Toronto Discovery at Concord Park Place | ?m | 28s | Concord Adex | BDP Quadrangle

[Hypnotoad]

I don't see the issue. There are two subway stops within walking distance. I would say that most people in the city have longer walks to the subway than contempated here. I know at Yonge and Eglinton, for example, most people (including myself) walk a longer distance to the subway (and without a shuttle bus!!!).

I guess my point is this: planners in the 60s and 70s got in wrong at Y&E/Davisville. The apartment blocks in this neighbourhood do little to actually orientate themselves to transit. It worked out pretty well, despite this fact.

Flashforward a few decades and research, best-practices and new official plans in the City of Toronto want to get things 'right' from the get go. They build a subway under the assumption that high density development will be built and orientated to higher order transit. They zone for this, although they make caveats so that the highest densities are along the 401 and not near the stations. Okay, this is reasonable considering the pre-existing neighbourhood with have a fit with 37-storey condos direclty abutting Sheppard. Then the city goes on to endorse an "avenues" concept where all buildings built along Sheppard will orientate themselves to the street, with certain setbacks in the hopes of enhancing transit usage, the pedestrian realm and creating an urban avenue, like you get at Y&E or St. Lawrence area, for example.

When this site went through consultations and applications with the city, there was an expectation that transit-oriented development (a planning principle designed to facilitate the construction of higher-order transit lines) would be in full effect. There are certain principles to TOD, including having the development and transit work together to create a community where transit, not driving, is a valid and preferrable option. What's more, the Province issued its intensification strategy for this area under the Growth Plan, 2006. With all these planning documents, education and lessons learned from past developments, this site had the potential to build meaningful, lasting and fully facilitated transit-oriented development.

Look at this site plan and you'll see that it fails.

The fact that you have to walk 15 minutes to a subway station is not the only part of the failure. Rather, such a walk is part of a TOD neighbourhood. But what is missing is the sense that transit is a connected, real and accessible part of this development. In reality, transit it thrown to the fringes and the development fails to practically, spacially or even responsibly orientate itself to transit. It also fails at building a pedestrian realm, which is a key TOD component. Furthermore, it fails at building an 'avenue' along Sheppard, between two subway lines. One of the things that makes Y&E work so well is that you have a streetwall and pedestrian realm between two subway stations (Davisville and Eglinton). If you live on Glebe, for example, you can easily access both subways and feel like you're part of a subway neighbourhood. There is no such effort duplicated in Parkplace.

I had high hopes for Parkplace. I really felt that the City, the Province and the Developer had sat down to put TOD principles in to action. But, like most of Sheppard, the development is more oriented to the 7 lanes of traffic along the street and the 15 or so lanes on the 401 than the subway investment.

 

[alklay]

In your post, you state that "apartment blocks in this neighbourhood (Yonge and Eglinton) do little to actually orientate themselves to transit."

How is an apartment buildings, four blocks from the subway, suppose to 'oriente themselves to transit'? I do not understand the argument at all.

 

[officedweller]

The site was initially constrained by the existing Canadian Tire store location. On top of that, my guess is that the Nimbys in the area didn't want highrises close to Sheppard - so the park looks like it is placed as a buffer.

 

[Edward Skira]

The crazy thing is Bessarion Rd is still single family dwellings. This project should have taken them out using Bessarion as another access point to Sheppard. Then the park could have been in the middle of the project.

 

[Hypnotoad]

In your post, you state that "apartment blocks in this neighbourhood (Yonge and Eglinton) do little to actually orientate themselves to transit."

How is an apartment buildings, four blocks from the subway, suppose to 'oriente themselves to transit;? I do not understand the argument at all.

Fair enough... let me see if I can put his on paper...

The apartment blocks fail to orientate themselves to transit. End of that thought. However, the overall neighbourhood at Y&R does orientate itself to transit. Here lies the subtle but important difference. I'll use the case of Mt. Pleasant and Erskin or that really tall tower on Duplex. These examples are about as far away from the subway station as any TOD advocate would allow (radius of no more than 1km, usually about 700m is considered TOD, depending on the order of transit).

TOD principles were not around when Y&E was envisioned. Ironically, the success of Toronto's Yonge line in relating density/growth to transit usage is hailed as one of the greatest examples of intensification along transit. But what TOD does is take this concept further and apply it to redevelopment (brownfield or revitalization) or new development along higher order transit lines.

So at Y&E, the apartment blocks don't oriente themselves to transit but other features in the neighbourhood do. Especially the streetwall along Yonge from north of Erskin to Davisville. Here you find shops, apartments and other mixed uses that build an urban neighbourhood that feed the apartments. New TODs (like Parkplace) need to build these to facilitate neighbourhood building. Basically, TOD really wants higher order transit and development to both spacially and functionally work together. Y&E has the benefit of being a functional neighbourhood. Concord ParkPlace has no such luxury. Also, Y&E is not competing with the 401 and other massive highways in direct proximity so the car is not really an important consideration for Y&E at all times of the day. It is for Sheppard.

So while my argument isn't that Y&R is a bad example of TOD -- it is and it isn't, depend on what features of you look at -- my argument is that Parkplace fails because it should build some of the elements Y&E (or other functional neighbourhoods have). The simple walk of 1km to the subway is not the same from the 401/Bessarion as it is from Erskin/Mt Pleasant to Eglinton. There are different walks for the same distance. Those features that orientate the neighbourhood to transit are what seperates Y&E from this fringe plan at parkplace.

Is that more clear? or still stupidly academic?

 

[Hypnotoad]

The crazy thing is Bessarion Rd is still single family dwellings. This project should have taken them out using Bessarion as another access point to Sheppard. Then the park could have been in the middle of the project.

Agree 100%. The failure here is that the subway stations (and Oriele GO) are at the fringes of the project. No effort appears to have been made to functionally or spacially integrate the stations to the development. As a result, I fear that what could have been the single greatest TOD in Canada will be no more than another block of tall towers feeding the 401.

 

[alklay]

CSW2424, your argument now makes perfect sense and I totally agree. The problem with Parkplace, is that it is bad urban design (almost regardless of transit issues). The street grid is done poorly, the mix of retail and residential is done poorly (if at all) and the density mix is poorly thought out. If they got these right, it would be 'transit oriented'.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

The fact that you have to walk 15 minutes to a subway station is not the only part of the failure.

Actually, it's not a fact...all of these buildings will be no more than 10 minutes from a station, and that's 'front door to platform' time. A 5 minute walk isn't the end of the world. But you're right about the neighbourhood building part...ParkPlace will get a Rabba, a dry cleaners, and a Subway, and maybe a daycare. Everything else at street level will be driveways, townhomes, and amenities complexes. Sheppard has not yet begun Avenue-izing - I guess that where they intend to shove things like streetwalls and retail. At the end of the day, though, the difference in transit ridership between ParkPlace as it will exist and the TOD ParkPlace that could have been will actually be quite small. That doesn't justify ParkPlace's faults, though.

Ed's right about Bessarion, too - it's OK that they're still houses for now, but NY Towers and ParkPlace are built with no regard for the future of these houses...the placement of the park is dubious.

 

[Mike in TO]

The crazy thing is Bessarion Rd is still single family dwellings. This project should have taken them out using Bessarion as another access point to Sheppard. Then the park could have been in the middle of the project.

Hopefully in time Concord will be able to aquire a few of these properties and adjust the site plan accordingly. Panorama demonstrated that Concord will look for development opportunities on adjacent parcels of land - hopefully that will be the case here as the site does have a number of difficult barriers to overcome in terms of integrating it into the surrounding community. If those homes on Bessarion were not there it would be much easier to create a grid style layout and orient the park in the centre of the development while creating a stronger streetwall on Sheppard. Unfortunately the homes do exist and Concord for better or for worse has had to create some odd dead ends and use the park space allocation as a buffer onto single family homes.

At the nearby NY Towers development Daniels expanded the initial four tower project by slowly buying up adjacent parcels of land. Hopefully there will be the opportunity for this to occur at Parkplace and Concord can make some minor adjustments to the development concept. A quick glance at googlemaps clearly demonstrates that Concord has a difficult parcel of land to work with and to integrate into the surrounding community - but a few key land acquisitions in the future could make for some very positive changes.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

The funny thing is that people living in that Bessarion neighbourhood are hoping that their houses will be bought up by developers...

 

[scarberiankhatru]

ParkPlace has a bit of Sheppard frontage, NY Towers has none...it doesn't matter how many thousands of condos they put along Sheppard if Sheppard itself doesn't change. It'll happen eventually, but I wonder if it'll happen as a charming little Avenue of lowrise precast things with 30 storey towers behind them. Sheppard's a big road - 3 storey podiums will look pathetic.

 

[rpgr]

It would be cool if they integrated some underground walkways to connect the Concord buildings, Canadian Tire retail front, subway, McDonalds and Ikea.

 

[Tuscani01]

My guess at why the higher buildings are along the 401 is that a buffer was needed between the 401 and this development. The higher you go, the quieter it will be in the rest of the development.

With the way that the buildings and podiums are positioned, it looks like that is exactly what they were trying to accomplish when coming up with this plan. Has it been approved by the city yet?

 

[acetradamus]

It doesn't matter how far the majority of the units are from the subway stations... if people are willing to use transit, they'll find a way to get there. Nobody lives at STC but it still gets 25000+ daily riders.

It's silly to put so much effort on trying to have approx 10,000 probably non-transit users anyway connected directly to the subway. This development alone doesnt justify the Sheppard line or the existence of a Bessarion station. Condos at stations do not bring substantial ridership. Not every person in every unit is going to use the subway. The area between Leslie and Bessarion still won't be a destination for anybody unless you live there. That's not what subways are for... It's amazing how adament people can be about having the buildings closer to the subway when this would only benefit the priviledged few who end up living there in those 4 or 5 buildings.

This development will contribute no measurable gain in ridership on the Sheppard line. Subways are only successful where there are existing travel patterns. You dont just put a dozen condos up and hope everyone's lives somehow revolves around going east to Don Mills, west to Yonge, south to downtown.

Clearly the city isn't serious about maximizing the potential for creating a transit oriented community in this area. People aren't buying these condos because their lives will be made easier by having access to the subway. The majority of buyers only see the subway as adding a premium to the value of their investment.

The corridor between Don Mills and Yonge St still doesn't have an established identity and mega condo projects like this don't do anything to create a realm of integrated development. This is an isolated residential development with priviledged access to the subway, nothing more.

 

[Redroom Studios]

acetradamus - well stated! I am not a fan of the Sheppard subway at all, for the exact reasons you stated. It sort of strikes me that perhaps the original thinking for Sheppard was a line parallel to the 401 that would somehow gain ridership from current vehicle commuters and thus relieving some volume from the highway... again flawed thinking. Trying to think back... how much push did this Sheppard line get from Mel Lastman, he of North York origins?