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A small project to integrate commercial spaces on the ground floor of a post-war apartment block may have a big impact for local residents, as a rezoning application for 24 Forest Manor Road, located near Don Mills Road and Highway 401, is seeking to rezone the property to allow the conversion of five ground floor rental units into commercial and retail spaces. Led by Suu-dda Patkar Architectural Corporation, the project is illustrative of a period of change and evolution for Toronto's mid-century high-rise apartment buildings across the city.
Located in the southern portion of the Parkway Forest high-rise community, the immediate area is serviced only by a single strip mall to the northeast near Sheppard Avenue, and commercial establishments along Don Mills and Sheppard, both of which are not a convenient walking distance away. The five new commercial units would serve the surrounding buildings and bring mixed use units to the community, which includes the Forest Manor Public School directly across the street.
The small conversion project is not the only activity in the area. Following the implementation of the Parkway Forest Secondary Plan in 2008, densification of the area began with the construction of a series of condo towers ranging from 7 to 36 storeys along with townhouses, mainly concentrated at the intersection of Sheppard and Don Mills. However, the integration of retail within existing rental apartment buildings is just as important as infill development and densification for the sustainability and survival of these high-rise communities, and relates directly to tower renewal initiatives occurring across the city.
The Tower Renewal Program takes aim at Toronto's roughly 1200 concrete apartment blocks constructed from the 1950s to the 1980s across the city. Many of these buildings are now in need of repairs, and as they are often located in the inner suburbs, they face issues of isolation from reliable transit, lack of mixed use, and higher crime rates. The program aims to revitalize these neighbourhoods by offering financial assistance for building retrofits, encouraging environmentally-friendly and sustainable building envelope upgrades, transitioning from residential to mixed-use zoning, and adding density and infill where appropriate in order to create safer, more livable communities.
This conversion project at 24 Forest Manor is one of many that will appear in the coming years. As Toronto's new condos reach for the sky, efforts are also being carried out to revitalize the city's leftovers from its last tower boom to improve quality of life across the board. Toronto contains the second-highest concentration of high-rise buildings in North America after New York City, and aims to maintain that status through sustainable and community-oriented initiatives that will ensure the livability of its high-rise stock well into the future.
