Toronto 1540 Bloor West | 91.9m | 27s | Trinity Group | Arcadis

Towered said:
You don't remember the city rejecting the initial "Giraffe" proposal for being "too tall"?
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I remember speaking to Gord Perks about this years ago. I live in the area and he came to my door, campaigning for re-election. I asked him why, what looked to me like an interestingly designed tower, had been rejected. He rattled off something about how it's bad urban design to have a 30 storey building right next to a two storey building. Not knowing any better I shrugged and said okay. Now we have a proposal for a much worse looking building that is just as tall that won't even get built because the city put them through procedural hell when they should have been BEGGING this project to go forward as fast as possible. Prefect microcosm of the city's misplaced priorities on this file over the last two decades.
 
milkycontent said:
I remember speaking to Gord Perks about this years ago. I live in the area and he came to my door, campaigning for re-election. I asked him why, what looked to me like an interestingly designed tower, had been rejected. He rattled off something about how it's bad urban design to have a 30 storey building right next to a two storey building. Not knowing any better I shrugged and said okay. Now we have a proposal for a much worse looking building that is just as tall that won't even get built because the city put them through procedural hell when they should have been BEGGING this project to go forward as fast as possible. Prefect microcosm of the city's misplaced priorities on this file over the last two decades.
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Gord Perks is a stale councilor and a fool. Perhaps he should consider that 2 storey buildings next to a major rapid transit hub with multiple lines converging are the actual bad urban design here.
 
Towered said:
Gord Perks is a stale councilor and a fool. Perhaps he should consider that 2 storey buildings next to a major rapid transit hub with multiple lines converging are the actual bad urban design here.
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Gord has always fancied himself as a whole City councillor and doesn't appear too interested in small issues in his own Ward. If you approach him about, say, a speed bump on your street, he'll tell you how complicated it is and how the general neighbourhood is implicated etc. He will talk about anything and everything except your concern.

With regards to the Giraffe proposal, when it was pointed out that the Crossways was as tall as the proposed building, Gord supposedly said "yes, but that's an anomaly".
 
Michael Tsourounis, Head of Real Estate at Hazelview Investments, tells STOREYS that the decision to walk away from the project was made in order to refocus their efforts on other ongoing work.

"We have a big rental project that's currently underway in the immediate vicinity at Bloor and Dufferin so we're currently under construction on that right now and that's why we made the decision to sell this site here just from how much we have going on in that immediate sub market from a capacity standpoint," he said.

storeys.com

Developers Look To Sell Site Of Planned 27-Storey Rental Tower in Toronto

What was set to become the site of a high-rise tower from one of Toronto's well-known rental developers may soon have a different future in store as the property was listed for sale last week.Hazelview Investments in partnership with Trinity Development Group had planned to construct a...
storeys.com storeys.com
 
What I recall about Giraffe was that it was too big of a project for the small site. Squishing a similar tower to the Crossways onto 1/3 the footprint. They bought a few properties next door and the footprint is much larger and voila the City has approved the new tower. If Giraffe was not determined to push its proposal against local resistance, they could have built a smaller project to get approval and be done by now. Nevermind what Perks thinks, he is not some local dictator. Now, I think developers are less willing to hold onto a property and pay the financing charges. It all seems so leveraged.
 
Alex L said:
What I recall about Giraffe was that it was too big of a project for the small site. Squishing a similar tower to the Crossways onto 1/3 the footprint. They bought a few properties next door and the footprint is much larger and voila the City has approved the new tower. If Giraffe was not determined to push its proposal against local resistance, they could have built a smaller project to get approval and be done by now. Nevermind what Perks thinks, he is not some local dictator. Now, I think developers are less willing to hold onto a property and pay the financing charges. It all seems so leveraged.
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It was both that, and the fact that such a project would wipe out too many storefronts on the 'fine-grained' west side of the intersection, and potentially replicate the 'big and dumb' [Crossways] side, an extremely narrow reading of "prevailing character":

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The City approved it because of an evolved and somewhat enlightened policy context which favours density near transit. The way it should have been 15 years (and more) ago when Giraffe (a far better building than the current garbage) was unfairly quashed.
 
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