Toronto East Harbour | 214.2m | 65s | Cadillac Fairview | Adamson

A lot of things are going to change here. This is First Gulf's first submission, I'm sure there are many more to come. This is a simply massive development with a billion different moving parts, it is going to be a while before construction starts and a lot is going to change before we see the final product.
 
I'm skeptical. This feels incredibly suburban to me. It's hard to tell from the render, but the block sizes look quite a bit larger than what is ideal for urban developments. And I suspect the plaza in the centre will be barren unless it's very carefully designed; seldom have I seen such plazas become vibrant public spaces (although this being a commercial development, with more pedestrian activity than residential developments, may help).
 
I'm not entirely sure that Toronto is able to support that much solid office space, especially in an unestablished location that far from the downtown core.

Even the Well could handle only one commercial skyscraper, and there are plenty of more desirable spots downtown that haven't been developed yet.

I would imagine that behind the scenes they've already made plans where some of the commercial space is eventually developed as residential- the final built product may be very different from what the proposals may be.
 
amnesiajune said:
You have to realize that 125,000 vehicles use the East Gardiner every day. University Avenue, the sort of road that would've been built with the "removal" option (a six-lane boulevard) carries a third of that traffic and it's busy for most of the day. Even just half of the East Gardiner's traffic would turn a surface boulevard into a traffic nightmare, and that's obviously going to hurt the site's potential.

By the way, the partial rebuild (which is a better name IMO) does include an on/off-ramp at Cherry Street.
Click to expand...

Staff reports showed that the tear-down option would've added an average of, if memory serves, 4-6 minutes to a typical trip. That's hardly "traffic nightmare" territory.
 
jje1000 said:
I'm not entirely sure that Toronto is able to support that much solid office space, especially in an unestablished location that far from the downtown core.

Even the Well could handle only one commercial skyscraper, and there are plenty of more desirable spots downtown that haven't been developed yet.

I would imagine that behind the scenes they've already made plans where some of the commercial space is eventually developed as residential- the final built product may be very different from what the proposals may be.
Click to expand...

It's true that there is a lot of office space in the development application hopper, but remember that it's not a net-zero proposition: even if there's zero growth in demand for office space across the city, some tenants will choose to move operations from older or less desirable spaces to here, the Well, the Ivanhoe towers, the new Southcore tower, the new tower at Front and University and the other one around the corner near Union, etc.

Commercial vacancy rates are pretty low, so I think it's also reasonable to expect that there is some room for new dev.
 
the first building in this is probably 10 years from tenant move in. It essentially has to wait for RER mid 2020's, and this level of density needs the DRL which is currently set to open in 2031.
 
The dataBase file, linked at the top of this page, has now been totally revamped and renamed along with the thread. A front page story has been published here with more information for you to consider too.

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EDIT: I agree with those who are essentially saying "don't sweat the broad strokes at this point". There's a pile of input still to come, years of it, and the huge amount of office space planned here would take years to absorb. This is very much Toronto's Canary Wharf: nobody thought it would work in London, and of course, it had some initial trouble, but now it's absolutely bustling and still growing.
 
Toronto is severely under built in office space compare to the space whores south of us.
 
While some of the details do seem odd to me (for example, why do the smaller office buildings on a square street grid in phase 4 not have retail when it looks like that would be a place where smaller-scale businesses could thrive), there is no doubt that this is an extremely exciting development. I do trust that it will be refined over the years and am looking forward to seeing that happen.
 
The only thing that looking good on the preliminary plans is that spiraling height look of buildings that cascade from low to high range . It would be great to see all the buildings have a unique unison look that's not boxy looking. Anchored by a mix use super tall office hotel building spiraling down to the small offices. With a nice market square for gatherings etc!
 
Hello! Haven't you read anything on Urban Toronto, Reddit or The Star in the last 5 years? CityPlace is going to be Toronto's next St. James Town. Those poorly built condos and increasing renters vs. owners are probably only a decade or two away from becoming our next urban failure.
 
Send it back and start all over. This is utterly uninspired. It's way too Toronto for future Toronto.
 
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