Toronto 45 St Clair West | 166.85m | 50s | Manulife Real Estate | Sweeny &Co

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Northern Light

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New to the AIC is this application to replace an existing 14s Office Building:

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Development Applications

City Planning COA Application Information Center
app.toronto.ca

Site as it is:

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* Docs are Up *

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Podium + Material Palate:

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Notes:

The application proposes to replace just over 1/2 of the current office space; the residential tenure is explicitly stated as purpose-built rental.

Floor Plate size: At a range of just over 900m2 to almost 1100m2 this one is likely to attract some unfavourable attention from planning for contravening the Tall Building guidelines.
 
Yonge and St. Clair continues to get super-sized! I like the proposal but I can't imagine they will get away with less than full office replacement here.
 
Kenojuak said:
Too much car parking
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Parking ratio is 0.24; which, we would have loved to see even 5 years ago; but admittedly, today, when you're not 1/2 a block from St. Clair Station, walking distance to St. Clair West Station, on the St. Clair LRT, lower would be nice.

Worth saying, mind you, it's roughly in the middle of the range for nearby proposals which go from zero to well over 0.5
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Like the attempt to add texture to the facades, but the window wall can (and probably will) make it look super messy (a la 1 Yorkville).

AoD
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Agreed; my quibble from a design choice would be the podium and at-grade experience. It's the latter I'm principally concerned with, but I'm also not sure how you blend that wavy treatment down to grade; or alternatively ignore it on the first floor w/o it looking bad.

I'd add, I would not mind seeing this design w/colour in it. Maybe Scotiaplaza red? (they wouldn't spring for the nice stone cladding, of course), which begs the question of getting it right. White/beige seems to be the new condo-blue glass for its overly abundant use.
 
I'm comparing this plan to what was envisioned in the 1 St. Clair West thread: (for public space/parks linkages)

This is from the 1 St. Clair W thread:

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My read of the above is that they proposed to connect the park that I was not overly fond of on the south side of their building to a N-S passage way up to St. Clair running along the east side of this tower.

When I look at the plans here, there is a narrow passage on the east side, by the looks of it, but they have bike parking in it, next to no landscaping, and it appears too slim to function as a public gateway space at all.
 
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Sad to see another punctured window concrete cladding facade building get torn down! But this proposal is beautiful as well as those other tower proposals in this St Clair, Yonge area.
 
Northern Light said:
I'd add, I would not mind seeing this design w/colour in it. Maybe Scotiaplaza red? (they wouldn't spring for the nice stone cladding, of course), which begs the question of getting it right. White/beige seems to be the new condo-blue glass for its overly abundant use.
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Totally agree tinting the precast panels to something resembling Scotia would look terrific here with the rippling/angles (and a tint won't break the bank). A very dark, deep red similar to Scotia's granite.

Unless of course the horizontal banding every 4 floors or so on the tower is all spandrel and not precast. That would be unfortunate.
 
canarob said:
Yonge and St. Clair continues to get super-sized! I like the proposal but I can't imagine they will get away with less than full office replacement here.
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I'm surprised it's taken this long really - there's been very little change there throughout this extended building boom. Why has Yonge and Eglinton been getting all the attention??
 
I find it incredulous that a 14 storey office block is being torn down on St Clair for a tower, even one with some architectural promise. Based on most of the recent proposals being put forth by developers filling the main avenues with mid rises must not be a very profitable business model. Still I'm not going to flight high density near rapid public transit.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Like the attempt to add texture to the facades, but the window wall can (and probably will) make it look super messy (a la 1 Yorkville).

AoD
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I mostly see sterile glass and spandrel. From a materials perspetive it looks very much like the typical unwelcoming/dreary Toronto trash (a bit of South Core on St Clair). The current building is no beauty, and I'm no fan of the lawn in front of it, but this is still a downgrade aesthetically. I'm all for density, but it's so hard to be a YIMBY in this city when so much of the new architecture is this sterile and soulless.
 
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