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Developer Menkes is seeking an Official Plan Amendment (OPA) to permit a mixed-use tower at 4800 Yonge Street, a 0.415 hectare site situated on the southwest corner of Yonge and Sheppard. The application aims to amend zoning for the subject site, which is designated in the North York Centre Secondary Plan (NYSCP) as a Mixed Use Area, and does not currently permit residential uses.
When we last talked about the 4800 Yonge Street site, it was in regards to an earlier plan from then owner Oxford Properties and architects Kohn Pederson Fox that called for a 25-storey office tower to occupy the site. Since then, the site has changed hands, and new owner Menkes is proposing a residential tower rising to 49 storeys over a commercial podium. The development which would rise 168.6 metres including mechanical penthouse, is designed by the New York office Miami-based multinational Arquitectonica.
The elliptically shaped tower would include 536 residential units with a total 37,411.42 square metres of floor area, though the final unit count and distribution will be established during the Zoning By-law Amendment stage of the planning process.
The building's large rectilinear podium—similar in massing to the earlier Oxford plan—would offer 5 storeys of commercial space, with 3,493.65 square-metres of retail on the first 2 levels and 8,193.92 square-metres of office space on the 3 upper levels. Below ground, the building would be served by a 6-level parking garage that would also include space for 578 bicycles, accessed via an integrated driveway system entered from Bogert Avenue.
If completed as proposed, the parking garage would be built to take into account unique below-grade site conditions due to the presence of the TTC's Y track which allows out of service subway trains to transfer between Line 1 and Line 4. The west Y track branches off the Yonge line and curves on a northwestern trajectory through the site, with levels P2 and P3 to be built above the track but levels P4 through 6 would only be built west and south of it. The northeast side of the residential tower essentially follows the edge of the subway tunnel below.
We will be sure to return with updates as additional information about this development emerges. In the meantime, you can check out renderings and more info in our dataBase file for the project, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Visit the associated Forum threads, or leave a comment in the space provided at the bottom of this page.
