Toronto Clear Spirit | 131.36m | 40s | Cityscape | a—A

The Distillery District is not a Victorian museum piece under a dusty glass dome. It is a living breathing neighbourhood that is being woven back into the fabric of the City. The planned point towers on the periphery of the site do just that.

Jaborandi, nobody has suggested that the area is a museum, or should be a museum. Raising this strawman is rather silly already. The issue being noted by some of us is the proximity and situating of the highrise towers with respect to the lowrise buildings found in the Distillery.

Also, it might help you to know that the towers will not all be on the periphery, but one is to be built right in the District area - where the rackhouse presently stands. That is not peripheral to the District, but right in it - and replacing some of the buildings in it.
 
OMG! You can see FCP and Scotia Plaza! I demand that they be torn down, to preserve the sanctity of these old industrial buildings. No post-1900 building should be visible from anywhere inside the Distillery District. Perhaps a giant screen could be erected around the area, to block off the sight of the rest of the city.

Bill

Well, if those look to you to be of the same scale and proximity, then I suggest picking up a pair of eye glasses... One looks down on the distillery and practically 'swallows' it whole (the picture shows just how out of scale even this 'slim' tower is to everything around it), whereas the CBD is completely peripheral.

In my view, this project--when it gets realised as a whole--will really not be much different at all from a typical tower in the park: the Distillery will become that park. Now, those that have no problems with towers in the park, that's fine; we have a fundamental disagreement that will not be resolved.

But, can we please lay off this idea that those of us opposing this project are of a belief that high rises are not to be built i) anywhere in the city or ii) that they have to be completely out of view of historic areas. Nobody here has made that point, yet for some reason that, along with the idea that we're demanding a museum out of the area, keeps coming up over and over.

We're talking about scale and context, and whether this is the best way to build a neighborhood. I believe the answer is no. There will be no 'adding on' to the Distillery; it will become completely constrained by this development which is, in effect, completely unfriendly to community building.
 
OMG! You could glimpse the Manhattan skyline from Park Slope! Great excuse for 50-storey point towers...
 
First Canadian Place is unphotogenic, so Clewes should design a condo for the site...one that preserves FCP's footprint, of course.
 
^Yes, it could go up on the site of the present banking podium due to it being considered unphotogenic by some. ;)
 
When you're in the Distillery District, Pure Spirit condo is right next to you. The fact that you can also see FCP, Scotia Plaza and BCE Place in the distance of your line of vision indicates how very much taller they are than the condo. This, too, gives a sense of scale. If we're making visual judgements let's do so correctly, based on the sensible visual judgements people make given their knowledge of near and far. Otherwise you could just as easily point to that last picture and say how out of scale Rack House 'M' ( on the left, with the metal fire escapes ) is because it appears taller than Pure Spirit.

Given that they have been unable to explain what their definition of "out of scale" is, it isn't surprising that none of the opponents of this development have ever said how many storeys tall the condo buildings are "supposed" to be, or why. 35? 30? 25? 20? 15? 10? 5? 0? They talk of scale, yet the new buildings are creating a new context with scale. One suspects that any height at all would be too out of scale for some.
 
I guess once the "appropriate scale" issue has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction, we can then move on to the "appropriate materials" issue.
 
Yes, I'd like the "colonial-Williamsburg" crowd here to substantiate just how near/far is acceptable for highrise in the area. Apparantly the mythic line that represents taste and appropriate scale can be drawn somewhere between the Distillery and the clearly visible CBD in the background.
 
I don't care how many storeys it is. Might as well build 60 storeys and get more people living close to the future downtown relief line station at Cherry.
 

Back
Top