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CityPlace: St. Jamestown in waiting?

rbt said:
Some developer will come along, pick up St. James towers, gut the buildings and turn them into high value rentals and condos. Lots of new money immediately to the west will pull up the land values to make renewing the buildings worth while.

I think there is even room to put up a couple more towers. Connect some of the buildings with a multi-storey podium extension and call it a day.
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Easier said that done friend. There isn't a lot of pricing power in the rental market and SJT, while structurally sound, is demographically not very appealing to higher paying renters. I agree the buildings have good layouts and amazing views, but it would take many, many, years to vacate and rollover all the units there. I know someone who was involved in that building for years (Cadillac Fairview built it btw) and they had a very tough time managing it. Not saying that it's impossible, but it would be extraordinary undertaking as the present owners aren't exactly in a hurry to part with the buildings. And you can forget about ever turning that complex into condos in your lifetime. The city would never allow the loss of such affordable housing.

Great idea, very small likelihood of happening.

CityPlace will be much worse than this complex in the future because it is not in a real neighborhood like SJT. CityPlace will be a total slum within 15 years. Thanks Concord Adex, you've left quite a mark on this city.
 
The Huang & Danczkay eyesores in Harbourfront are over 20 years old, they look pretty shoddy still, they're no more in a "real neighbourhood" than CityPlace, yet I wouldn't deem them to be "total slums".

I repeat: the only thing that'd truly slumify CityPlace is if the T-Dot undergoes a total middle-class-flight demographic shock a la Detroit or Johannesburg...
 
It was something like two weeks ago that Hume yapped on that the Pinnacle development was the next St. James Town. Now this. Talk about stigmatizing a place.
 
Hume, and others, have been making the St. Jamestown prediction about CityPlace for as long as the project has been around. It's not like there's a sudden piling-on.
 
Hume read about the St. Jamestown comparison on this forum, I reckon...back when realestatejunkie was posting (and people may have said it before then).
 
Could well be... who knows?

Though, with feedback like the gov'nor's above, I can see why other writers have run screaming after a couple of posts. Anonymous Internet forums are much more fun when you're anonymous and have nothing to lose.

By the same token, though, after I outed myself by asking for contacts earlier, a few forumers were incredibly helpful with perspective and advice. It was appreciated... thanks guys!

That's all, from me.
 
Spot on SNF. If anything I found that you used kid gloves when describing the future down there.

Interestingly, if the City of Toronto had any moral conscious, it would immediately equalize property tax for apartment buildings and condominiums to give tenants a decent chance. It is outrageous that the residents of this city who can least afford the additional costs are paying 3x the tax (through rent) of higher income earners. It is shameful, disgusting and a complete departure from what you would think the principals of canadian tolerance and fairness would dictate.

Nothing but a bunch of hypocrites down there in City Hall. Furthermore, by preventing prime locations like St. Jamestown from becoming owner occupied dwellings and thus providing more incentive to the residents to improve the aesthetics, safety and condition and the complex, the faux-socialists are really hurting the people they purport to care about the most. Let the free market turn SJT into the biggest affordable housing project in the city and watch the spiral benefits that would ensue.
 
Why would trying to turn St James Town into City Place likely be any more successful than trying to block City Place from eventually becoming St. James Town?
 
Is there anything *really* different about St. Jamestown compared to other rental clusters like High Park, Yonge & Eglinton, etc., etc....other than the demographics (which are probably not as "bad" as advertised, anyway)?
 
scarberiankhatru said:
Is there anything *really* different about St. Jamestown compared to other rental clusters like High Park, Yonge & Eglinton, etc., etc....other than the demographics (which are probably not as "bad" as advertised, anyway)?
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Great question. I believe the density per square km in SJT is significantly higher than the density in the aforementioned areas. Also, in HP and Y&E there are only a few buildings per project and thus not nearly the insular, self-contained, cut off from the street, feeling that City Place and SJT inspire. Certainly Y&E feels nothing like this and in HP the buildings and the complexes are a great deal smaller. Furthermore, the buildings in HP are surrounded by a very mature residential area and are located on the edge of what is probably the city's greatest public amenity, High Park.

Take a stroll through HP and then grab your wind protector and head over to CityPlace and tell me what areas feels more comfortable to you.
 
St. Jamestown is certainly not so different that it was doomed to 'slumminess' via design...the location makes a difference, though.
 
Hipster Duck said:
St. Jamestown is a bustling, lively neighbourhood that just happens to be poor and full of struggling immigrant families.
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I've been into some of the buildings in St. Jamestown and do recall how horribly kept up the lobbys and elevators were. I've heard many a horror story from residents there.

Those negative points aside, I do have to agree that indeed, St. Jamestown is a bustling, lively neighbourhood. Everything you could ever need or could ever want (crack and whores included) is easily within a quick walk away. There is community there. It is surrounded by everything an urban area should have and it's not necessary to have a car.

Since day one of CityPlace, my concern has never been with the architecture. (I LOVE West One and the others are OK). The issue is the location. (This excludes the first built buildings on Front St.).

For the rest of them, they are surrounded by 6 to 8 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic and at least 10 lanes of railway tracks and an unfriendly portion of Bathurst St. (And Blue Jays Way is no treat to walk during a wind/rain/hail/snow storm, believe me). This will always be there and it creates a psychological barrier.

Except for the buildings... there is nothing there.

I hope this changes. There is so much potential.

If this does not change I worry that it will indeed be doomed.

If, in the end, there will be 14,000 new residents right there in downtown Toronto, why on earth would we want to give these people any reason to have to get into a car in the biggest city in Canada? How it looks now to most critics is that CityPlace is working against what most of us want for a successful urban Toronto.

And what's with that dick of a councillor crapping all over them? Why isn't he working to make this young community successful and something to be envied?
 
Massive multi-block construction sites are invariably horrible to walk through...CityPlace will be markedly better for pedestrians once everything's done, trees/shrubs are in place, stores are open and, probably most importantly, all the units are inhabited, thus generating more pedestrians. The location still won't be an A+, though. The Spadina streetcar often borders on useless and there just isn't that much that's "steps" away (partly because the rails and the Gardiner eat up so much land nearby that there *can't* be an endless variety of stuff...but we must wait and see exactly what gets added when the complex is done (stores, parks, etc.)). It's not too soon to tell that it's not doomed, though, not at all.
 
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