Toronto Gibson Square Condominiums | 137.46m | 42s | Menkes | Rafael + Bigauskas

The Gibson House is not in danger...I honestly think people would chain themselves to it if it's ever threatened with destruction, or maybe even just relocation.
 
scarberiankhatru said:
What opportunity was missed?
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The opportunity to create a vibrant, thriving, exciting, interesting and appealing 2nd CBD in Toronto.

Missed that one! Thanks Mr. Menkes! Hope you enjoy your new gulfstream while we enjoy the disgusting mess that you are your pals at TriHELL left us with for decades!
 
Investor: So now it's Menkes' fault that office towers like Imperial Oil were not built in North York Centre? Anyone who claims North York Centre isn't vibrant has probably never been there. The difference between NYCC and other suburban nodes like Mississauga or STC is night and day - North York is successful, the others aren't. Once Hullmark (and the Bazis silliness across the street :)) gets built, it'll be a much closer match to Yonge & Eglinton. For one thing, half of the Yonge & Eglinton area isn't comprised of parking lots and construction sites.

Massive intensification along a subway line...check.
Turning suburban bungalows into an actual urban neighbourhood...check.
Generating tons of pedestrians and transit riders...check.
Even the oft-feared CityPlacesque 'sterile master-planned ghetto' effect never happened.

Some of the individual buildings have questionable architectural merit, but that's what happens when developers like Tridel are given a loose leash. Menkes' buildings are better than average for the area, if that counts for anything...most of the condos from the 80s are really awful, but the neighbourhood thrives in spite of them. Architecture plays a minor role in the viability of a neighbourhood, anyway. If you're going to condemn the whole area just because of a few ugly condos, you really should condemn the entire city in one fell swoop.
 
scarberiankhatru said:
Investor: So now it's Menkes' fault that office towers like Imperial Oil were not built in North York Centre? Anyone who claims North York Centre isn't vibrant has probably never been there. The difference between NYCC and other suburban nodes like Mississauga or STC is night and day - North York is successful, the others aren't. Once Hullmark (and the Bazis silliness across the street :)) gets built, it'll be a much closer match to Yonge & Eglinton. For one thing, half of the Yonge & Eglinton area isn't comprised of parking lots and construction sites.

Massive intensification along a subway line...check.
Turning suburban bungalows into an actual urban neighbourhood...check.
Generating tons of pedestrians and transit riders...check.
Even the oft-feared CityPlacesque 'sterile master-planned ghetto' effect never happened.

Some of the individual buildings have questionable architectural merit, but that's what happens when developers like Tridel are given a loose leash. Menkes' buildings are better than average for the area, if that counts for anything...most of the condos from the 80s are really awful, but the neighbourhood thrives in spite of them. Architecture plays a minor role in the viability of a neighbourhood, anyway. If you're going to condemn the whole area just because of a few ugly condos, you really should condemn the entire city in one fell swoop.
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I suppose when you look at it that way you have a decent point. I'm referring more to the retail streetscape and ugly designs that you eluded. I would not for a second describe the scene on the ground as 'thriving' and believe me I know this area very well. There's no contiunuity, no communal centre, no trendy/interesting restaurants or shops. You can't compare the feeling of walking up yonge north of broadway to walking up yonge north of sheppard. One is desirable the other avoidable. I suppose that accounts for the $500 per square foot prices at Yonge and Eg vs. the depreciating sales figures up in North York.

Menkes should be sentenced to builder jail for their hideously awful designs in the Avondale disaster. Their Ultima project is probably the best I've seen from these guys but even that has a cheap and empty feeling to it.
 
Your "ugly designs" point could be dismissed because a) it's subjective and b) is it really any worse than anywhere else in the city? The buildings generally do not acknowledge Yonge Street's angle, resulting in occasional awkwardness, but at least there's no decaying commie blocks-in-the-park...

The retail, however, is an unresolved issue. A good 50% of Yonge in North York Centre is either parking lots, under construction, or will soon be under construction. I don't know what it'll all end up looking like, but comparing it to Yonge & Eglinton, whose Yonge-scape north of Eglinton is finished and static, isn't quite fair. There's entire blocks of Yonge at Sheppard and closer to Finch that are completely empty and really hurt Yonge overall in their empty state. Still, this doesn't stop people from flooding Yonge north of Sheppard - and if you've ever been there on, say a summer Sunday evening, flooding can be an appropriate term. The failures you're suggesting are extreme hyperbole, not reality.

Yonge & Eglinton will probably always the street retail edge because it has block after block of old storefronts, while Yonge up in Willowdale's retail strips were already spotty by the time the condo boom started (and north of Finch there's parking in front of the stores, which is like urban seppuku). Also, until very recently, no one in Willowdale had any money, so there was no incentive to cobble together a relatively upscale retail strip as exists along Yonge around Eglinton...trendy may come - how soon can it be expected when half the neighbourhood was widows living in bungalows only a few years ago? With each old retail building that goes, there's less opportunities for bars/restaurants, since the only ones that have proven to be viable in condo bases are chain eateries or tiny Asian eateries (this is true of the entire city, though).
 
scarberiankhatru said:
Your "ugly designs" point could be dismissed because a) it's subjective and b) is it really any worse than anywhere else in the city? The buildings generally do not acknowledge Yonge Street's angle, resulting in occasional awkwardness, but at least there's no decaying commie blocks-in-the-park...
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Subjective agreed- that's why we are discussing it. I almost resent the buildings to be honest. They scream 'hey, look at us! We wanna look like Las Vegas!' It's the imbalance between the towers and the street that really irk my senses.

I believe it is far worse than many, many, areas of the city. Projects don't have to be high end to have appeal. These are such large empty shells as far as I'm concerned.
 
Re: Vegas...they do scream 'look at us' because they are placed as individual entities askew from Yonge instead of a row of conjoined twins or clones or cutout paper people, but there's really not much Vegas-style frippery or tomfoolery. Take a condo like Meridian. It has this weird Ancient Egypt/Woodbridge combo base, but the tower is rather sleek. The Vegas effect comes into play mainly through the severe clash of all the towers.

But...this random clash saves the neighbourhood, too. There's randomness, there's ugliness, there's towers for "classy" people with no taste, for immigrants, for renters, for retirees...until yuppies and bohemians start living there en masse, North York Centre will be for all the uncool people, which is one reason why it's bashed so frequently on the internet and in the press. It has taken all the sexiness out of redevelopment and condo booms. It's also the only post-war suburban area in the city that has become urban...not bad for an unappealing failure, eh?
 
The Vegas effect comes into play mainly through the severe clash of all the towers.
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Precisely what I'm saying and well put. It's that 'Where the hell are we?" sense of this non-'nabe that I find so objectionable.


If I hear what you are saying Scarb, it is basically- expect less and you won't be disappointed! I think you've summed up this wasteland quite succinctly and far better than I am capable of doing. It's sad to think of what could have taken place there instead of what you've accurately described.
 
scarberiankhatru said:
Your "ugly designs" point could be dismissed because a) it's subjective and b) is it really any worse than anywhere else in the city? The buildings generally do not acknowledge Yonge Street's angle, resulting in occasional awkwardness, but at least there's no decaying commie blocks-in-the-park...
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Of course. Because they're too new to decay; duh. Just as St. James Town's builders might have said "at least there's no decaying old tenement slums" or something.

And besides, as commie-block-era stuff goes, those curvy white brick 60s blocks north of Gibson House might be seen as having more class than the bulk of what's come up around it over the past decade or so...
 
investor said:
It's sad to think of what could have taken place there instead of what you've accurately described.
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OK, you say you want another CBD but you also want Queen West...what are the odds that both would be able to co-exist? What are the odds that either could even have happened in the first place? The 2nd CBD would have been easier since all it would have required is tearing down everything [that would have composed North Queen West] and throwing up fifteen or so million more square feet of corporate goodness like the Nestle building. Still, what kind of CBD is one block wide? Like the desert that used to be one block away from everything on the Vegas Strip, go one block from Yonge and you reach "stable neighbourhoods" of bungalows/McMansions. Criticize Willowdale for being a Potemkin Village of urbanity, not for what would never have happened.

adma said:
And besides, as commie-block-era stuff goes, those curvy white brick 60s blocks north of Gibson House might be seen as having more class than the bulk of what's come up around it over the past decade or so...
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Hmm...ranking Willowdale's towers by classiness...

The curvy white commie blocks, like many "old" rental towers, are underrated and overshadowed by all the new condos. There's nothing classy about a 1+den in a Tridel cereal box, no matter how emphatically it redefines luxury.
 
Better a NYCC then to have Tridel , Menkes, Conservatory Group, Monarch, Pemberton concentrating on the downtown core. One Verve, one Infinity, one Battery Park, one Uptown is already too much.
 
maestro said:
Better a NYCC then to have Tridel , Menkes, Conservatory Group, Monarch, Pemberton concentrating on the downtown core. One Verve, one Infinity, one Battery Park, one Uptown is already too much.
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Infinity....you just sent chills down my spine!

Infinity is INFINITELY atrocious!

I suppose in my idealistic world (ie Chicago) Toronto developers, planners and ultimately buyers would strive to make a place like NYCC, a bona fide secondary market within the 416, something more exciting than the cereal box asian/persian/egyptian/woodbridge (to borrower a phrase from Scarb) theme park that it has become.
 
I suppose in my idealistic world (ie Chicago)
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Chicago ... really? Don't get me wrong as the city has a well decorated downtown and a rich storied history on architecture which it's slowly reconnecting with however its all a viel masking repetitive chain stores, car culture and a generally unfriendly overbuilt environment.

P.S. The Gardiner is a non-issue compared to the 'L'
 
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