Toronto 1235-1255 Lawrence West | ?m | ?s | G. Gagliano Properties

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Northern Light

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Matt Elliott is reporting in the latest edition of City Hall Watcher and Lobbyist watch, that St. Joe's Media is lobbying City Hall concerning a possible mixed-use redevelopment of their head office site.

Matt has dropped the paywall for this issue, and I would encourage everyone to have a read as it covers a lot of territory with great info; and consider subscribing too.

Link:

graphicmatt.substack.com

Summertime, and the lobbying is easy

City Hall Watcher #130: A special FREE milestone issue, with a brand new LOBBYIST WATCH featuring Airbnb, the island airport, Presto competitors & more!
graphicmatt.substack.com graphicmatt.substack.com

The land area is significant, and located on the south side of Lawrence between Caledonia and Keele, just west of the GO line.

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Its 2.5ha or just over 6 acres. *** I'm not clear if they control the entire property, but they do seem to have the majority.

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Oddly, the buildings just got a re-do in the last year.
 
omg I used to work there - st. joes is a wild place, definitely of another era. There are some impressive studio facilities in that building which would be tough to recreate, but the company as a whole has been on the decline for decades, even after scooping up all of Rogers Media's magazine brands.

They literally renovated the entire north wing of the building after killing their St Joes media lease down on Queen Street with the assumption that all of the publishing staff would come and work at Benton (a tough sell after working downtown) but my guess is due to the pandemic / declining print/magazine sales it's just not on the table and they're hoping to leverage the land value.

Curious to note, a part of this building is leased to Radio Maria, and it was rumoured among staff that it was there for tax purposes, but I can't verify if that's true.
 
DavidCapizzano said:
omg I used to work there - st. joes is a wild place, definitely of another era. There are some impressive studio facilities in that building which would be tough to recreate, but the company as a whole has been on the decline for decades, even after scooping up all of Rogers Media's magazine brands.

They literally renovated the entire north wing of the building after killing their St Joes media lease down on Queen Street with the assumption that all of the publishing staff would come and work at Benton (a tough sell after working downtown) but my guess is due to the pandemic / declining print/magazine sales it's just not on the table and they're hoping to leverage the land value.

Curious to note, a part of this building is leased to Radio Maria, and it was rumoured among staff that it was there for tax purposes, but I can't verify if that's true.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming printing is done by contract and/or offsite?

****

To your knowledge do they have that entire block? I was confused by a somewhat different signage/appearance closer to the railway.
 
Northern Light said:
I'm assuming printing is done by contract and/or offsite?

****

To your knowledge do they have that entire block? I was confused by a somewhat different signage/appearance closer to the railway.
Click to expand...

they own the entire plot of land. It's been renovated a few times, including the most recent round just this past year. My understanding is they've been at this site for several decades (with the exception of st joes media which was on Queen St E)


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DavidCapizzano said:
St Joes actually owns and operates its own printing facilities in Concord and Ottawa - they're a really old company. The bread and butter for a long time was flyers. They produced the Sears Wish Book!
Click to expand...
Back in the day when i worked at Sears (not too long ago so to speak), we used to send off some items to St.Joes for photo cataloguing. That was before the real hemorrhaging of money and Sears used more of their in-house photography team to save some cash. But up until the complete death of Sears, they were still doing some work with St.Joe's.

Just not as signiciant as the heydays of Sears (ie: before the revolving door of CEO's the company had).
 
Amare said:
Back in the day when i worked at Sears (not too long ago so to speak), we used to send off some items to St.Joes for photo cataloguing. That was before the real hemorrhaging of money and Sears used more of their in-house photography team to save some cash. But up until the complete death of Sears, they were still doing some work with St.Joe's.

Just not as signiciant as the heydays of Sears (ie: before the revolving door of CEO's the company had).
Click to expand...

Decided on 'like' because I appreciate the contribution.

But it's still sad news, even after the fact.

Mr. Lampert milked the company dry.

Sigh.
 
The Lobbyist Registry brings news on this site............and it just got larger!

Aerial pic of this utterly massive 3.5ha (~9 acre) site.

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From the Lobbyist Registry:

Details for Subject Matter Registration: SM32350​


Decision(s) or issue(s) to be lobbied

1235-1255 Lawrence Avenue West and 3-23 Benton Road, Toronto - Redevelopment

The client is listed as:

G. Gagliano Properties Ltd/Benton Property Corp.
 
This one was the subject of a settlement offer that went to the May meeting of City Council.

No, we didn't miss the application, rather, the proponent's settlement offer concerned their appeal of OPA 231.

In so doing, amusingly, they have effectively gained the first part of any ZBA by getting the majority of the site designated Mixed Use.

The settlement contains some Employment Area 'stuff' for the City........and some things that will be of interest to @HousingNowTO


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On the Affordable Housing:
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On the Employment Area:

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