Toronto The Plant | 35.96m | 10s | Curated Properties | Kohn Shnier

Jan 18
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Really looking forward to this building and how it will animate this area. I like this scale of building on Toronto's downtown side-streets in particular how it will introduce some commercial spaces not on a main street which is rare here. People complain a lot about Toronto condos - myself included - but when I've been in this area and liberty village recently I've been struck by how I wish all the monotonous copy/paste townhouse developments with no mixed use were instead developed as buildings in the style of this one and its neighbour to the north.
 
there is already a fair amount of retail along Sudbury to the west of it - it has very, very high vacancy rates. There are two restaurants in the bottom of the condo directly to the west that seem to do OK, everything else is vacant units, dry cleaners, and convienence stores.

Perhaps once the Liberty Village GO station opens here driving pedestrian traffic will they do a bit better.
 
innsertnamehere said:
there is already a fair amount of retail along Sudbury to the west of it - it has very, very high vacancy rates. There are two restaurants in the bottom of the condo directly to the west that seem to do OK, everything else is vacant units, dry cleaners, and convienence stores.

Perhaps once the Liberty Village GO station opens here driving pedestrian traffic will they do a bit better.
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Yeah it's really unfortunate that so many retail units sit empty meanwhile so many good small businesses get forced out of other places due to high rents. I wonder if there's any policy levers the City could pull to encourage reasonable rents and occupation of retail spaces in new developments. But even if we have ghost down retail units for a while I think it's still a good investment in the bones of an area — over time these types of spaces could fill in and be used in adaptive ways. But you're right — there are aspects of the area that inherently discourage it too, such as lack of foot-traffic. Hopefully as the city grows and more spaces like this are built, side streets will start to become places that people walk and destinations in themselves.

I'd really like Toronto to get bolder in converting some of our endless and infinite but somehow the most important to preserve in amber house-lined streets into new mixed use zones too — Kensington Market, Mirvish Village (RIP) are/were some of the best examples of small-scale urbanism in the city and there is no way to create new spaces likes that today even though everyone loves them and they're obviously good for people, the community, the local economy, the environment, culture, quality of life.

Our main streets, our primary pedestrian areas, are also very isolated from each other and I think this also creates an urban culture that discourages straying from the main street you're on — there is generally a barrier of long blocks of houses or a bleak N/S main street between where you are and another urban pedestrian area. Toronto 's main streets are great but our urban fabric is largely unconnected. As the city grows and we all start to live more densely, we should start thinking beyond that (especially as the rent is becoming increasingly unaffordable for communities and small businesses and units are being lost to avenues development) and think more in terms of connected, mixed-use network of urban areas.
 
ADRM said:
That is one thick slab.
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It’s actually the parapet railing wall that's for the terraces where the residential level start. You could see a couple square holes for scupper drains on the side, that’s where the top of the slab is.
The second floor may have a concrete curb at the edge as well which makes it look like a thick slab.
 
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Big Hit, the kickbox studio in the condo across the street will be closing this month (end of lease) and will reopen in this condo sometime early next year. (assuming this will be done by then)
 
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