Fad225
Active Member
soooo sick of Clewes buildings.. this is a nice change
Toronto Aura at College Park | 271.87m | 78s | Canderel | Graziani + Corazza
soooo sick of Clewes buildings.. this is a nice change
DTGeek
Active Member
Nice work, but I think you need to make the glass green.
khris
Senior Member
Here is a video from CTV
It has a closeup view of the base. Very nice
I like! Can't wait for some hi-res images to show up on UT!
And here is a story with video from Citynews
It has a closeup view of the base. Very nice
I like! Can't wait for some hi-res images to show up on UT!And here is a story with video from Citynews
ganjavih
Senior Member
The old rendering looks like Mississauga... the new one is much more appropriate for downtown Toronto.
Dude, we've been Clewesed to death.
Dude, we've been Clewesed to death.
dt_toronto_geek
Superstar
I'm looking forward to a quality render too, this is exciting. I'm thrilled they put the design up for competition. I have to wonder if someone with influence at Canderel Stoneridge has spent some time on this board.
J
Jackhammer
Guest
From Tuscani01 at SSC:
Tallest Condo In Canada Coming To Downtown T.O.
Friday November 16, 2007
CityNews.ca Staff
Think the chaos over the condo at 1 Bloor St. East was frenzied this week? Just wait till the real estate agents, developers and would-be flippers hear about this. What promises to be the largest condo tower in all of Canada was announced on Friday - a building that once finished, will stand 75 storeys and 343 meters tall.
The "Aura" will change the face of the downtown core yet again when it's built at the corner of Yonge and Gerrard, opposite College Park. The builders say it will encompass 1.3 million square feet - with at least 1.1 million devoted solely to residential space. And what would a Yonge St. development be without business? Some 190,000 square feet will be reserved for retail space.
"I look at Yonge Street as being a street that is going to be in a major state of change over the next five to ten years, and it's only going to make this environment better," believes Michael La Brier, the president of Canderel Stoneridge, which is behind the building.
The Bloor condo is 79 storeys and this one is only 75. How can they claim bragging rights to being the tallest? A spokesman tells CityNews.ca that the Aura beats its competitor on metre and square footage size, and that each residence will actually be bigger in height than the Bloor spot - so even though it has fewer storeys, it will actually wind up being slightly taller than the other address.
Those behind the plan have yet to reveal how much it will cost you to buy a place in the complex. That may not be decided until next month. But the spokesman explains that while there will be high end and pricey luxury models on the upper floors, some of the lower tiers should be affordable - although he wouldn't say how much "affordable" is.
It's the latest in what's rapidly becoming a newly energized market. A survey released earlier this week by Remax shows condos are on fire again in this city, with a 14 per cent rise in sales over last year - and growing.
And the residences are getting taller. The number of buildings over 200 metres - about half the height of the CN Tower - will more than double, going from seven to seventeen. It doesn't surprise realtors like Paul Raszewski. He's been selling condos here for 25 years and has seen the market bloom. "Because of the fact that the house prices in Toronto have skyrocketed, a lot of the young people, young professionals cannot afford a home. Automatically their choice is to go into a condo."
The fact a riot almost broke out last week at the Bloor St. location is testimony to just how much in demand the condominiums are. "They are very well marketed properties, and some of them are in very hot locations where there may not be many more opportunities to actually build any more because there's no more land in Toronto to really build new things," Raszewski concludes.
The Aura has been in the planning stages for more than a year, undergoing seemingly endless scrutiny and changes, before the city finally approved the project. After the frenzy that accompanied the earlier unbuilt condo, this one promises to create equal fireworks. Early registrations are being accepted online but actual sales won't start until February 2008, and the new condo may not be ready for tenants until 2012.
Tallest Condo In Canada Coming To Downtown T.O.
Friday November 16, 2007
CityNews.ca Staff
Think the chaos over the condo at 1 Bloor St. East was frenzied this week? Just wait till the real estate agents, developers and would-be flippers hear about this. What promises to be the largest condo tower in all of Canada was announced on Friday - a building that once finished, will stand 75 storeys and 343 meters tall.
The "Aura" will change the face of the downtown core yet again when it's built at the corner of Yonge and Gerrard, opposite College Park. The builders say it will encompass 1.3 million square feet - with at least 1.1 million devoted solely to residential space. And what would a Yonge St. development be without business? Some 190,000 square feet will be reserved for retail space.
"I look at Yonge Street as being a street that is going to be in a major state of change over the next five to ten years, and it's only going to make this environment better," believes Michael La Brier, the president of Canderel Stoneridge, which is behind the building.
The Bloor condo is 79 storeys and this one is only 75. How can they claim bragging rights to being the tallest? A spokesman tells CityNews.ca that the Aura beats its competitor on metre and square footage size, and that each residence will actually be bigger in height than the Bloor spot - so even though it has fewer storeys, it will actually wind up being slightly taller than the other address.
Those behind the plan have yet to reveal how much it will cost you to buy a place in the complex. That may not be decided until next month. But the spokesman explains that while there will be high end and pricey luxury models on the upper floors, some of the lower tiers should be affordable - although he wouldn't say how much "affordable" is.
It's the latest in what's rapidly becoming a newly energized market. A survey released earlier this week by Remax shows condos are on fire again in this city, with a 14 per cent rise in sales over last year - and growing.
And the residences are getting taller. The number of buildings over 200 metres - about half the height of the CN Tower - will more than double, going from seven to seventeen. It doesn't surprise realtors like Paul Raszewski. He's been selling condos here for 25 years and has seen the market bloom. "Because of the fact that the house prices in Toronto have skyrocketed, a lot of the young people, young professionals cannot afford a home. Automatically their choice is to go into a condo."
The fact a riot almost broke out last week at the Bloor St. location is testimony to just how much in demand the condominiums are. "They are very well marketed properties, and some of them are in very hot locations where there may not be many more opportunities to actually build any more because there's no more land in Toronto to really build new things," Raszewski concludes.
The Aura has been in the planning stages for more than a year, undergoing seemingly endless scrutiny and changes, before the city finally approved the project. After the frenzy that accompanied the earlier unbuilt condo, this one promises to create equal fireworks. Early registrations are being accepted online but actual sales won't start until February 2008, and the new condo may not be ready for tenants until 2012.
syn
Senior Member
I like the new base, I just hope it boldly meets the street rather than having those depressing setbacks you see on a lot of new condo bases.
It's really going to fill in that missing gap at Yonge and Gerrard. When it and 1 Bloor East are complete (along with all the other new towers in the area), the view up Yonge should be pretty spectacular.
It's really going to fill in that missing gap at Yonge and Gerrard. When it and 1 Bloor East are complete (along with all the other new towers in the area), the view up Yonge should be pretty spectacular.
Andrew3D
Active Member
343m? I think that was a typo. Even with higher ceiling heights I doubt it will be taller unless they have some sort of rooftop element we don't know of.
It went to a design review panel, not a competition.
Yeah, I don't trust some of the figures in that article.
42
khris
Senior Member
That would make it an official supertall. 1125 ft!
Irishmonk
Senior Member
Supertypo more like it.
yyzer
Senior Member
A new Aura ... a new era
TheStar.com - living - A new Aura ... a new era
November 17, 2007
Sarah Barmak
Special to the Star
Torontonians can be excused these days if their eyes glaze over with each successive announcement of skyline-altering condo towers.
But yesterday's was worthy of special attention, and not because the developer – Canderel Stoneridge – is claiming its 75-storey Aura condo on the northwest corner of Yonge and Gerrard Sts. will be "the tallest mixed-use residential tower in Canada."
What makes this 243-metre tower such a landmark for Toronto is that it truly brings the city into the era of the design review panel.
When this building is finished, locals won't have to ask the old question: "Who approved this?" The real question will be, who didn't?
Aura, the third phase of College Park Residences, will be tall, though not quite up there with One Bloor East and the Trump Tower. It will also have a high-performance fitness centre that includes NBA star Steve Nash and cyclist Lance Armstrong among its investors. With 17,000 square metres of commercial/retail space on the lower floors, it even aims to transform a less-than-lively part of Yonge St.
But it's different from the rest because of the way it was designed – by committee. After an application to up-zone the lot's 40-storey limits failed at the city and went to the Ontario Municipal Board, a panel of big-name architects was used to help reach a settlement and make alterations to the building.
A similar approach to ensuring excellence in design has achieved acclaim for cities such as Vancouver, Seattle and Denver, but it's the first time such a panel has been used to adjudicate a single structure in this city, much less to help a developer and the planning office reach a compromise.
For years, the city's architecture experts have been calling for the adoption of design review and the process is getting started on other fronts. Waterfront Toronto and the city, also without much fanfare, have both been busily convening voluntary assemblies of qualified experts for more than two years to advise on building and landscape developments.
They've had a tangible impact on the city's design aspirations and an official city panel was announced in April in an attempt to teach Toronto to "despise mediocrity."
"We have a chance to influence excellence in architecture," Mayor David Miller says about the city panel, which was assembled as a pilot project. "It's not fighting about height. It's about a city that works at the ground level."
The pilot panel was formed in the wake of recent changes to the Ontario Planning Act that removed language forbidding planners from critiquing designs. Headed by Toronto's department of urban design and its director, Robert Freedman, focus groups and a symposium were held to sketch out the panel's role. Members of Vancouver's panel acted as advisers for both the city and waterfront panels.
The panel now operates in six areas of the city, all of which have up-to-date secondary plans.
Freedman, a former lawyer who left the bar to study architecture, was not a fan of the direction many developments were taking at the OMB. "The OMB is a quasi-judicial body, it's like going to court, with each side putting forward its best case," he says. "It's an adversarial process; that process does not typically work well in fostering good creative design."
As a board settlement, the panel session was more productive, says Freedman, who attended the Canderel Stoneridge panel meetings and sits on the waterfront panel as a non-voting member.
"You get groups of people coming together to make something better, as opposed to arguing on opposite sides that it's either this or nothing," he says.
Barry Graziani, partner at Graziani and Corazza, Canderel's architects for the Aura, says at first he was a bit skeptical about the panel and potential for criticism. "But it turned out to be a great process to go through both for the project itself and our firm, which is relatively young," Graziani says. "The level of professionalism of the architects involved had a lot to do with it."
Graziani has now been involved in three panels, including two Etobicoke developments reviewed by the city's design review panel, and he says the pilot project could learn a lot from the Aura process.
"For the Aura project, there was a discourse that happened," he says. "With the city process, there isn't that chance for a discourse. You present it and they give you criticism and you leave."
The Aura design review was initiated by Canderel after its first proposal was rejected by the city in August 2006. Renowned architects Eberhard Zeidler and René Menkès were brought in to begin the process. Three more respected names – Bruce Kuwabara, Josh Chaiken and Jon Pickard – were added later when the panel became a joint process with the city.
Though originally recruited to scrutinize Canderel's point tower proposal, the panel soon wanted changes to the podium at Yonge and Gerrard, too. A fourth floor and a new, higher structural element were added to create a subtle visual link with the old College Park building to the north. The tower, with more than 900 unites, had to retreat slightly west on the podium, in order to avoid wind tunnel effects on Yonge St.
There were other minor recommended touches that Canderel's architects, Graziani and Corazza, worked in. The result is meant to allude to the old and unrealized Eaton's vision from the early 20th century of College St. and Yonge as the central node of the city.
Canderel president Michael La Brier says he's enthusiastic about the finished design, which led to a settlement at the OMB last week.
"I would never have used low-iron glass if the panel hadn't suggested it," he says. "It's a more expensive, high-quality glass. It will mean that when you look up from the street, the windows will look very clear and transparent."
For Kuwabara, the review process only begins with buildings; the real potential is in re-envisioning the urban environment, extending to sustainability issues.
"Design review is everything," says Kuwabara, who has spent more than two years chairing the waterfront panel.
"It's the public realm, it's streetcars. One of the burning issues is the longevity and health of urban trees. The design of individual buildings, once you take that point of view, is relevant only in the way that they support that vision."
Yet the crucial question of how much power panels actually have to implement their findings is a concept that remains nebulous. Of the two major Toronto panels, it would seem that the city panel has a greater position of influence. It makes its recommendations directly to the planning department, which then advises city council on whether to approve, reject or approve proposals with alterations. The Waterfront panel can only advise – it cannot force builders to change.
But developers who are not satisfied with the council's decision can still appeal it to the OMB.
"The panel doesn't change any of that," Freedman says. "All it does is provide another level of very valuable advice. There are some (cities) where the panels are actually given decision-making powers, but they're not the majority."
This doesn't mean that the panels' advisory nature makes them entirely toothless, however.
"In Vancouver, the panel's advice is pretty powerful," says Freedman.
Years of operation have given the panel the prestige that encourages builders to adhere to its decisions. "I think people take it as a point of pride if they bring their project in front of the panel and it gets a glowing review."
After more than two years in operation, there are signs the Waterfront panel has already begun to command this kind of respect. In fact, there is talk the panel's stringent standards might be scaring developers away from the area.
"With the waterfront, we're waiting for buildings to come forward," says landscape architect Janet Rosenberg, who sits on the panel. "The only building that's come forward is the Corus building."
That proposed Jack Diamond media complex – presented to the panel earlier this year – drew sharp criticism from the panel, sparking a public critique that most developers would prefer to avoid.
Rosenberg says she has heard that developers are now trying harder to get it right the first time, holding waterfront-related proposals until they've hired consultants. Meanwhile, the panel has cut its teeth on large-scale landscape projects that have allowed members to consider the look of entire precincts.
While peer-review might be an adjustment for developers, Freedman points out that it shouldn't be a new world for architects. "A critique of your work is how architecture schools work."
The lack of waterfront proposals to critique must be somewhat irksome even for Kuwabara, for whom the panel is "Toronto's last chance to do anything on the waterfront."
"We're at a very different place in the city of Toronto and how design is appreciated by the public," he says. "To me it's a discussion, it's using design review as a platform, to create deeper awareness of the issues as I see them. Never before in the history of Toronto have there been this many large-scale precinct plans going on. Regent Park, the West Donlands, East Bayfront, Ryerson. The cultural renaissance has changed the way people look at the city. Now people come to Toronto and actually look at the architecture."
The nature of design review is hard to pin down, tied as it is to issues as varied as the environment to ensuring the quality of materials. For Paolo Palamara, co-president of condo developer Diamante, reviews shouldn't lose sight of the details. He says they must put the needs of buildings' future inhabitants before "prettiness."
"Can design review – and I think this is still an open question – actually foster excellence in design?" Freedman asks. "It's often very good at avoiding really bad design. But the question of excellence gets tougher."
For Rosenberg, however, it's a prime opportunity.
"Let's get outside of the bounds what we would normally do," she says. "Let's think big, let's challenge ourselves. If we could have whatever we wanted, what would we get as a result of it?"
TheStar.com - living - A new Aura ... a new era
November 17, 2007
Sarah Barmak
Special to the Star
Torontonians can be excused these days if their eyes glaze over with each successive announcement of skyline-altering condo towers.
But yesterday's was worthy of special attention, and not because the developer – Canderel Stoneridge – is claiming its 75-storey Aura condo on the northwest corner of Yonge and Gerrard Sts. will be "the tallest mixed-use residential tower in Canada."
What makes this 243-metre tower such a landmark for Toronto is that it truly brings the city into the era of the design review panel.
When this building is finished, locals won't have to ask the old question: "Who approved this?" The real question will be, who didn't?
Aura, the third phase of College Park Residences, will be tall, though not quite up there with One Bloor East and the Trump Tower. It will also have a high-performance fitness centre that includes NBA star Steve Nash and cyclist Lance Armstrong among its investors. With 17,000 square metres of commercial/retail space on the lower floors, it even aims to transform a less-than-lively part of Yonge St.
But it's different from the rest because of the way it was designed – by committee. After an application to up-zone the lot's 40-storey limits failed at the city and went to the Ontario Municipal Board, a panel of big-name architects was used to help reach a settlement and make alterations to the building.
A similar approach to ensuring excellence in design has achieved acclaim for cities such as Vancouver, Seattle and Denver, but it's the first time such a panel has been used to adjudicate a single structure in this city, much less to help a developer and the planning office reach a compromise.
For years, the city's architecture experts have been calling for the adoption of design review and the process is getting started on other fronts. Waterfront Toronto and the city, also without much fanfare, have both been busily convening voluntary assemblies of qualified experts for more than two years to advise on building and landscape developments.
They've had a tangible impact on the city's design aspirations and an official city panel was announced in April in an attempt to teach Toronto to "despise mediocrity."
"We have a chance to influence excellence in architecture," Mayor David Miller says about the city panel, which was assembled as a pilot project. "It's not fighting about height. It's about a city that works at the ground level."
The pilot panel was formed in the wake of recent changes to the Ontario Planning Act that removed language forbidding planners from critiquing designs. Headed by Toronto's department of urban design and its director, Robert Freedman, focus groups and a symposium were held to sketch out the panel's role. Members of Vancouver's panel acted as advisers for both the city and waterfront panels.
The panel now operates in six areas of the city, all of which have up-to-date secondary plans.
Freedman, a former lawyer who left the bar to study architecture, was not a fan of the direction many developments were taking at the OMB. "The OMB is a quasi-judicial body, it's like going to court, with each side putting forward its best case," he says. "It's an adversarial process; that process does not typically work well in fostering good creative design."
As a board settlement, the panel session was more productive, says Freedman, who attended the Canderel Stoneridge panel meetings and sits on the waterfront panel as a non-voting member.
"You get groups of people coming together to make something better, as opposed to arguing on opposite sides that it's either this or nothing," he says.
Barry Graziani, partner at Graziani and Corazza, Canderel's architects for the Aura, says at first he was a bit skeptical about the panel and potential for criticism. "But it turned out to be a great process to go through both for the project itself and our firm, which is relatively young," Graziani says. "The level of professionalism of the architects involved had a lot to do with it."
Graziani has now been involved in three panels, including two Etobicoke developments reviewed by the city's design review panel, and he says the pilot project could learn a lot from the Aura process.
"For the Aura project, there was a discourse that happened," he says. "With the city process, there isn't that chance for a discourse. You present it and they give you criticism and you leave."
The Aura design review was initiated by Canderel after its first proposal was rejected by the city in August 2006. Renowned architects Eberhard Zeidler and René Menkès were brought in to begin the process. Three more respected names – Bruce Kuwabara, Josh Chaiken and Jon Pickard – were added later when the panel became a joint process with the city.
Though originally recruited to scrutinize Canderel's point tower proposal, the panel soon wanted changes to the podium at Yonge and Gerrard, too. A fourth floor and a new, higher structural element were added to create a subtle visual link with the old College Park building to the north. The tower, with more than 900 unites, had to retreat slightly west on the podium, in order to avoid wind tunnel effects on Yonge St.
There were other minor recommended touches that Canderel's architects, Graziani and Corazza, worked in. The result is meant to allude to the old and unrealized Eaton's vision from the early 20th century of College St. and Yonge as the central node of the city.
Canderel president Michael La Brier says he's enthusiastic about the finished design, which led to a settlement at the OMB last week.
"I would never have used low-iron glass if the panel hadn't suggested it," he says. "It's a more expensive, high-quality glass. It will mean that when you look up from the street, the windows will look very clear and transparent."
For Kuwabara, the review process only begins with buildings; the real potential is in re-envisioning the urban environment, extending to sustainability issues.
"Design review is everything," says Kuwabara, who has spent more than two years chairing the waterfront panel.
"It's the public realm, it's streetcars. One of the burning issues is the longevity and health of urban trees. The design of individual buildings, once you take that point of view, is relevant only in the way that they support that vision."
Yet the crucial question of how much power panels actually have to implement their findings is a concept that remains nebulous. Of the two major Toronto panels, it would seem that the city panel has a greater position of influence. It makes its recommendations directly to the planning department, which then advises city council on whether to approve, reject or approve proposals with alterations. The Waterfront panel can only advise – it cannot force builders to change.
But developers who are not satisfied with the council's decision can still appeal it to the OMB.
"The panel doesn't change any of that," Freedman says. "All it does is provide another level of very valuable advice. There are some (cities) where the panels are actually given decision-making powers, but they're not the majority."
This doesn't mean that the panels' advisory nature makes them entirely toothless, however.
"In Vancouver, the panel's advice is pretty powerful," says Freedman.
Years of operation have given the panel the prestige that encourages builders to adhere to its decisions. "I think people take it as a point of pride if they bring their project in front of the panel and it gets a glowing review."
After more than two years in operation, there are signs the Waterfront panel has already begun to command this kind of respect. In fact, there is talk the panel's stringent standards might be scaring developers away from the area.
"With the waterfront, we're waiting for buildings to come forward," says landscape architect Janet Rosenberg, who sits on the panel. "The only building that's come forward is the Corus building."
That proposed Jack Diamond media complex – presented to the panel earlier this year – drew sharp criticism from the panel, sparking a public critique that most developers would prefer to avoid.
Rosenberg says she has heard that developers are now trying harder to get it right the first time, holding waterfront-related proposals until they've hired consultants. Meanwhile, the panel has cut its teeth on large-scale landscape projects that have allowed members to consider the look of entire precincts.
While peer-review might be an adjustment for developers, Freedman points out that it shouldn't be a new world for architects. "A critique of your work is how architecture schools work."
The lack of waterfront proposals to critique must be somewhat irksome even for Kuwabara, for whom the panel is "Toronto's last chance to do anything on the waterfront."
"We're at a very different place in the city of Toronto and how design is appreciated by the public," he says. "To me it's a discussion, it's using design review as a platform, to create deeper awareness of the issues as I see them. Never before in the history of Toronto have there been this many large-scale precinct plans going on. Regent Park, the West Donlands, East Bayfront, Ryerson. The cultural renaissance has changed the way people look at the city. Now people come to Toronto and actually look at the architecture."
The nature of design review is hard to pin down, tied as it is to issues as varied as the environment to ensuring the quality of materials. For Paolo Palamara, co-president of condo developer Diamante, reviews shouldn't lose sight of the details. He says they must put the needs of buildings' future inhabitants before "prettiness."
"Can design review – and I think this is still an open question – actually foster excellence in design?" Freedman asks. "It's often very good at avoiding really bad design. But the question of excellence gets tougher."
For Rosenberg, however, it's a prime opportunity.
"Let's get outside of the bounds what we would normally do," she says. "Let's think big, let's challenge ourselves. If we could have whatever we wanted, what would we get as a result of it?"
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
From the Post:
Aura aims to be tallest condo tower in city
Yonge-Gerrard
Will Tremain, National Post
Published: Saturday, November 17, 2007
An old-fashioned race to the skies may be under way in Toronto's condo tower market.
Condo developer Canderel Stoneridge Equity Group yesterday unveiled its Aura tower, which it plans to build next year at Yonge and Gerrard streets.
Aura, a slender knife-blade building, currently sits at 75 storeys and 243 metres in height. That would make it slightly short than Bazis International's planned condominium tower at One Bloor Street East, whose roof would sit at 248 metres. The Trump International Hotel and Tower on the southeast corner of Bay and Adelaide, which when first announced was described as Canada's tallest residential tower, was recently scaled back to about 274 metres.
But Michael La Brier, president of Canderel Stoneridge, said his company could add up to 10 more storeys -- provided the city blesses the plan. Aura would then be the city's highest condo building, at about 280 metres.
"When we had the building engineered, we had everything so we could add up to 10 more floors to the building," said Mr. La Brier. "So that's certainly part of the discussion we need to have ongoing with the city."
The new Aura skyscraper will boast at least 960 residential units, and more if the additional floors are added. Canderel Stoneridge says 5,000 people are on a waiting list to buy.
Mr. La Brier is clearly willing to barter with the city to win add the additional height for the new tower. "One of the the things we want to do is completely rebuild the [nearby] Barbara Ann Scott Park, and that's a price I'm certainly prepared to pay, especially in lieu of getting another 10 storeys of density on the building."
The local city councillor, Kyle Rae, said he's open to the possibility of 10 more storeys -- ''that would be something that would have to go through planning''-- but welcomes the new people drawn to the downtown core's "residential renaissance."
"I know there are people in the neighbourhood looking to move up," said Mr. Rae.
Riz Dhanji, vice-president of sales and marketing for Canderel Stoneridge, said the sale of Aura's units, starting next February or March, should be nothing like this week's sales for the Bazis tower.
Real estate agents lined up for eight days for the chance to buy a unit in the Bazis tower. On the morning the sale began, arguments broke out, and the base price on the units jumped by $200,000.
"We don't believe in that," Mr. Dhanji said.
"We want it to be more of a controlled process, and as easy a process as possible. But we can't control if people want to line up."
© National Post 2007
_______________________________________________
10 more floors for a complete rebuild of the park? Definitely (with the caveat that the plan has to be excellent, of course) a great idea!
AoD
Aura aims to be tallest condo tower in city
Yonge-Gerrard
Will Tremain, National Post
Published: Saturday, November 17, 2007
An old-fashioned race to the skies may be under way in Toronto's condo tower market.
Condo developer Canderel Stoneridge Equity Group yesterday unveiled its Aura tower, which it plans to build next year at Yonge and Gerrard streets.
Aura, a slender knife-blade building, currently sits at 75 storeys and 243 metres in height. That would make it slightly short than Bazis International's planned condominium tower at One Bloor Street East, whose roof would sit at 248 metres. The Trump International Hotel and Tower on the southeast corner of Bay and Adelaide, which when first announced was described as Canada's tallest residential tower, was recently scaled back to about 274 metres.
But Michael La Brier, president of Canderel Stoneridge, said his company could add up to 10 more storeys -- provided the city blesses the plan. Aura would then be the city's highest condo building, at about 280 metres.
"When we had the building engineered, we had everything so we could add up to 10 more floors to the building," said Mr. La Brier. "So that's certainly part of the discussion we need to have ongoing with the city."
The new Aura skyscraper will boast at least 960 residential units, and more if the additional floors are added. Canderel Stoneridge says 5,000 people are on a waiting list to buy.
Mr. La Brier is clearly willing to barter with the city to win add the additional height for the new tower. "One of the the things we want to do is completely rebuild the [nearby] Barbara Ann Scott Park, and that's a price I'm certainly prepared to pay, especially in lieu of getting another 10 storeys of density on the building."
The local city councillor, Kyle Rae, said he's open to the possibility of 10 more storeys -- ''that would be something that would have to go through planning''-- but welcomes the new people drawn to the downtown core's "residential renaissance."
"I know there are people in the neighbourhood looking to move up," said Mr. Rae.
Riz Dhanji, vice-president of sales and marketing for Canderel Stoneridge, said the sale of Aura's units, starting next February or March, should be nothing like this week's sales for the Bazis tower.
Real estate agents lined up for eight days for the chance to buy a unit in the Bazis tower. On the morning the sale began, arguments broke out, and the base price on the units jumped by $200,000.
"We don't believe in that," Mr. Dhanji said.
"We want it to be more of a controlled process, and as easy a process as possible. But we can't control if people want to line up."
© National Post 2007
_______________________________________________
10 more floors for a complete rebuild of the park? Definitely (with the caveat that the plan has to be excellent, of course) a great idea!
AoD
3Dementia
Senior Member
Since the media never makes errors (that's why it's called "news") and I continue to resist metric... I was shocked to find out 200 metres is half the height of the CN Tower.
Since the tower is 1805 feet tall and Citytv reported Aura height @ 343 metres, which is around 1.7 times taller than 200 metres, my calculations reveal the following: half the height of the tower (900 feet) multiplied by 1.7 = 1530 feet. So there you have it... Aura must be over 1500 feet tall.
Anyway... nice addition even at 800 or 900 feet if the extra 10 floors materialize. I had to laugh at part of the nonsensical "spokesman" comment: "Aura beats its competitor on metre and square footage size".... wtf does that mean?
"each residence will actually be bigger in height than the Bloor spot - so even though it has fewer storeys, it will actually wind up being slightly taller than the other address." OK.... think I understand that.... I just don't believe you.
_________
Interestingly, in another article Varacalli winked and hinted that 1 Bloor East's fins can easily grow the project's 278 metre height ... a few extra metres to top Trump's cheater flagpole.
^That claim seem quite reasonable.
Mongo
Senior Member
If Aura does end up at 280m / 85 floors, the Toronto top five list would look like this:
First Canadian Place - 978 ft. 72 floors
Trump International - 925 ft. 57 floors
Aura (RoCP III) - 919 ft. 85 floors
1 Bloor East - 912 ft. 80 floors
Scotia Plaza - 902 ft. 68 floors
Unless 1BE adds even more fin height, of course.
Bill
First Canadian Place - 978 ft. 72 floors
Trump International - 925 ft. 57 floors
Aura (RoCP III) - 919 ft. 85 floors
1 Bloor East - 912 ft. 80 floors
Scotia Plaza - 902 ft. 68 floors
Unless 1BE adds even more fin height, of course.
Bill