Given the time this is gonna take to build out fully, we may get lucky that the rather bland massing becomes more varied as planning rules and market conditions change.
Agreed, however the team mentioned that they want that PATH type experience at-grade, to ensure people congregate in the public realm more.
There used to be a whole underground shopping and path connection to all of the buildings along the Broadview extension. I haven't read anything since I worked on it keeping it. So I assume it was scrapped as it was costly.
Is it because so much construction build is condominium and there isn't as much leverage as in commercial development where there is a reason to add signature value, the opposite of value engineering. The corollary in Toronto's case in terms of quality to "a rising tide raises all boats", might be the opposite case when the bar is set too low to keep a boom going.
2150 Lake Shore.
This is perhaps slightly off-topic, but it seems to me this is part of a larger set of conditions wherein we have people demanding improved public goods while not necessarily wishing to pay for them. Our oft-cited "shabby public realm" is the direct result of an insufficient tax base (and, I suspect, a corpulent, hide-brown bureaucracy that sucks up money like nobody's business). Toronto's residential taxes have been kept to a historic low for a long time now and in the end, we get what we pay for. Any ambitious politician who calls for raising land taxes is flat-out asking to lose an election. So, barring a bold new paradigm, we're stuck with what we have here in Toronto. World class it ain't.
