Toronto 64 Prince Arthur | 46.1m | 13s | Forgestone | RAW Design

[buildup]

Straight outta Margaret Atwood's own personal dystopian nightmare... I think this is going to have massive pushback from the Annex's un-rich homeowners.

They've been discredited and will be lying low for a while - refer to Margaret Wente's article in Globe & Mail. These people are sitting on massive capital gains on their properties because they've been protected by city planners, while the rest of the area densified, and are a 60-minute walk from a subway.

Great building put it right in the middle of those slabs. The developer should be rewarded for the design.

 

[Khaloody]

finally something Different. Hope it goes through

 

[condovo]

Great building put it right in the middle of those slabs. The developer should be rewarded for the design.

Design doesn't get rewarded in this town. (See John Tory at Bisha's ribbon-cutting today.)

 

[ProjectEnd]

The mistakes of another era should not be hot tub time machine teleported into this one recklessly.

Walking distance is a loaded term when you're close to Bloor Street. Boundaries need to persist, absent them chaos.

Soho is Soho for a reason. If you inserted shiny sliver towers down West Broadway or Mercer Street no big deal right? I mean look at all the big towers, "within walking distance".

What does this proposal come down to really?

Good planning? No.
Appropriate design? No.
Continuity of a neighbourhood streetscape? No.
A rookie developer who grossly overpaid for a site? Yes.

What 'mistakes of another era' are you referring to? The time when Bloor was all stately homes for the wealthy elite? Should we be going back to that era?

One of the things that I find interesting about the Annex, in particular the mid-rise apartments which dot its landscape, is how much of the existing nineteenth centry fabric actually remains intact. So if your caps-lock-diatribe about the 'mistakes of the past' is centered upon the false notion that houses were being cleared out wholesale, not only are you wrong about that time, you're wrong about this one too. Most of the mid-century buildings around here only removed one or two houses. Some of the larger slabs took three or four. 20 Prince Arthur is by-far the largest at seven, but only because it included a generous park for tenants to the west.

What's also remarkable about the Annex is how it's got to be one of the most diverse neighbourhoods in a city and country full of them. Where else do you have university-age renters a couple of hundred feet from grocery billionaires next to literary giants? What a great city, what great (former and, in its own time, not without its own fights) planning.

I actually started a thread about this exact thing last week. You might find it interesting: https://twitter.com/ProjectEND/status/903278492103704578

Neighbourhood destruction? Not that I can see. 'Mistakes of another era'? Unfounded and without evidence. But why don't we use your list:

Good planning? I'd say so.
Appropriate design? Not my cup of tea, and as an aside, unbuildable as shown and at our city's price point, but if that's what they want to do...
Continuity of a neighbourhood streetscape? Well yes, actually. Replacing a single building with something taller is kinda what the latter half of the last century was about in this neighbourhood.
A rookie developer who grossly overpaid for a site? I know what they paid for this site, do you?

 

[LMVDR]

What 'mistakes of another era' are you referring to? The time when Bloor was all stately homes for the wealthy elite? Should we be going back to that era?

One of the things that I find interesting about the Annex, in particular the mid-rise apartments which dot its landscape, is how much of the existing nineteenth centry fabric actually remains intact. So if your caps-lock-diatribe about the 'mistakes of the past' is centered upon the false notion that houses were being cleared out wholesale, not only are you wrong about that time, you're wrong about this one too. Most of the mid-century buildings around here only removed one or two houses. Some of the larger slabs took three or four. 20 Prince Arthur is by-far the largest at seven, but only because it included a generous park for tenants to the west.

What's also remarkable about the Annex is how it's got to be one of the most diverse neighbourhoods in a city and country full of them. Where else do you have university-age renters a couple of hundred feet from grocery billionaires next to literary giants? What a great city, what great (former and, in its own time, not without its own fights) planning.

I actually started a thread about this exact thing last week. You might find it interesting: https://twitter.com/ProjectEND/status/903278492103704578

Neighbourhood destruction? Not that I can see. 'Mistakes of another era'? Unfounded and without evidence. But why don't we use your list:

Good planning? I'd say so.
Appropriate design? Not my cup of tea, and as an aside, unbuildable as shown and at our city's price point, but if that's what they want to do...
Continuity of a neighbourhood streetscape? Well yes, actually. Replacing a single building with something taller is kinda what the latter half of the last century was about in this neighbourhood.
A rookie developer who grossly overpaid for a site? I know what they paid for this site, do you?

The mistake of putting a high rise apartment building amongst single family homes and a few mid rise buildings. The neighbourhood is better suited for mid rise buildings done appropriately. You could probably add a couple storeys to this building without too much distrurbace but not much more.

This proposal is so out of place here it's almost a joke. If you permit anything above a mid rise here the whole street is in jeopardy of becoming walled by towers. I know some of you probably salivate at the thought but I believe it would be a travesty.

Your little Twitter post is amusing. You're suggesting all those Uno Prii mid rises are preferable to low rise housing. Few would imagine as much today. Certainly along Spadina and St. George but the others are poor planning errors of another era.

And look at 100 Spadina. What did they fill that parking lot with? Hint: mid rise.

 

[smably]

Your little Twitter post is amusing. You're suggesting all those Uno Prii mid rises are preferable to low rise housing. Few would imagine as much today. Certainly along Spadina and St. George but the others are poor planning errors of another era.

Maybe not preferable to the millionaire Eatons and Westons, but certainly preferable to the hundreds or thousands of Annex residents who now call those towers their homes and who would never otherwise have been able to afford to live in the Annex. What a weird, classist, misanthropic argument to make. Would we really have been better off if the neighbourhood had been preserved in amber as a place only for the super-rich? Count me as one of the "few" who consider the mix of mid- and high-rise apartments and mansions part of what makes the Annex great.

 

[ADRM]

Few would imagine as much today

If you're obsessed with preserving an antiquated and unsustainable system of housing, Phoenix is nice this time of year.

We're going to forge ahead with building our city towards higher and better uses, thank you very much, and we're going to do our utmost to ignore and tamp down amorphous dog whistle terminology like "character."

There are going to be more people in lots of places closer to more stuff and it's going to be wonderful.

 

[LMVDR]

Love how all you dogmatic tall building assassins close your minds to any contrary opinions. If someone suggests that a city should try and preserve the character of an area all of sudden you equate that with class warfare. It's the opposite. More density is amazing. Just not everywhere. You villify the successful people listed above for expressing an opinion on what sort of streetscape that want for their families in an area they currently reside and have invested time and money. Disgusting.

Tall/super tall buildings are great for Toronto. More people are great for Toronto! Just don't put tall buildings in existing lowrise areas. It destroys those areas. Along the avenues works great. So more mid rise on St. George. More tall on Avenue Road, etc.

 

[ADRM]

Just don't put tall buildings in existing lowrise areas. It destroys those areas.

In a post riddled with lots of laughable hyperbole, this one is probably the easiest to debunk. I won't even make an argument, I'll just pose a question to you and let your response to the talking: if tall buildings ruin the Annex, why haven't tall buildings in the Annex ruined the Annex?

Go!

 

[ChesterCopperpot]

Love how all you dogmatic tall building assassins close your minds to any contrary opinions. If someone suggests that a city should try and preserve the character of an area all of sudden you equate that with class warfare. It's the opposite. More density is amazing. Just not everywhere. You villify the successful people listed above for expressing an opinion on what sort of streetscape that want for their families in an area they currently reside and have invested time and money. Disgusting.

Tall/super tall buildings are great for Toronto. More people are great for Toronto! Just don't put tall buildings in existing lowrise areas. It destroys those areas. Along the avenues works great. So more mid rise on St. George. More tall on Avenue Road, etc.

Looks like you didn't learn from your week vacation

 

[LMVDR]

Looks like you didn't learn from your week vacation

Excuse me? Is that some sort of insult? I thought personal insults weren't tolerated here.

 

[interchange42]

Love how all you dogmatic tall building assassins close your minds to any contrary opinions. If someone suggests that a city should try and preserve the character of an area all of sudden you equate that with class warfare. It's the opposite. More density is amazing. Just not everywhere. You villify the successful people listed above for expressing an opinion on what sort of streetscape that want for their families in an area they currently reside and have invested time and money. Disgusting.

Tall/super tall buildings are great for Toronto. More people are great for Toronto! Just don't put tall buildings in existing lowrise areas. It destroys those areas. Along the avenues works great. So more mid rise on St. George. More tall on Avenue Road, etc.

You accuse others of class warfare, yet you equate successful people with solely those in the houses? There is more than an undercurrent of rich vs. "un-rich" here, but that pot is being warmed in the Victorian hearths on Admiral, not the Prii balconies on St George.

The mistake of putting a high rise apartment building amongst single family homes and a few mid rise buildings. The neighbourhood is better suited for mid rise buildings done appropriately. You could probably add a couple storeys to this building without too much distrurbace but not much more.

This proposal is so out of place here it's almost a joke. If you permit anything above a mid rise here the whole street is in jeopardy of becoming walled by towers. I know some of you probably salivate at the thought but I believe it would be a travesty.

Your little Twitter post is amusing. You're suggesting all those Uno Prii mid rises are preferable to low rise housing. Few would imagine as much today. Certainly along Spadina and St. George but the others are poor planning errors of another era.

And look at 100 Spadina. What did they fill that parking lot with? Hint: mid rise.

The Annex isn't the Annex without the Uno Prii. To call for topological homogeneity in the area is to not understand that it's the diversity of the area that makes it so great: the tree-lined streets of beautiful Victorians rubbing shoulder to shoulder with higher density buildings makes it a more egalitarian place to be than it could ever be without them. Architecturally, the infill at 100 Spadina is the very definition of banal and is in no way worthy of the Prii tower-in-the-park that it stands beside. Its inoffensiveness size-wise reminds one of a time when we hadn't yet identified a housing crisis in this city, and if the infill of the parking lot were happening now, it wouldn't be the timid little creature that was built. (Architecturally it could be as dull, it could be better, it could be worse.)

Looks like you didn't learn from your week vacation

Excuse me? Is that some sort of insult? I thought personal insults weren't tolerated here.

If I may, the stridency of the retort is an indication of the frustration felt by just about everyone else to your quite strident posts. While I'm not on board with those that want to see something as tall as is being proposed here, your suggestion that only a couple more floors—so, four—on this site is all that would work without destroying the character of the street, just makes me wonder if you can actually hear yourself. If you're not certain, you're being as tone deaf as Galen Weston Jr was when he complained that the 8-storey building a couple blocks away would strip his home of its ideal qualities as a place to raise his young family. The word you were looking for when you used 'successful' above is 'entitled'. Strip away some of the hyperbole, and there could be a discussion here, instead of the scrap that we have going on.

42

 

[LMVDR]

You accuse others of class warfare, yet you equate successful people with solely those in the houses? There is more than an undercurrent of rich vs. "un-rich" here, but that pot is being warmed in the Victorian hearths on Admiral, not the Prii balconies on St George.


The Annex isn't the Annex without the Uno Prii. To call for topological homogeneity in the area is to not understand that it's the diversity of the area that makes it so great: the tree-lined streets of beautiful Victorians rubbing shoulder to shoulder with higher density buildings makes it a more egalitarian place to be than it could ever be without them. Architecturally, the infill at 100 Spadina is the very definition of banal and is in no way worthy of the Prii tower-in-the-park that it stands beside. Its inoffensiveness size-wise reminds one of a time when we hadn't yet identified a housing crisis in this city, and if the infill of the parking lot were happening now, it wouldn't be the timid little creature that was built. (Architecturally it could be as dull, it could be better, it could be worse.)





If I may, the stridency of the retort is an indication of the frustration felt by just about everyone else to your quite strident posts. While I'm not on board with those that want to see something as tall as is being proposed here, your suggestion that only a couple more floors—so, four—on this site is all that would work without destroying the character of the street, just makes me wonder if you can actually hear yourself. If you're not certain, you're being as tone deaf as Galen Weston Jr was when he complained that the 8-storey building a couple blocks away would strip his home of its ideal qualities as a place to raise his young family. The word you were looking for when you used 'successful' above is 'entitled'. Strip away some of the hyperbole, and there could be a discussion here, instead of the scrap that we have going on.

42

You use a lot of words to say little of value. Weston has every right to his opinions as a local homeowner and taxpayer. His financial position is of little consequence. I don't agree with him about Davenport but he has every right to comment.

No I wasn't looking for entitled. Again, you're trying to ignite class warfare, and you failed.
I use my words carefully. And yes a small building would work well here. Why don't you install a wall of mid rise buidlings from Avenue to Spadina on Prince Arthur? I'm sure that wouldn't have a negative affect either. (sarcasm if can't detect it)

And Prii's towers are quite striking I agree. I just don't approve of their placement.

 

[maestro]

If you're obsessed with preserving an antiquated and unsustainable system of housing, Phoenix is nice this time of year.

We're going to forge ahead with building our city towards higher and better uses, thank you very much, and we're going to do our utmost to ignore and tamp down amorphous dog whistle terminology like "character."

There are going to be more people in lots of places closer to more stuff and it's going to be wonderful.

130 metre apartment towers aren't a sustainable housing option either. They are just too expensive.

 

[ADRM]

130 metre apartment towers aren't a sustainable housing option either. They are just too expensive.

They are objectively more sustainable than single family homes. I'm not trying to pass off this building as affordable housing.