The area around Queen and Church is poised to become yet another of the city's high-density tower clusters, as The Pemberton Group has submitted rezoning documents to the City for the construction of a new 49-storey 156.25-metre residential tower at 18-20 Dalhousie and 139-149 Church Street. Designed by Graziani + Corazza Architects, the building would span the block between Church and Dalhousie just north of Queen Street, and would replace part of the infamous row of pawn shops along this stretch.

View from the southwest of 18 Dalhousie, image courtesy of The Pemberton Group.

The site presents a challenging condition in that anything higher than 88 metres above grade cuts directly into the helicopter flight path of St. Michael's Hospital. To avoid this, the massing of the tower—rectangular up to the 29th floor—is cut back to a triangular floor plate on the south portion of the site for the remainder of its height. The tower is shaved off on the north side at its upper floors to conform exactly to the helicopter flight path, which it does not in fact intrude upon.

View from the northwest of 18 Dalhousie, image courtesy of The Pemberton Group.

The tower sits atop a 2-6 storey podium that contains grade-level retail and residential units on the second floor and above, with amenity spaces provided throughout. The design team is pursuing a more fine-grained retail frontage along Church Street, with six smaller commercial units proposed along that stretch totalling only 480 square metres of non-residential gross floor area. The Dalhousie frontage at grade is given over to the residential lobby entrance, underground parking entrance, and service spaces. An outdoor roof terrace overlooking Dalhousie and a large indoor amenity space are provided on the seventh and eighth floors where the tower steps back from the podium.

It is for the residential entrance on Dalhousie Street that we are labelling the building 18 Dalhousie in our database files, as opposed to giving it a Church Street address. It is quite possible that Pemberton will give the building a marketing name later in the process, rather than relying on the address for its name.

View of the podium along Church Street, image courtesy of The Pemberton Group.a

The building contains a total of 414 residential units, with a unit mix of 212 one-bedrooms (51%), 160 two-bedrooms (39%), and 42 three-bedrooms (10%). A total of 115 vehicular spaces are provided on four levels of underground parking, while an additional 414 spaces for bicycle parking are included in the building.

East elevation, image courtesy of The Pemberton Group.

18 Dalhousie joins a flurry of development activity along the Church corridor between Queen and Shuter Streets. Immediately adjacent to 18 Dalhousie to the south, Bazis is proposing to construct a 54-storey tower at 60 Queen East, directly on the corner of Queen and Church. Immediately to the east, St. Thomas Developments is proposing to replace the large surface parking lot at 88 Queen with four residential towers of 27, 27, 28, and 49 storeys, the first of which—the 27-storey 88 North—is currently under construction. To the north, CentreCourt's 24-storey Core Condos was completed last year at the corner of Shuter and Dalhousie, while just to the west at the corner of Church and Shuter, construction is now underway on Menkes' 29-storey Fleur Condos. 

View of 18 Dalhousie from the west, image courtesy of The Pemberton Group.

We will keep you updated on this project as well as the others in this area as they work their way through the development process. In the meantime, you can tell us what you think by checking out the database file which includes more images. You can get in on the conversation in our associated Forum thread, or by leaving a comment in the space provided on this page.