Toronto 650 Bay Street | 52.4m | 18s | Lanterra | Arcadis

[innsertnamehere]

Also - a loading turntable in an 18-storey hotel? Has Lanterra costed that out? Why is nobody talking about the ridiculous cost of the City's loading standards?

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

Keep it classy, Lanterra...

 

[ProjectEnd]

Also - a loading turntable in an 18-storey hotel? Has Lanterra costed that out? Why is nobody talking about the ridiculous cost of the City's loading standards?

A table is a back-of-the-napkin $1M cost including the weird formwork and mechanical items. That does not include the outworkings of an artificially deep at-grade slab to be able to accommodate it.

 

[Northern Light]

Also - a loading turntable in an 18-storey hotel? Has Lanterra costed that out? Why is nobody talking about the ridiculous cost of the City's loading standards?

People are talking about it, I assure you.

Though its more a private discussion than a public one.

Its a bit inside baseball for the MSM.

 

[innsertnamehere]

A table is a back-of-the-napkin $1M cost including the weird formwork and mechanical items. That does not include the outworkings of an artificially deep at-grade slab to be able to accommodate it.

nor decades of ongoing maintenance.. (lets be real though, it doesn't get repaired and loading simply turns around on the public street anyway).

 

[Red October]

Not great (keeping the bay and gables would be ideal) but still better than another blank wall of glass at street level at least.

 

[Amare]

Bay St is literally architectural hell, and it's embarrassingly shameful.

Lanterra is a joke for coming up with this gutter trash proposal.

 

[Rascacielo]

Are they restoring the bricks on the corner building to some semblance of the original? Dollarama could've done a classier job than the last developer's attempt at 'restoration'.

 

[christiesplits]

Very disappointing proposal. Needs to go back to the drawing board.

 

[Andrew3D]

It’s been a while since I last posted here, and it feels like the right time to jump back in.


I really like the use of brick in this proposal, and the scale is surprisingly restrained for such a central location. While it’s unfortunate to lose the Victorian buildings, I try to keep in mind that Toronto still has thousands of similar examples lining its downtown residential streets. This site is simply too central to realistically preserve them, and I’m glad that, as others have noted, they won’t be reduced to superficial façadism.


With that in mind, I ran the buildings through A.I. to explore what they might look like if restored, and I also recreated the corner to better understand the street-level impact. Interestingly, no matter how much I tried, NanoBanana Pro refused to keep 77 Elm intact. Apparently, it’s not a fan of Uno Prii’s brutalist work.

59-71_Elm by Andrew Moore, on Flickr
59_79_Elm_soonToGo by Andrew Moore, on Flickr

350_BayStreet by Andrew Moore, on Flickr
350_Bay_mockup by Andrew Moore, on Flickr

 

[70Challenger]

I'm glad they will be reconstructing that cornice at least. That AI render actually makes the new podium look decent, maybe it's the brick texture. Doesn't make up for not preserving the Victorian frontage of course.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

This is going to be a great replacement for this stretch of bay.

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

...they should keep those town houses.

 

[Bayer]

...they should keep those town houses.

Agreed.

In the basement of one of those, at 69 Elm, was a Danish restaurant I really liked called Tastefully Done. I used to have lunch there all the time.

 

[officedweller]

Personally, I don't think the heritage building is nice enough to anchor the end of the block very well.
It has small windows and entrances, forcing the hotel entrance and pedestrian activity around the corner from Bay onto Elm.

But if they are going to keep it, they should shift the strip of gray brick on the right to become a spacer between the red brick of the heritage building and the new orange brick, like this: