Toronto Riverside Square | 64.6m | 20s | Streetcar | RAW Design

I was visiting a friend in 90 Broadview yesterday and came across this note from Streetcar. Sorry for the terrible resolution (I'm looking at you, Tim Cook!)

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Dear Resident of The Ninety,

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves as your new neighbours; both as owner of the New Broadview Hotel and as the new owners of the lands located at 77-79 East Don Roadway (Tippet Richardson site) and 677 Queen East (Toyota site).

As you may know, we have plans to undertake an extensive restoration of the New Broadview Hotel. We intend on making the Hotel a centerpiece of the community once again. Equally as important is our acquisition of the Toyota and Tippet Richardson sites. The two sites represent over 4 acres of land area and are bound by Queen Street East, East Don Roadway and Eastern Avenue. Together they will be known as Riverside Square.

Given the scale and location of Riverside Square we see great opportunity to make much needed bike and pedestrian connections across the Don River to Corktown Common, provide new green space and perhaps most importantly: reintegrate the site into the traditional mixed-use character of the Queen East while providing valuable new services and publicly accessible amenities to the community.

Recently, a rezoning application for each site has been made, and over the coming weeks you can expect to see our Riverside Square project branding appearing in the area.

As we remain in the early stages of design, we would like to share our proposal with you to hear your feedback and ideas, and engage you in an open dialogue about the future of your neighbourhood. As such, we will be reaching out to your Board of Directors with the goal of arranging consultation sessions for early fall of this year.

Until then, feel free to contact us at riversidesquare@streetcar.ca should you have any questions.

Best Regards,

Aaron Knight, MCIP RPP
Development Manager
 

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^^ thanks for sharing this notice. It will be very interesting to see how they propose to connect these parcels of land. It has the potential to be a high-impact redevelopment in terms of built form and connectedness. To be successful, the proposed "valuable new services" and "publicly accessible amenities" will need to exceed the bare minimum requirement. Time will tell of course but it will be exciting to see how the propose to connect Corktown Commons with this site. It is probably out of the realm of possibility, but any options for restoring the old eastern bridge would be awesome.

But overall, this could be more in a trend of positive changes coming to this area. For example, one of the Streetcar buildings on Queen East has a new doctors office opening in a few weeks.
 
Developers are really trying to make waves east of Yonge street. There's still value there. Streetcar's projects are getting bigger and bigger. Hope they can improve their fit and finish as they grow.
 
Exterior-wise, yes. But Streetcar will have superior interiors, finishes, and common areas. Seems like a great project and should be a huge plus for the neighbourhood and businesses.
 
Exterior-wise, yes. But Streetcar will have superior interiors, finishes, and common areas. Seems like a great project and should be a huge plus for the neighbourhood and businesses.

If you didn't like River City's?UrbanCorp's construction quality, I don't see how you'd like Streetcar's.
 
Our opinion is based on personal experience with one developer while also looking at resales of Streetcar buildings with far nicer common areas. We can't afford luxury products, so of the smaller, less established developers we have more faith in Streetcar pulling off a decent and vibrant (and much needed) redevelopment here on Queen St East. And with their Jilly's makeover, Riverside will only improve. That's all :)
 
Our opinion is based on personal experience with one developer while also looking at resales of Streetcar buildings with far nicer common areas. We can't afford luxury products, so of the smaller, less established developers we have more faith in Streetcar pulling off a decent and vibrant (and much needed) redevelopment here on Queen St East. And with their Jilly's makeover, Riverside will only improve. That's all :)

Hmm... OK. Just surprised that you picked Streetcar as a builder that has good fit and finish and delivers a better product than UC. I disagree with you there. No knock to streetcar, but they're really not at the level of UC/RC IMO. They're making progress though.
 
I lived in Streetcar's Trinity Lofts for a year, and other than some imperfections on the ceiling (which they took care of) construction was pretty good, I'd say. I didn't hear the upstairs or next-door neighbours, window insulation was flawless, the common spaces seemed fine too. I can't complain about construction quality at all.
 
I lived in Streetcar's Trinity Lofts for a year, and other than some imperfections on the ceiling (which they took care of) construction was pretty good, I'd say. I didn't hear the upstairs or next-door neighbours, window insulation was flawless, the common spaces seemed fine too. I can't complain about construction quality at all.

They did a good job with that project. But there are others where the units were merely separated by drywall (no concrete). There have been soundproofing issues in their previous projects. They are improving, but I refuse to believe that they build a better product than Urban Capital. I walked by a few Streetcar developed buildings today on King and they're already falling apart. Go walk by the Corktown District buildings on Sumach and King. They're in bad shape.

A few accounts of their workmanship.

http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/06/new_in_toronto_real_estate_the_carlaw/ (read the comments)
http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/showth...el-Ave-Streetcar-Developments-20s-Tact)/page4
http://myagentmike.ca/2012/02/15/builders-and-customer-service-is-there-such-a-thing/
http://torontoist.com/2014/05/say-goodbye-to-jillys/ (read Colleen's comment)

I'm not making this stuff up.
 

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