Toronto 20 Front West | 175m | 52s | Brookfield | KPMB

taal said:
Would the city allow it ? It seems short cited ... I'm sure they'd do office replacement for what is there but longer term this would be a great site for a large office building.
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Despite superficial market conditions there are a couple of majors looking for space; but there's also an awful lot of it on the market (both existing, and proposed); far more than will be filled in the near to medium term.

It's not impossible that Brookfield might have interest from one of bigger prospects out there, but it's certainly not the most likely thing, on its face.

@innsertnamehere is the full zoning in place for phase 3 or would they need a ZBA?
 
Northern Light said:
Despite superficial market conditions there are a couple of majors looking for space; but there's also an awful lot of it on the market (both existing, and proposed); far more than will be filled in the near to medium term.

It's not impossible that Brookfield might have interest from one of bigger prospects out there, but it's certainly not the most likely thing, on its face.

@innsertnamehere is the full zoning in place for phase 3 or would they need a ZBA?
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Ask and you shall receive!

The site is zoned in Toronto's zoning by-law 569-2013 as "CR 12.0 (c8.0; r11.7) SS1 (x2334)" with a height limit of 137m.

Exception 2334 has a bunch of applicable by-laws and exceptions which were carried over from the former Toronto zoning by-law 438-86. Most notably, this site has site specific zoning under by-law 44-88, available through the link below:


the height map will likely interest people the most:

1676639876776.png


You can see the height permissions for the two existing towers extending up to over 200m, with a height permission of 105m here.

So despite the general height limit being 137m in the zone, this site-specific by-law actually down-zones this site to a max of 105m.

Whatever may have originally been envisioned in that initial sketch posted above, when Brookfield place finally came around for municipal approvals in 1988, they only got approvals for a 105m, much smaller tower here.

They'll need a full rezoning here, in other words.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Ask and you shall receive!

The site is zoned in Toronto's zoning by-law 569-2013 as "CR 12.0 (c8.0; r11.7) SS1 (x2334)" with a height limit of 137m.

Exception 2334 has a bunch of applicable by-laws and exceptions which were carried over from the former Toronto zoning by-law 438-86. Most notably, this site has site specific zoning under by-law 44-88, available through the link below:


the height map will likely interest people the most:

View attachment 456975

You can see the height permissions for the two existing towers extending up to over 200m, with a height permission of 105m here.

So despite the general height limit being 137m in the zone, this site-specific by-law actually down-zones this site to a max of 105m.

Whatever may have originally been envisioned in that initial sketch posted above, when Brookfield place finally came around for municipal approvals in 1988, they only got approvals for a 105m, much smaller tower here.

They'll need a full rezoning here, in other words.
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TY for that most thorough report!

Interesting that the height clearly does not match the render.
 
Northern Light said:
TY for that most thorough report!

Interesting that the height clearly does not match the render.
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the rendering was likely an initial vision, and the never-built tower was likely negotiated down in scale as a part of the approvals process. And to such a small size that Brookfield just never optioned to actually build it.
 
innsertnamehere said:
the rendering was likely an initial vision, and the never-built tower was likely negotiated down in scale as a part of the approvals process. And to such a small size that Brookfield just never optioned to actually build it.
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ACO (where I grabbed the render from says the permission for the tower was approved); I presume they're wrong, at least at the height as shown in the render. I found an old reference to it in this thread that suggests approval at 35s which is clearly well less than what is rendered; but I'm still not sure I can reconcile 35s commercial at 105M.

Hmmm.
 
Just about 3 months ago, I told UT something was up here............and well, the App is in....

Not office (no surprise), perhaps a small one though, purpose-built rental is proposed.

Height: 51 Storeys

Architect: KPMB

The App:

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app.toronto.ca

Application Details

app.toronto.ca app.toronto.ca


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1683978034982.png


Edit to add: Interesting play on 'office replacement' here. They are proposing to 'replace' the space off-site, at the Hudson's Bay Centre, in the form of the repurposed department store space we've already seen.
 
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Er...it looks less inspiring than the established office component just west of it... 😼
 
I really hope this is rejected, isn't this zoned as employment land ? It's short cited to say the least ...
 
Honestly I see what they're trying to do, I take no issue with the design, but it's so short cited and a clear cash grab ... force it to remain employment lands as its zoned, and we'll see it developed in the next 30 years ...
 
I think it's a good response to market conditions. As leases come up for renewal there will be a shrinkage in office real estate footprint for most companies. This is a permanent shift in the market. Regardless of what companies say it's about what they do. Google and Amazon both said come back to work and then paused work on their campuses. Companies will likely move to the core and suburban office sites get converted to industrial. We won't need any more new office buildings for a at least a decade.
 
TRONto said:
I think it's a good response to market conditions. As leases come up for renewal there will be a shrinkage in office real estate footprint for most companies. This is a permanent shift in the market. Regardless of what companies say it's about what they do. Google and Amazon both said come back to work and then paused work on their campuses. Companies will likely move to the core and suburban office sites get converted to industrial. We won't need any more new office buildings for a at least a decade.
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I'm not sure it will be as long as a decade.

That said, there are 5 major towers in the pipeline now, publicly (by major I mean ~50s+ ) The Hub, 11 Bay, CC3, Union Centre and the office component of Union Park.

There are other ideas on that front that were making the rounds pre-Covid.

On top of that, you have the proposals at East Harbour, Liberty Village and at least three Allied sites in West Downtown or just west thereof.

Even if there were demand in the next decade, Brookfield 3 won't be needed to meet forseeable demand.
 
Northern Light said:
I'm not sure it will be as long as a decade.

That said, there are 5 major towers in the pipeline now, publicly (by major I mean ~50s+ ) The Hub, 11 Bay, CC3, Union Centre and the office component of Union Park.

There are other ideas on that front that were making the rounds pre-Covid.

On top of that, you have the proposals at East Harbour, Liberty Village and at least three Allied sites in West Downtown or just west thereof.

Even if there were demand in the next decade, Brookfield 3 won't be needed to meet forseeable demand.
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Sorry, I meant new proposals. There is so much in the pipeline I'd find it hard to believe that a developer would expect a return on a new office space proposal. I also would be surprised if more than one of the existing proposals goes through. Nobody wants space anymore.
 
taal said:
I really hope this is rejected, isn't this zoned as employment land ? It's short cited to say the least ...
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taal said:
Honestly I see what they're trying to do, I take no issue with the design, but it's so short cited and a clear cash grab ... force it to remain employment lands as its zoned, and we'll see it developed in the next 30 years ...
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My perspective - another example of living in a romanticized past in the hope of returning conditions to a state which is just not going to happen.

This is just one of a number of recent proposals for the redevelopment of commercial buildings into mixed use with substantial residential components plus material office replacement components - even when such as this, the entire existing office structure is being demolished.

First, given the pervasive adoption of work from home, already starting pre-Covid supported by technological advances over the recent years - at this point the entire residential component chould be counted as contributing towards the replacement office requirement.

Secondly, the balance in demand, the ratio of office to residential space requirements has changed, and is not likely to go back, fundamentally there has been an increase in residential requirements in ratio to the amount of office space required to support the corresponding population. This is not even taking into account the effect of the ongoing reduction in average household size )i.e. more residential required for the same population.

I suspect that the prospects of the office replacement component being profitable on its own merits for a developer, are marginal or non-existent. That being the case, the office component is in fact being materially subsidized by the residential portion of the building. The result will be a very counter productive increase in the development costs for the residential units.

In other words, this is a losing situation in two ways - first of all (although not necessarily in this case as the proposed office space would be offsite) the approved density could be used for additional residential units, helping the housing situation, and secondly, the incremental costs loaded onto the residential units to support the replacement office component further hurt affordability.

So given the current market situation, over availability of office space in Toronto, combined with a housing shortage - it would seem to make sense to me that Council, the City's Planning department and developers back off from requiring workplace replacement components within new primarily residential buildings being proposed for existing commercial building locations.
 
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