Toronto The Dupont | 36.55m | 9s | Tridel | Turner Fleischer

[ProjectEnd]

Why would you want to reduce parking here? The ossington bus is a good NS route but there is a dearth of EW transit. You will still get people with cars living here and parking will just go to further crowding an already at capacity street parking condition. St. Clair is no different. The amount of net new cars looking for street parking in the neighborhood is getting out of control. While it might be nice to think that people will just ditch the car not enough of them do.

Tax them into oblivion. Put that money towards transit expansion. Get rid of all the parking.

 

[Hieberrr]

Shaw St directly south of there is at like 90% capacity for street parking. I'd argue that we shouldn't remove parking, but rather try and figure out a smarter way to incorporate it.

Overall though, this neighbourhood lacks garages and street parking as it is, so I'd be hard pressed to recommend a major decrease in parking capacity. That is, unless we can somehow guarantee the East/West 26 Dupont bus can increase frequency tremendously with this and all of the other developments in the area. Currently, it's every 15-20 minutes.

 

[mickael]

...unless we can somehow guarantee the East/West 26 Dupont bus can increase frequency tremendously with this and all of the other developments in the area. Currently, it's every 15-20 minutes.

We could increase 26 frequency or, hear me out, we install more track and install some stops on the CP tracks just north of Dupont!

 

[ProjectEnd]

You'd have to obtain the North Toronto Subdivision, or at least part of it, from CP. And that's just not going to happen.

 

[ADRM]

This was resubmitted in late December. No substantial changes, at a glance, though it was nice to see the City push for this:

Some slightly updated renders illustrating some of the refinements:

I'd forgotten how much retail they've proposed at grade (good) and that there is a ton of surface parking (bad):

 

[concrete_and_light]

Wow the amount of retail is really quite good! And good to see that the community and the city values small-scale retail spaces accessible to small businesses. With the redevelopment of the avenues putting previous fine-grain retail streetscapes at risk, it's legitimately quite nice to see a new development here create so many new ones.

With regards to the surface parking, I don't really super mind here, especially with it tucked around back and next to the rail corridor — given safety regulations it might be hard to use that space for much else.

 

[A Torontonian Now]

Given that it seems the Farm Boy at Litho is meant to replace this Sobey's, I wonder if we will see construction for this development get going later this year, since Litho looks to be not far from completion.

 

[ADRM]

Given that it seems the Farm Boy at Litho is meant to replace this Sobey's, I wonder if we will see construction for this development get going later this year, since Litho looks to be not far from completion.

Yep -- my understanding is that this Sobey's won't be taken out of operation until the Litho Farm Boy is up and running and, as you say, Litho seems to be more or less on schedule.

 

[AlexBozikovic]

Can thewe retail spaces be combined? Would anything stop the developers from doing this?

 

[DavidCapizzano]

Is this a rental building? Plans show a suite reserved for a superintendent

 

[ADRM]

This was resubmitted in late December. No substantial changes, at a glance, though it was nice to see the City push for this:

View attachment 292370

Some slightly updated renders illustrating some of the refinements:

View attachment 292369
View attachment 292368

I'd forgotten how much retail they've proposed at grade (good) and that there is a ton of surface parking (bad):

View attachment 292372

Just realized there are a few more renderings (including an aerial and a couple ground planes I'm not sure I've seen before) at the end of the arch plans, which also reminds me that I think the siting of the park is a mistake. It's going to be wedged in between this and 888 Dupont, and no one's going to want to sit there as drivers whizz past at 70km/h; it should've hugged Shaw, where it would have been a bit better shielded from Dupont.

 

[bilked]

Just realized there are a few more renderings (including an aerial and a couple ground planes I'm not sure I've seen before) at the end of the arch plans, which also reminds me that I think the siting of the park is a mistake. It's going to be wedged in between this and 888 Dupont, and no one's going to want to sit there as drivers whizz past at 70km/h; it should've hugged Shaw, where it would have been a bit better shielded from Dupont.

That was my first thought too. I'm sure the park placement is intended to provide tower separation from 888 Dupont - and interestingly, the park is also there in the 888 renders. If they installed playground equipment, you might attract some families from the neighbourhood, but otherwise it's hard to see how the park would function as anything other than a residents' amenity.

 

[DavidCapizzano]

I am against the playground here - not the park. We need more passive, mature greenspaces where people can just lounge and enjoy the outdoors. There is a big obsession in Toronto right now with parks needing to have a function and being hyper-programmed resulting in confusing spaces not meant for anyone and not particularly good at anything. Having a spot to sit and enjoy a coffee or some takeout along this stretch seems like a huge bonus.

 

[ADRM]

That was my first thought too. I'm sure the park placement is intended to provide tower separation from 888 Dupont - and interestingly, the park is also there in the 888 renders. If they installed playground equipment, you might attract some families from the neighborhood, but otherwise its hard to see how the park would function as anything other than a residents' amenity.

View attachment 292526

Yeah, I live literally around the corner, and there's not a snowball's chance in hell I would allow a child to play in a park facing Dupont; at least three people have been killed by drivers on this stretch between these buildings and Christie in the last few years. This is in many ways a perfect illustration of how disconnected the City's planning approach is from both transit service and pedestrian and cyclist safety improvements (also seeing in the image above the right turn slip that should have disappeared with the 888 development).

 

[bilked]

I am against the playground here - not the park. We need more passive, mature greenspaces where people can just lounge and enjoy the outdoors. There is a big obsession in Toronto right now with parks needing to have a function and being hyper-programmed resulting in confusing spaces not meant for anyone and not particularly good at anything. Having a spot to sit and enjoy a coffee or some takeout along this stretch seems like a huge bonus.

I was of the same view. Until I had kids! And then actually started using the City's small little parks and parkettes regularly.

From my (very unscientific survey), these inner city parkettes aren't really used much at all unless they have playground equipment. If they do, they're well-loved. Adults tend to congregate in larger parks with more open space (unprogrammed, as you mention), where they can sit in circles and drink tall cans, or whatever adults do.

Little children and parents are drawn to the opposite - they make very good use of parkettes, provided they have playground equipment, but don't utilize larger open spaces in the same way as adults would.

So if we are going to create parkettes, from my perspective, they ought to keep young families in mind. For unprogrammed green space (which I agree is important) it would be better to simply have the developer contribute to off-site parkland dedications for larger projects like rail deck park, which will, no doubt, be embraced by the adult folk.