Toronto 4800 Yonge Street | 168.24m | 49s | Menkes | Arquitectonica

sunnyraytoronto said:
Developers like podium because from street-level it hides their ugly development from pedestrians walking by. EmpressWalk is a great example of this where its 4 level podium retail mall hides their two residential condominium towers from pedestrians walking along Yonge Street,... these are the first residential condo towers allowed to be built on Yonge Street in North York Centre,....

A podium at the base makes a development looks more plugged into the ground,.... giving a sense of a stronger foundation to hold up the building. It's also used as a vertical buffer between the ground level activities and the rest of the development above. Also when developer put in commercial podium, they often try to sell it as doing the community a favour by giving the local community more retail opportunity, gathering place, an almost public place, etc,.... but it's really just another source of revenue for the developer.
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I get why they do it. But you can still have a high-ceilinged first floor or two, given over to retail. How you distinguish it from the rest of the tower is easy - with branding/signage and stuff in the windows. Commercial floor(s) can still have a huge street presence, without a clunky, graceless podium mucking up the design.
 
I don't think the resistance against a mixed use building is justified. If building a 5 storey office building can be allowed on site, there is should be nothing wrong with building a 40 storey tower above the 5 stories of office. If the zoning law want to ensure certain uses, then we should allow incremental uses on site provided that a certain threshold for usage division is satisfied, and that the development is beneficial to the local and broader communities as a whole.

my only concern is over the additional automobiles that will be brought in with yet one more high rise condo in the area. I think it may be worthwhile for Toronto to reverse its parking strategy and require that developments such as this carries little or no parking allocation. residents living here should be taking transit.

although I believe Gibson square is a city planning failure. The commercial/office portion of the development in its location is embarrassingly small.
 
sunnyraytoronto said:
Developers like podium because from street-level it hides their ugly development from pedestrians walking by. EmpressWalk is a great example of this where its 4 level podium retail mall hides their two residential condominium towers from pedestrians walking along Yonge Street,... these are the first residential condo towers allowed to be built on Yonge Street in North York Centre,....

A podium at the base makes a development looks more plugged into the ground,.... giving a sense of a stronger foundation to hold up the building. It's also used as a vertical buffer between the ground level activities and the rest of the development above. Also when developer put in commercial podium, they often try to sell it as doing the community a favour by giving the local community more retail opportunity, gathering place, an almost public place, etc,.... but it's really just another source of revenue for the developer.
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That's all pure cynicism with zero actual information.

The City wants the podium form because it blocks blasts of wind that head down the sides of towers from reaching the ground. And the City generally does want multi-use complexes on major roads, especially at transit stations, as they're far more efficient use of land. Retail and office components need larger floor plates. Some developers are good at making multi-use work, some are not so good. Some architectural designs for these podium and tower complexes are more attractive than others. There's nothing inherently wrong with revenue, and there's noting inherently ugly about this architectural typology.

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I'm not sure the gusts happen most of the time, but yeah, you want to know what it's like out before you subject yourself to that on windy days!

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salsa said:
Makes me wonder why some condos have terraces on top of the podium if it's gonna be blasted by wind most of the time.
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It's another selling point so developers can charge more for their condos and collect higher maintenance fees,.... in addition, it helps developer meet their local amenity and Section 37 Community Benefit criterias without having to provide a much more expensive sheltered area,.... all they end up giving up is otherwise useless roof space on top of the podium.
 
UD2 said:
I don't think the resistance against a mixed use building is justified. If building a 5 storey office building can be allowed on site, there is should be nothing wrong with building a 40 storey tower above the 5 stories of office. If the zoning law want to ensure certain uses, then we should allow incremental uses on site provided that a certain threshold for usage division is satisfied, and that the development is beneficial to the local and broader communities as a whole.

my only concern is over the additional automobiles that will be brought in with yet one more high rise condo in the area. I think it may be worthwhile for Toronto to reverse its parking strategy and require that developments such as this carries little or no parking allocation. residents living here should be taking transit.
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You have to becareful of what you ask for,.... that's a double-edge sword. IF the number of required on-site parking spaces where decreased then the developer could build the same number of parking spaces as proposed and increase the number of units!,.... the height would likely remain the same because it's maxed based on transition and matching HullmarkCentre North Tower,... but the way to increase the number of units is to fatten up the tower by building much wider,....

Now if you assume less parking spaces mean more transit riders,.... you have to remember the average condo unit in North York Centre has 2.5 residents, meaning one might take the car and one might take transit,..... the reason why they choose this location is because it's on the Yonge Subway line,... but also because it's near Highway 401,..... in reality, if they don't have on-site parking,... they'll just find another place to park their car,..... on the other side of Beecroft the 53-63 Sheppard West development proposal looks like its been hosting an illegal parking lot for years,..... and SheppardCentre has a ton of empty parking spaces,.... some of them still hosting abandon cars from the 1970's,.... practically a car museum in there,... or junk yard,... depending on your perspective.
 
interchange42 said:
That's all pure cynicism with zero actual information.

The City wants the podium form because it blocks blasts of wind that head down the sides of towers from reaching the ground. And the City generally does want multi-use complexes on major roads, especially at transit stations, as they're far more efficient use of land. Retail and office components need larger floor plates. Some developers are good at making multi-use work, some are not so good. Some architectural designs for these podium and tower complexes are more attractive than others. There's nothing inherently wrong with revenue, and there's noting inherently ugly about this architectural typology.

42
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That's why the city like podium,.... I'm talking about why developer like podium,.... developer like podium to maximize their revenue! Retail or office podium, the developer just wants to sell it off to maximize their profit now!

Here's the interesting part,... if the developer didn't sell off the retail or office podium but instead choose to rent/lease it out,... part of that revenue goes towards the building and lowers the maintenance fees for the residential condo owners. Of course that rarely happens. That would mean the developer are in it for the long term and would have to build a quality structure,..... these days, developer just want to maximize their return on each project and then move on to their next project,... wham-bam-thank-you-maam!
 
Solaris said:
This location needs a whole lot more than the tiny office component ... podium or not
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If it absolutely needed it, it would have been built. How long has the city artificially kept this prominent site an embarrassing wasteland through zoning? 30 years? 40? How much longer should it be kept set aside in the faint hope that someday a developer might possibly build an office tower on it?
 
Towered said:
If it absolutely needed it, it would have been built. How long has the city artificially kept this prominent site an embarrassing wasteland through zoning? 30 years? 40? How much longer should it be kept set aside in the faint hope that someday a developer might possibly build an office tower on it?
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See this is actually really tricky ! So let's use downtown for example, there was essentially 0 office development between what late 1980s (Scotia being the last big development) and the mid 2000s ? There was essentially a 15 year period where there was maybe 1 small office project downtown ... say we'd allow condo development on prime lots at that point, what that imply RBC Plaza / BA2 ... would have never happened ?

I agree there hasn't been much demand for new office space (mind you the node itself has low vacancy rates), but maybe that'll change ? But unlike downtown, where redevelopment can be an option once these plots are gone there is 0 space for new office development in NYCC given its surrounded by low rise housing
 
I like that it looks like a tombstone. But for those who don't. Losing the podium would help. The tower/ crown look good though. Keeps with the other interesting roof lines in this area.
 
sunnyraytoronto said:
if the developer didn't sell off the retail or office podium but instead choose to rent/lease it out,... part of that revenue goes towards the building and lowers the maintenance fees for the residential condo owners. Of course that rarely happens. That would mean the developer are in it for the long term and would have to build a quality structure,..... these days, developer just want to maximize their return on each project and then move on to their next project,... wham-bam-thank-you-maam!
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The condo-ization of office and retail space is a fairly recent phenomenon, and I'm not sure just how much of the market it represents at the moment, but given how the retail condos have gone over at Aura, the not-quite-so-bad World on Yonge, and jury's-still-out Emerald Park, I suspect that there may be a lull in retail condos for a while.

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interchange42 said:
The condo-ization of office and retail space is a fairly recent phenomenon, and I'm not sure just how much of the market it represents at the moment, but given how the retail condos have gone over at Aura, the not-quite-so-bad World on Yonge, and jury's-still-out Emerald Park, I suspect that there may be a lull in retail condos for a while.

42
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The "condo-ization" of office is more recent but the "condo-ization" of retail space has been going on for years. Pacific Mall has been around for decades,... along with its various copy-cat malls throughout the years like SpendidChina - its just that they're hidden in ethnic Chinese malls that most non-Chinese don't concern themselves about them.

Its only more recently that theses "condo-ization" of retail space are going into the podium of residential condo towers. Why?,... because developer maximize their profit by charging much higher amounts per square feet for these PacificMall type cubicle retail spaces than they could get for conventional sized stores (ditto for the "condo-ization" of office spaces).

What's interesting is which condo towers gets these "condo-ization" of retail space. Take the three that you mentioned: Aura, WorldOnYonge and EmeraldPark,.... they all have a very high demographic of Asian residents buying and living in those condo towers. The developer sells the PacificMall type cubicle stores as retail space that would remind the residents of their former homeland in Asia,.... but it's really just to maximize the developer's profits. What should have been Aura underground loading docks was designed as their basement PacificMall type retail spaces. The WorldOnYonge PacificMall retail spaces are hidden in the rear podium of the complex so far off Yonge Street and behind a couple of towers most folks don't even know it exist. The EmeraldPark PacificMall retail mall are blocked off by its own line of retail stores along Yonge frontage where the developer should have designed a mall entrance but instead choose to maximize profit by selling off that space as retail stores.

All three of these mixed use developments with "condo-ization" of retail spaces are right on Yonge Street. At EmeraldPark, each of these PacificMall type cubicle stores originally sold for $250,000 to $1million in 2008-2009 to MomAndPop store owners and small investors,... for most of them, there's no way they could afford to buy a regular size store on Yonge Street. Here, they pay something relatively affordable for a small PacificMall retail space with the prestige of a Yonge Street address. There's basically an infinite number of small MomAndPop stores and small investors always willing to buy,... even now,... just not many willing to open up stores! This is why developers will continue to build these PacificMall type cubicle stores,... it sells!,... it maximize developer's profit,... and it sells, Sells, SELLS!,.. they will always sell them! The developer has never been left holding onto any of these stores long term looking for a buyer,.... as they could be when it's a larger format retail space. For the developer, these PacificMall type cubicle retail stores at Aura, WorldOnYonge and EmeraldPark,.... all sold out quickly during pre-construction! So why would any developer stop building these PacificMall type cubicle retail stores???? Developer don't care if stores never open in these PacificMall type cubicle retail stores,.... Developer don't care about retail mall traffic,.... All developer care about is maximizing their profit and they did that by selling the retail space as PacificMall type cubicle stores with high per sqaure feet prices,.... then developer move onto their next project. Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Maam!

If you ever find a residential condo development catering to Asian demographic on Yonge Street with a retail podium where the developer actually choose to put in regular size retail stores,.... then I'd be shocked at how stupid this developer is!
 
Look at that shampoo bottle
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