Recent content by balmoral

Bremner Blvd - a missed opportunity? ML Square, Telus and 18 York have all contributed greatly to a once derilect neighbourhood - ICE will do so as well. All have their faults, but what redeems them are the high quality of their street-level materials and design. However, I can't help but...

Who "owns" Yonge St? Great topic and discussion. I have long been greatly confused by Yonge St. and though (small) sections have their charm, collectively it is a blight. My question relates to who owns all of the decrepit two to three story buildings, and why did the owners not take...

Couldn't agree more. What gets me is the little things: I was at Nathan Philips Square for the breast cancer run yesterday, and its unbelievable to see how shoddy the whole area is. Peeling paint on stairwells, brown patches of dirt instead of grass, crumbling benches, tangled overhead wires...

Drl Does anyone agree that the Downtown Relief Line is poorly branded? Its' name implies a finality, or an end solution. To my mind, it should be the first of multiple downtown lines. The fact that it takes 45 minutes and multiple transfers/vehicle types to get from, say, Bathurst and...

I just finished reading Danny Meyer's book on the power of hospitality. He is the owner of many NYC restaurant institutions, including Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe and Shake Shack. The way his company, in conjunction with the local BIAs and the city government, has transformed both Union...

Point taken at re Les Halles. But what I think is noticeable about Toronto, unlike other large, popular cities, is that we don't have one area that is uniformly high end and beautiful. As an example, Bloor St. and Yorkville, succeed in places...but are intermingled with sketchy retail, broken...

Glad to hear most agree with me on these arcades/overhangings, and some great additional points are made. One is the small size of the retail being incorporated into Toronto's new buildings; they are almost destined to be fast food outlets and drycleaners. Where are the two story...

Podiums Just a quick question from a neophyte: why, on so many podiums in Toronto, is the ground floor retail not flush to the sidwalk? There always seems to be some sort of overhang (not sure of the proper terminology!), or the storefront is recessed. There are many hideous examples on Bay...

It strikes me as (sadly) Canadian that when presented with an example of groundbreaking architecture, the most common reaction is "Well, Chicago and New York have a lot of mediocre developments going up too." The point I, and others, are trying to make, is that these cities are constanly...

We've still got a looooong way to go... Toronto is on a roll, but I think this new developement adjacent to MOMA on 54th neatly encapsulates just how far we've got to go to be compared to the world's great cities. A 75 storey Jean Nouvel residential/hotel/gallery space tower is being developed...

As a constant lurker and occassional poster, I have to say that this 1 St Thomas thread has bothered me immensely. I've attempted to start a discourse on this building vis a vis the following: 1. Stern's 15 Central Park West: unarguably the most successful (financially-speaking) new...

Good Stern Article - Refute his defence of himself! Good interview with Stern from the NY Observer, defending his work to a skeptical arbiter. Sounds like quite a large new development he's now working on for Silverstein near ground zero. Always interesting to see his towers compared to our 1...

Great points, Hipster Duck. Only issue I'd quibble with is that 15 CPW is really the first major building to go up on either CPW or 5th since the 30s, I believe, and Stern's building certainly pays tribute to the buildings of that era. On a somewhat related note, did Toronto ever have a...

15 CPW Stern Building Reaction Read this thread with interest after reading Michael Gross' excellent article on Stern's new New York building, 15 Central Park West in the NY Observer. http:nyobserver.com/2007/15-cpw?page=0%2C0 Gross is the author of 740 Park: The Story of the World’s...