Toronto 100 Davenport | 72m | 19s | Diamante | Scott Shields

The tower will be built in one form or another. Julie and her team went into this knowing they were going to be met with opposition. They did not go into it just to walk away from a project after a community meeting. They also knew the site specific bylaws as well as other relevant facts so that being said this is obviously heading to the OMB down the road. What the community, the city and the Councillor say has merit but the province will have the final say, precedence has already been set with the two neighboring towers. My personal take on it is that they wont get anywhere near 39 stories but did they really want 39 stories or really wanted 15 and aimed for more since they know how the OMB works :)
 
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david-realtor said:
The tower will be built in one form or another. Julie and her team went into this knowing they were going to be met with opposition. They did not go into it just to walk away from a project after a community meeting. They also knew the site specific bylaws as well as other relevant facts so that being said this is obviously heading to the OMB down the road. What the community, the city and the Councillor say has merit but the province will have the final say, precedence has already been set with the two neighboring towers. My personal take on it is that they wont get anywhere near 39 stories but did they really want 39 stories or really wanted 15 and aimed for more since they know how the OMB works :)
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Well, the OMB says yay or nay, that's how it works, so the question is where will this end up through bargaining on the road to the OMB. Right now the City won't even need to talk to them again until they come back with a more realistic proposal, as the City should be 99% satisfied that the OMB would say no at 39. Diamante will have to figure out where the OMB might rule in their favour

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I like the tower as it is proposed. It looks good at the north end of Bay. It's hard to know if the developer is playing this thing so a shorter project will be eventually approved, though can't see Cardinal involving himself in such a game.
 
old boy said:
I like the tower as it is proposed. It looks good at the north end of Bay. It's hard to know if the developer is playing this thing so a shorter project will be eventually approved, though can't see Cardinal involving himself in such a game.
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They knew from the get go a 39 story would never happen on this lot. I would be truly surprised if they got anywhere near that tall.
 
I love this render as it's very handsome and clean. Very nice for the sorrounding area. Fits in great.
 
Unsurprisingly headed to the OMB. Council adopted the refusal report yesterday after it was released by planning staff shortly after the consultation last month.
 
Diamante may not appeal this refusal to the OMB. This one is so much taller than an earlier OMB agreement allowed for, that the City likely feels confident being able to defend the refusal to the point that they would not even bother to negotiate based on this submission. (Negotiation with the City while awaiting an OMB hearing is becoming commonplace, but those negotiations are based on the developer having some reasonable chance of success. The City and developer both have to weigh what they think that chance is of course.) Diamante, instead, is more likely to resubmit with something closer to what the City might accept here.

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FMCS said:
Love the design and I also can't understand the height restriction considering the location....
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I don't know the site specifics to comment on whether the 39 storeys is appropriate or not. I don't like the ugly precedence this proposals sets. This has gone through a long drawn process already that, IIRC, allows a midrise of a similar scale to Diamante's Alpine project. What has really changed during that decade, a relatively short period of time, to rewrite that approved plan and allow something 4 to 5 times higher? Smart of Diamante to go outside of the box with their design. Hopefully, it doesn't fool anyone.
 
It's not really all that ugly though. Will it stand the test of time, who knows, but a little flare wouldn't kill this city, it's a bit tiring hearing conventionalist thinking as the only way forward. I'm not saying Dubai is the answer, but a little variety as this proposal seems to represent isn't bad either. That podium is very Gaudi-esque, and looks stellar to me if done in similar material to the rendering. The stone is special, and the windows scream architectural voyerism to me, if that makes sense. I would even settle on just that podium if that made sense financially, which it obviously doesn't.
 
Some of the commentary around this tower provides a useful jumping off point, I think, for some criticisms of the Planning Department's built form and design guidelines. I know guidelines are just that, but they nonetheless play a role in the type of architecture we see proposed, and I think that's a significant contributing factor to the relative lack of diversity we see in Toronto condo and office building design.

For one, the podium-and-point-tower approach is an attempt to moderate the feeling of a tall building's imposition on the streetscape and neighbourhood. I fundamentally disagree that this very guideline is a consistently effective way to do that; I find some podium-less slender towers much less overbearing at street level than buildings with a blocky, uninteresting podium (especially those of the flat, vertical glass wall-type that we've seen a lot of recently). A lot of Hong Kong's architecture is a great illustration of that.

That criticism naturally flows into Planning's strange obsession with height -- give me a slender, 50-storey tower that meets and engages well with the street any day over a 25-storey tower with a boxy podium any day. But Planning doesn't see it that way.

And then the mid-rise guidelines and the 45-degree angular plain are a whole other kettle of fish, but I digress.
 
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