Toronto TeaHouse 501 Yonge Condominiums | 170.98m | 52s | Lanterra | a—A

I agree with canarob. I really dislike this slab design. The balcony treatment is very similar to 12 Grenville. This will be a major Yonge street development, can't we get something more original? We need another Absolute not The Crossways.
 
So, urbandreamer is rah rah rah for aA no matter what. No surprise.
And Big Daddy is apoplectic. No surprise.

At least some of you have the sense to know that it is very early in the game here, and that this has only been drawn for massing purposes so far. This plan has many hurdles to clear, and will undoubtedly receive a rough ride. The City does have some design muscle and no doubt we will see it flexed over the coming months.

What we see here now is merely the opening salvo: the developer is never going to spend a ton of money on a shiny render until the details of what they are allowed to build is worked out.

For those who want to see changes made to this plan, watch for details of public meetings to come... and then go to them. Let the planners know why you don't like what you see - just don't be the person who spends all their time shouting and none of it listening. There are already enough of those types at these meetings, and they rarely help things get worked out. Just saying...
 
There's no chance this proposal gets approved as is. It has no redeeming features and is almost comical in its' hulking, obdurate, merciless rectangularity. This is the kind of project that Dr. Evil would propose for central Bruges.
 
WiddleBittyKitty said:
So, urbandreamer is rah rah rah for aA no matter what. No surprise.
And Big Daddy is apoplectic. No surprise.
At least some of you have the sense to know that it is very early in the game here, and that this has only been drawn for massing purposes so far. This plan has many hurdles to clear, and will undoubtedly receive a rough ride. The City does have some design muscle and no doubt we will see it flexed over the coming months.
What we see here now is merely the opening salvo: the developer is never going to spend a ton of money on a shiny render until the details of what they are allowed to build is worked out.
For those who want to see changes made to this plan, watch for details of public meetings to come... and then go to them. Let the planners know why you don't like what you see - just don't be the person who spends all their time shouting and none of it listening. There are already enough of those types at these meetings, and they rarely help things get worked out. Just saying...
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Really? Apoplectic? Actually, in this case I am. I’m sick and tired of seeing the city get screwed over by a developer who just doesn’t care. With condos, the developers come in, do their thing and they are gone. No commitment, just a quick buck and away they go. We have to live with what they leave behind.

Oh, and I’ve been to those public meetings and I can tell you the “golden rule” definitely applies. He who has the gold, rules.

It’s like the “wink, wink” between the city and developers. They have a first meeting. The developer wants 50 storeys. The city tells them “well it’s good you didn’t ask for 60 storeys”. The application goes in for 60 storeys and the city cuts them down to 50 storeys. The old chestnut trick. The developer gets what he wants and the city gets to look like they are protecting the common good. But to make it worse in Toronto, the developers want to build on the cheap and no one seems to challenge them. Why you may ask....because the units sell either way because most buyers don’t care either because they won’t be living there.

But I won’t say any more lest I start to sound cynical.
 
Loozrboy said:
OK, I know it's totally unfair to judge a building based on a tiny distorted preliminary line drawing, but... well let's just say I hope that's an exceedingly poor representation of the finished product. As in, no more accurate than dt_toronto_geek's red-outline visualization from a while back.
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Scroll down the page loozrboy and you'll see CN's Sketchup's pretty much matches my feeble attempt to illustrate some scale here.

Big Daddy said:
WTF?? Really? Can we stop this somehow? This is actually worse than i had feared. Doesnt the city have any design powers?
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This is going to get rejected by the City Planner with plenty of issues to resolve, and in a few years will probably end up at the OMB. Meanwhile, we'll probably be staring at yet another empty lot on Yonge Street by early next year.
 
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Mongo said:
I will repeat what I seem to have to say every time an elevation is made public: Don't judge a building by just the elevation, they are almost always very unflattering. I myself intend to wait for the render before passing judgment.
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Oh, I don't think I have to wait for the render. My opinion is that this development would lack any sort of grace. I hope it gets tied up and rejected wholesale. It's a low-effort, no-effort proposal. The city should make the developer and architect do some actual work.
 
I've come somewhat late to this thread. It was only last week that our condo Board told the AGM about Lanterra's plans for the 501 Yonge Street block. It's a short laneway West of our condo at 25 Maitland Street. We have issues with the proposal. It's likely to do serious damage to the neighborhood. At a minimum, major revisions should be demanded. And a number of isses need to be addressed, ... everything from the disruption during construction, to vehicle congestion, to air pollution (especially for our condo), to increased wind turbulence. And all of this says nothing about the impact of light, shadow, and view in our building.

I've modified one of the images found here to conform more to the signs posted yesterday announcing the proposed amendment to the relevant By-Laws. Here's how it might look:

Outline.png


For those interested, I've taken the first steps towards establishing a website about the proposal at http://501yonge.ca. I'm open to suggestions for how to best, and most equitably, use this site.
 
^ Good for you, Robert.

The proposal is outright clumsy. I know the neighbourhood intimately well, having lived there (in a "previous life") for about 7 years.

I hope all of the neighbourhood concerns are addressed. Development can be a good thing but developers should not be allowed to run rampant ...

Now I think that is all from me until I see an official render.
 
As others have said, yes it's just an elevation, but let's face it, the rest of the crap aA has designed lately has ended up looking just like this stale, boring piece of garbage. Look towards Wallman if you want to see an imaginative take on modernism.
 
I really hope that drawing is a long way off from the final one, or this might be the moment when Aa has jumped the shark.

This elevation reminds me of the late, lazy phase of postmodernism - when in order to redeem crass 'business as usual' architecture, the boring buildings would have some standard gimmicks pasted on. Here, the gimmicks are sleekly withheld. But same difference.

The building in this drawing is a repetitiously unimaginative and overbearingly vapid hulk. I hope it gets sent right back to the drawing board.
 
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The fact that aA would produce this, even as a "first go around", has severely diminished my respect for them and their artistic integrity. I don't need to see the renderings. I'm done with aA in this town. I hope they get sent out to pasture (along with Concord, Pinnacle, Pemberton and Lanterra). These days, Wallman is far superior.

I'm normally ardently anti-NIMBY, but I hope they bring this beast down. I'd prefer what's on site now over this commie slab re-hash.
 
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