Toronto Mirvish Village (Honest Ed's Redevelopment) | 85.04m | 26s | Westbank | Henriquez Partners

P23 said:
I'm not fond of your implication that renters somehow ruin neighbourhoods and property. Especially as these will probably be in the higher price range. There's a shortage of decent rental units in the city and these are a step in the right direction.
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Sorry, it's not an implication, it's reality.
 
P23 said:
I'm not fond of your implication that renters somehow ruin neighbourhoods and property. Especially as these will probably be in the higher price range. There's a shortage of decent rental units in the city and these are a step in the right direction.
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I'm not fond of your own implication that higher priced rentals are better for neighbourhoods than lower cost rentals.
 
P23 said:
Disagree. It's practically on top of a subway station/streetcar line.
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But that's not the only consideration. They want to drop a 29-storey tower (and the others) in the middle of a mature, low-rise neighbourhood. There are no buildings even remotely close to that size anywhere near this intersection. Such a sudden change in mass and scale is not good built form, no matter how exciting the ideas are.

This site is ideal for midrise and there are lots of other sites surrounding the intersection that could also be built as midrise to take advantage of the transit.

Having said that, it would be disappointing if opposition to this project was taken as as opposition to the "fine grain" ground-level treatment and not the size of the project. The ideas on this one are a breath of fresh air compared to the dull podiums built during the boom. I'm tempted to become a cheerleader for this project based on that, but the height in this location is a serious problem. Buildings don't exist in isolation from their surroundings.
 
A site of this size is not going to be redeveloped without lots of height and density. It's the economic reality.

I understand the desire for a contextual midrise, but as soon as honest ed's was sold you had to know nobody would have bought it for anything less than building out hundreds of units.

I'd rather have honest ed's stay around, but that's not an option. I guess this development is the best we can do given the realities of development in Toronto. It's a textbook case of the course of gentrification and there just was no way to stop it from happening.
 
flonicky said:
But that's not the only consideration. They want to drop a 29-storey tower (and the others) in the middle of a mature, low-rise neighbourhood. There are no buildings even remotely close to that size anywhere near this intersection. Such a sudden change in mass and scale is not good built form, no matter how exciting the ideas are.

This site is ideal for midrise and there are lots of other sites surrounding the intersection that could also be built as midrise to take advantage of the transit.

Having said that, it would be disappointing if opposition to this project was taken as as opposition to the "fine grain" ground-level treatment and not the size of the project. The ideas on this one are a breath of fresh air compared to the dull podiums built during the boom. I'm tempted to become a cheerleader for this project based on that, but the height in this location is a serious problem. Buildings don't exist in isolation from their surroundings.
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Westbank needs to make money too, unless they build up they wont get it, and then all the things about the project you like will suffer. 29 really isnt that tall, if it was a single tower it might look weird but this is a complex with so many varying heights. It is itself a whole neighbourhood.
 
29s by a subway station is fairly reasonable - especially or a site this close to the core. At some point the city will have to chose how it want to densify areas immediate outside downtown while preserving established residential neigbhourhoods, and this project offers what I think is a suitable model for nodes.

AoD
 
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