Toronto 88 Queen | 167.35m | 52s | St Thomas Dev | Hariri Pontarini

[ksun]

The city should find all reasons to fine them $1m every year for keeping this blighted area downtown for so long.

 

[Jacob Laponointe]

I can't imagine why they still haven't developed this lot. I'm sure they make plenty of money from the parking lot, but surely there must be exponentially higher amounts to be made from developing this massive property that is situated so close to the financial district.

 

[UrbanAffair]

Yeah, it is odd. Only thing I could think of is there may be remediation needed for contamination. Doubtful, but not really sure what was here in the past...might it have been industrial processing of some sort?

 

[DSC]

Yeah, it is odd. Only thing I could think of is there may be remediation needed for contamination. Doubtful, but not really sure what was here in the past...might it have been industrial processing of some sort?

It was a church so I doubt there is a contamination problem.

 

[maestro]

It was a church. Believe it was named Cooke. Only contamination would be from being a parking lot for 30 plus years.

The owner has expressed interest to develop with numerous proposals over the years. Perhaps they don't have the means and/or want to give up equity to do it. Fining them or another a million a year won't get the lot developed any sooner. That's just stupid even if the city was able to do it.

 

[Skeezix]

The site wasn't entirely a church block, like Metropolitan United to the west. It was a typical city block, with Cooke's Presbyterian at the NW corner of Queen and Mutual.

In 1950, the block was still largely fully built out:

By 1965, the block-busting had commenced:

By 1971, most of the block was taken up with surface parking:

By 1983, only the Church remained (and was gone by 1985):

 

[Skeezix]

By the way, here's a Toronto Library photo of Cooke's Presbyterian in 1956 (completed in 1891). According to TPL website, it was demolished in 1984. Shame.

 

[Skeezix]

An earlier incarnation of the church in 1859. When they demolished the successor church building in 1984 for surface parking, they really did divorce this site from its history.

 

[Skeezix]

The church being demolished in 1984, with the caption: "More Toronto history under the wrecker's hammer; Once the home of the largest Presbyterian congregation in Canada; Cooke's Presbyterian Church at Queen and Mutual Sts. is just a shell as the wrecking hammers reduce it to rubble."

 

[Skeezix]

Here is some discussion of Cooke's Presbyterian from 2009, with other photos, here at UT in the Lost Toronto thread.

 

[stjames2queenwest]

That's crazy

I had no idea. That's mind blowing, a beautiful historic structure demolished just for parking?

 

[interchange42]

I know it seems inconceivable now, but it would never have happened had the demand for parking space (of all things) not made the most economic sense at the time. I assume that those who gradually bought up the properties to create the parking lot were telling themselves 'someday this will be a valuable property', because Toronto as a whole was never on the skids exactly, so it would have been foreseeable that an eminently redevelop-able block was being assembled… for whenever that made sense. It seems it's starting to make sense, but too bad we lost so much before getting to this place in time.

42

 

[stjames2queenwest]

That is really sad especially in this particular case. It would be great if the HPA plan came into reality. Those images were such a teaser.
A project like that here would be good in so many ways. Both with the "image" of the neighbourhood, as well as pulling the skyline of the core further north and east.

 

[salsa]

This is a really large site, and I'm concerned that whatever gets build here will have a long monolithic glass-wall podium as is often the case, which would be inappropriate for this area. The facade really needs to be broken up into several distinct sections just like with the Honest Eds proposal. Or better yet, sell off the parking lot to several different developers.

 

[TDotTeen]

This is a really large site, and I'm concerned that whatever gets build here will have a long monolithic glass-wall podium as is often the case, which would be inappropriate for this area. The facade really needs to be broken up into several distinct sections just like with the Honest Eds proposal. Or better yet, sell off the parking lot to several different developers.

I couldn't agree more. I feel like there should be some regulations similar to the Tall Buildings Guidelines that prevent developers from building single-development blocks that dominate an area. I know you can't regulate/legislate everything, but we do it currently with tall buildings anyway because its important to the health of the city. Really, I think a large development that takes up an entire block can kill a streetscape just as easily (if not more so) than one that is too tall for its location.