Toronto Yonge City Square Residences | 117.09m | 32s | Gupta | Arcadis

4050 YONGE ST
Ward 08 - North York District



Proposed redevelopment of the existing surface parking lot with two towers. The proposed East Building, 21 storeys in height, would be comprised of non-residential uses including office, retail, restaurant and 312 hotel suites. The base of the building would provide access to the existing TTC subway station. The West Building would be 35 storeys in height and consist of 290 residential units (69 1-bedrooom, 120 2-bedroom & 101 3-bedroom). Both buildings would be connected by a 6 storey podium. A total of 766 below grade parking spaces (257 for residential use & 509 for commercial / hotel use) and 250 bicycle parking spaces are proposed.

Proposed Use ---​
# of Storeys ---​
# of Units ---​
Type​
Number​
Date Submitted​
Status​
Applications:
Site Plan Approval​
20 115847 NNY 08 SA​
Feb 14, 2020​
Under Review​
OPA & Rezoning​
20 115845 NNY 08 OZ​
Feb 14, 2020​
Under Review​

Still Gupta, still IBI:

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So they're proposing a tower that soars much higher than anything we've seen built/proposed around both Midtown and North York Centre. I'm sure that's going to go over well, I wonder what they were drinking when they proposed that.
 
So they're proposing a tower that soars much higher than anything we've seen built/proposed around both Midtown and North York Centre. I'm sure that's going to go over well, I wonder what they were drinking when they proposed that.
What? It’s 35 floors. There is a lot of stuff a lot taller than that in both midtown and NYCC.
 
Here, within Hoggs Hollow (bottom of Valley) from the days of City of North York (when development first started here) there’s a development rule that nothing shall go higher than valley ridge. Basically, developer can’t build anything that’ll look over the houses on valley ridge - their view & privacy must be respected.

Currently, office buildings here range from 5-8-storey, apartment buildings from about 6-11-storey,.... and now Gupta is proposing 21-storey office and 35-storey condo on 6-storey podium. The height differential VS surrounding buildings is a huge 25-storey! Only the 6-storey podium would be allowable and that’s the non-residential part since this land is zoned for commercial only and not residential!

Furthermore, Gupta/Easton Group is now in violation of Terms of Agreement for the sales of this land from Build Toronto - originally zoned for 7-storey TTC head office and the built form was to remain the same and commercial - originally Gupta/Easton Group proposed 7-storey office facing Yonge with rear converted to 9?-storey hotel (commercial zoning). They had building permits granted couple years ago but never proceeded - can’t sell Office-Condo.

This will definitely get rejected by City,.... it’s not just local residents that’l fight for their privacy,.... also at risk are respecting usage of valley lands,... and the office lands here. Most of these 5-8-storey office building in Hoggs Hollow were built in the 1980s and are about 50% vacant,... if this 35-storey condo gets built, all those commercial office land owners will demolish their office buildings (employment area) to build 35-storey condos! And this will become another Vertical Sleeping Community!

So why is Gupta/Easton Group proposing 35-storey condo? I guess it’s profitable for Gupta/Easton Group to pre-sell condos and then cancel later as they did in Vaughan,..... the deposit are interest free loans!
 
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50% vacant ? What are you basing that on ? Most of the building are actually nearly full ... even York Mills center which used to have a lot more vacancy.

While painful to sift through (you can probably narrow the search further ...): http://www.altusinsite.com/index.ph...ng_name=Yonge&searchbyabldgbtn=Find+Buildings

I base it mostly on walk-through, observing office window light late in afternoon during winter (when it gets dark earlier), track building permits and speaking to locals.

York Mills Centre (northeast corner of Yonge & YorkMills/Wilson) seems to be the worst vacancy at close to 50% - when I last checked 2 years ago - they got hit hard when that loyalty point company & accounting firm left. Yonge Corporate Centre managed by Cadillac Fairview tends to have the lowest office vacancy rate in the area,.... the other office building on east side of Yonge near WilliamCarson Crescent tends to do poorly.

With all due respect, you’re assuming all empty office space will be put up for lease/rent on that site,.... that’s not always the case.

Your link also shows office space available at the previous 4050 Yonge project for this site... 40,000 Sq feet per floor for each of the 6 office floors. So Gupta/EastonGroup went from Office-Condo to traditional office space,... either way none of the previous office space sold or were lease it seems.

Your link shows only 5 units currently available at HullmarkCentre (4773-4789 Yonge at Sheppard) which has about 200 office-condo units - thus giving the impression of a 2.5% vacancy rate! 4 years ago it had 80% vacancy rate which I proved in the link below,... these days it’s about 66% vacancy rate - that’s just the nature of the beast on these Office-Condo units sold to “oversea investors” with no interest in opening their own office here or even renting out the space - thus, these office space never get listed as being for sale or lease available.
 
I wouldn't trust the numbers for the office-condos given they're owned by individuals and marketed through various means, but for dedicated office buildings, which are leased by a handful of large reit companies, they are accurate.

Yorkmills center is nearly 100% full ... there was a large lease signed recently and a partial sale ... see this article:

But more importantly:

RBC very recently signed a large ~ 200K lease, filling most of the vacant space ...

I really don't think I agree with your sentiment that office space that's not in use is not actively marketed (again ignoring office condos).
 
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I wouldn't trust the numbers for the office-condos given they're owned by individuals and marketed through various means, but for dedicated office buildings, which are leased by a handful of large reit companies, they are accurate.

Yorkmills center is nearly 100% full ... there was a large lease signed recently and a partial sale ... see this article:

But more importantly:

RBC very recently signed a large ~ 200K lease, filling most of the vacant space ...

I really don't think I agree with your sentiment that office space that's not in use is not actively marketed (again ignoring office condos).

Teal, thanks for the update.

I wasn’t aware RBC recently leased 193,000 sq ft of the 567,000 sq ft YorkMillsCentre (northeast corner Yonge & YorkMills/Wilson); that’s 34% of the office building - Surprising that an office building would have at least that high a percentage of its office space available for lease. Even more shocking is how long that huge percentage of office space was available for before it was leased! Here’s my earlier post on this thread from November 2015 stating YorkMillsCentre (northeast corner of Yonge & YorkMills/Wilson) being half empty,..... for decades!

RBC already has a presence at YorK Mills Centre,... but now I guess we’ll have to call it “RBC York Mill Centre”,.. again https://hidi.com/portfolio-item/rbc-york-mills-centre/
 
So like I've said many times before, NYCC (including the Yorkmills node) is a fairly stable office market, with total vacancy between 6-8% (downtown is closer to 2% to give some perspective ... which is ridiculously low ... but the GTA {905 && rest of the 416} is closer to 11-13%) ... availability is closer to 10% ... this includes sublease space. There have been some tenants that have relocated downtown but a few new leases have been signed.

If you want to know more I suggest you read various office market reports, this one is probably the best as it focuses on suburban 416 and the 905:
https://www.avisonyoung.ca/documents/56635302/56647756/Toronto+North+East+Office+Market+Report+(Q4+2019)?_ga=2.76439699.74063563.1581828371-403501699.1581828371

I don't imagine much will change, if anything I think vacancies will continue to have a slight upward pressure as you see a few more relocations to downtown and potentially VCC. But, as time has proven, they do tend to be slowly backfilled.


So with all that said, I doubt there will be any new office construction for the foreseeable future (less that of the `forced`variety as I'll call it) ... the build costs just don't justify it given the rental rates (compared to say downtown). That's just half the problem, the other is, it's really rare you see a large bulk deals in NYCC, most are in the 25<->50K square/foot range i.e. building up enough demand to fill up a new decent size tower (say 20 floors) will just take a very long time.

Given that, it's likely there will be NO new office construction, I can imagine most of the remaining suitable plots of lands will have condominiums built on them, with maybe the only exception being the N/W corner of Sheppard and Yonge.

While it's not likely the 2nd downtown some imagined decades ago, it's still a mixed use community with over 10 million square feet of office space ... that's nothing to sneeze at, in fact, I suspect this is more of what you'll see in the GTA outside downtown going forward (using downtown Markham, VCC as examples ... both of which, likely won't have the same amount of office space as there is NYCC for years if ever).
 
Given that, it's likely there will be NO new office construction, I can imagine most of the remaining suitable plots of lands will have condominiums built on them, with maybe the only exception being the N/W corner of Sheppard and Yonge.

That northwest corner of Yonge & Sheppard - currently hosting “temporary” McDonald’s, TacoBell & HSBC - is owned by City (acquired for Sheppard STUBway construction); city’s plan is to “enforce” office there and at TTC Sheppard-Yonge bus terminal by only selling to developer promising to build commercial office on that site and relocating bus terminal underground - this is what happened in mid-80s with Ivanhoé Cambridge’s York Mills Centre (northeast corner of York Mills/Wilson. City/BuildToronto “enforce” these conditions via Terms Of Sales Agreement with developer who buys City lands.

Problem is, these days City/BuildToronto seems to have issues enforcing their Terms Of Sales Agreement - as witness :
- 5800 Yonge where City/BuildToronto sold NorthYork/Toronto Hydro lands to Times Group after 5 years of negotiation with a Terms Of Sales Agreement limiting height of 4 towers to the 100m allowable within North York Centre Secondary Plan (29, 29, 29 & 31-storey) only to see Developer propose all 4 towers with higher height beyond North York Centre Secondary Plan at 43, 37, 37 & 44-storey
- here, where Gupta/Easton Group brought City/TTC land at a discount agreeing to keep the same 7-storey commercial office built form & commercial usage as the approved TTC head office for this site,..... but are now proposing 21-storey mix use hotel-office and 35-storey residential condo tower.

So at the end of the day,.... I’m really not holding much hope for office tower at northwest corner of Yonge & Sheppard
 
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Much taller than everything around it. It will stick out badly. Worst if it is 900 feet tall
 

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