMH Architects |
