Personally, I find this to be one of the most dreary, oppressive, uninspired and monotonous new developments in this area. I'm tired and fed up with grey brick/spandrel and glass. With 8 months or so of grey, miserable weather why do we need to add more of the same to our already dull palette? Someday, when colours are back in fashion, people will wonder about this era's collective mental state.
i tend to agree with you in this case. it is truly a giant gun-metal grey monochrome slab, and not all that well constructed i'm afraid. i think the design itself
could have been OK, but there definitely were some corners cut along the way.
it's also in the strangest location. there isn't a condo in the city in a rougher part of town. standing on the corner of Queen and Sherbourne looking at The Modern; surrounded by the indigent, troubled, addicted and transient souls who swarm around that huge Salvation Army shelter is a very surreal experience....
so, while absolutely no one would miss those shacks, or Popeye's chicken, it's very difficult to imagine a condo on that corner. (Brad Lamb obviously thought it was doable with Kormann House--until it wasn't). the only less likely corner for a boutique condo would be one major street north, at Dundas and Sherbourne.