Toronto 2444 Yonge Street | 114.27m | 31s | First Capital | Hariri Pontarini

2440 Yonge St – 2444 Yonge St at Roselawn – Former Bank of Montreal Site

First Capitol Realty has submitted a revised mixed-use development consisting of two residential towers of 27 and 23 storeys over a 9-storey podium consisting of ground floor commercial uses and residential above; 6 blocks of 3-storey town houses. The City wrote a Refusal report. Currently under appeal to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT) (PL171386)). Although we didn’t save the heritage Bank of Montreal from demolition, buildings south including the Best Buy building, also purchased by the developer, have been added to the Toronto Heritage Inventory.

The Final Report of the original proposal was adopted by Council on Dec 5, 2017. The LPAT Case Management Conference scheduled on March 17, 2020 has been put on hold.

 
The Best Buy location here at 2400 Yonge St has closed:

 
The Best Buy location here at 2400 Yonge St has closed:

Noo! In all seriousness it was a pretty convenient location, hopefully they locate here again once this development is complete whenever the day is.

My hunch tells me they wont though, I never saw this location being very busy most times. I guess Canada Computers is the lone surviving electronics store in midtown.
 
New site plan application with new renderings and changes to the buildings:

Link: http://app.toronto.ca/AIC/index.do?folderRsn=7/Zis9jPPDE50JMhP4RM3w==

PLN - Architectural Plans - AUG 20  2021-500.jpg


PLN - Architectural Plans - AUG 20  2021-501.jpg


PLN - Architectural Plans - AUG 20  2021-502.jpg
 
Last edited:
The podium is a bit staid, but I think the towers are a good improvement with the warmer red tones.

This site is excellent for a high-rise development; however, many existing single detached homeowners may be against the proposal especially with the same old excuse "it does not fit with the neighbourhood characteristic" just watch and see. Especially, those who lived in Yonge and Eglinton for many decades may feel "NIBYM-ism"
 
I would have preferred to see a nice midrise scale and decline in height as Yonge heads north towards Castlefield, Briar Hill etc. That said unfortunately Toronto has dropped the ball a bit when it comes to context and character of certain hood's. I also wish midrises were profitable enough to build more of them, but with land values as they are, I understand the proforma work becomes financially tricky. I dunno, I guess I am an old school 40 yr old, I love my highrises, but I also feel more comfortable and at home with a scale similar to Paris. Not everything on Yonge must be be soulless and tall. Just my opinion.

Sometimes Toronto reminds me of a teenager going through a growth spurt and it's not always pretty. I do think as towers go, these don't look bad. Points for that at least.
 
Last edited:
I would have preferred to see a nice midrise scale and decline in height as Yonge heads north towards Castlefield, Briar Hill etc. That said unfortunately Toronto has dropped the ball a bit when it comes to context and character of certain hood's. I also wish midrises were profitable enough to build more of them, but with land values as they are, I understand the proforma work becomes financially tricky. I dunno, I guess I am an old school 40 yr old, I love my highrises, but I also feel more comfortable and at home with a scale similar to Paris. Not everything on Yonge must be be soulless and tall. Just my opinion.

Sometimes Toronto reminds me of a teenager going through a growth spurt and it's not always pretty. I do think as towers go, these don't look bad. Points for that at least.
If you want to restrict a booming city to midrise, then it has to be midrise everywhere. That is what makes Paris work. But in Toronto we allow rich homeowners to hoard 75% (?) of the City's land area as Neighbourhoods (the so-called "traditional single family neighbourhoods") which means the population growth is forced into very small areas near transit and growth centres, at huge heights and density. That's the tradeoff. Toronto cannot protect the Neighbourhoods while also preserving a midrise character in the centres and on key streets/
 
If you want to restrict a booming city to midrise, then it has to be midrise everywhere. That is what makes Paris work. But in Toronto we allow rich homeowners to hoard 75% (?) of the City's land area as Neighbourhoods (the so-called "traditional single family neighbourhoods") which means the population growth is forced into very small areas near transit and growth centres, at huge heights and density. That's the tradeoff. Toronto cannot protect the Neighbourhoods while also preserving a midrise character in the centres and on key streets/
I would bump the figure up from 75% to more like 90% to be quite frank! This figure represents mostly single-family zoning. Ops look at the following comment down below haha!
 
Last edited:
If you want to restrict a booming city to midrise, then it has to be midrise everywhere. That is what makes Paris work. But in Toronto we allow rich homeowners to hoard 75% (?) of the City's land area as Neighbourhoods (the so-called "traditional single family neighbourhoods") which means the population growth is forced into very small areas near transit and growth centres, at huge heights and density. That's the tradeoff. Toronto cannot protect the Neighbourhoods while also preserving a midrise character in the centres and on key streets/

A blanket restriction of mid-rise only, perhaps, but a selective one............I don't think this actually true.

I do think mid-rise has to be permitted along all major roads (arterials and collectors), as-of-right.
I would add, we still need to punch through some bloated interior areas where the the street grid is 2km between major roads.
Breaking up those super-blocks with a new street at a 1km interval on which mid-rises would be permitted as-of-right would likely be quite reasonable.
In the interior areas, simply allowing purpose-built rental, multi-family housing, to the level of 4-plexes would likely suffice.

I would make one other point that's often overlooked, Toronto simply does not have sufficient sewer capacity or water capacity to support an additional 4M in the City proper (total 7M).
While we must acknowledge and better accommodate on-going growth, we also have to make sure senior government policies align w/the notion that unliimited growth is neither desirable nor feasible.
The City proper can support another 1M fairly easily, and perhaps as many as 2M...........after that, quality of life would deteriorate and there is next to no hope of growth covering its costs.

Growth is a choice.

We need to choose wisely as to the form and pace of such growth; and its limits.
 
I would make one other point that's often overlooked, Toronto simply does not have sufficient sewer capacity or water capacity to support an additional 4M in the City proper (total 7M).
While we must acknowledge and better accommodate on-going growth, we also have to make sure senior government policies align w/the notion that unliimited growth is neither desirable nor feasible.
The City proper can support another 1M fairly easily, and perhaps as many as 2M...........after that, quality of life would deteriorate and there is next to no hope of growth covering its costs.

Growth is a choice.

We need to choose wisely as to the form and pace of such growth; and its limits.
I couldnt agree more, unfortunately our governments (provincial and federal) are too naive and idiotic to realize that most of this province's growth cant and shouldnt be concentrated around Toronto. There needs to be a push to make other cities more desirable (i'm looking at you Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Hamilton) through proper 21st century infrastructure (ie: high-speed rail, vastly improved regional rail, etc..).

We're just getting around to it with regional rail, but high-speed rail gets studied and studied to no ends.

But anyways in the meantime while our governments do absolutely nothing to address these (and many other) issues, areas like midtown will continue to suffer with a lack of adequate infrastructure and population pressures. Developers know it, and they can continue to exploit it thanks to our current provincial government's policies. Now with respect to this particular development I do like it, especially the materials and massing on the 2 towers. But I dont know about the ground level, I liked the previous iteration better in that matter but dont get me wrong, it's already 100% better then the dull and generic glass block-long streetwalls that developers like Tridel like to build.
 

Back
Top