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Hazelton Hotel/Condo (Yorkrow, 9s, P+S/IBI Group) COMPLETE

Yorkville was indeed a village once, and it became a sort of creative club district in the 1960's with coffee houses and live music. But that scene was already dead when I came here in 1970 and tourists were being directed to see the "hippies" there. When I lived on Scollard in 1977 Yorkville was already very commercial, with several small, well designed, low rise, brick infill shopping malls between Cumberland and Yorkville and at the corner of Avenue Road, and trendy eateries like Noodles on Bay Street where Pangaea is now.

Replacing the original brick fronts of those nice old Victorian bay and gables with fake "grape chewie" fronts nicely expressed the slide into Jerkville, just as a hundred of the Beautiful People holding a Grouchfest in the Heliconian Hall and claiming that part of town was still a village as recently as three years ago speaks to the same phoniness. The five star ( pending ) Hazelton Hotel is a triumphal conclusion to a transition that has been going on for almost forty years.
 
Well put US. I guess people just don't like change, and are too myopic to understand that change is constantly happening in spite of them.
 
http://www.thehazeltonhotel.com/

I think I'll move in sometime soon;)

Upon further investigation: i give it 2 thumbs down. Why? Too much brown, too much boring Gluckstein-style crap. Very conservative. Very "old" Toronto. Perfect for the 55+ executive set I suppose, but for me? I'll wait for the Thompson hotel@550 Wellington....
 
Junglab's memorable quip about Regency Yorkville - The Star of Downtown for the jet-set - comes most readily to mind when looking at this and other buildings going up in Jerkville these days.
 
I'm guessin' the posers are renting their Lambos and Bentleys to show off!!

Posers have also been known to max out their credit cards for overnight stays at 5 star hotels on Yorkville!!!

lol! ( I wanna become a poser too!!)
 
I always thought Yorkville was Poserville.... Seriously, Yorkville is filled with phonies. The truly wealthy do their shopping in Paris.

Yeowch! So a person can't buy something in Yorkville without being a phoney? And what if the truly wealthy need something quick, and happen to be in the neighbourhood?

I actually rate the Hazelton below the Regency in terms of architectural merit! I'm a tough critic.

Tough is not the word. Unreliable is. At least the Hazelton is a cohesive structure. The Regency is a pastiche of various styles. Ick.

42
 
Ah, its so easy to hate the rich.

(The Hazelton certainly beats the Regency both in terms of form and of materials. The Regency is worthy of North York...well, maybe not even North York.)
 
I shall get myself on the subway and stroll through Yorkville with pen and paper rating every single building (there's really not that many) out of 10. I shall post the 10 newest building's scores on this forum soon. We shall see who is tough who is unreliable and who is just plain silly! It shall be a fun little game I think.

But, back to the Hazel McCallion-approved hotel: it's okay but not great. Greatness is what I admire!
 
Maybe a reproduction of one, scaled back a bit, for Hazel's mausoleum. They're both in the opulent "quality finishes" status style - lots of white marble and gold leaf - that some rich people ( tyrants especially, though not exclusively ) think they are supposed to want. I don't think there'd be a big enough site to do something like that in Jerkville though. Maybe Post Road or the Bridle Path.
 
I love the top half but the bottom half makes me kind of nauseous with that Ron Perlman makeover of 80s bricks...Beauty and the Beast?
 

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