UD2
Active Member
What about the office buildings in consumers Rd office park
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Toronto Yonge Sheppard Centre Renovations and Expansion | 123.13m | 35s | RioCan | BDP Quadrangle
- Thread starter AlbertC
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pipolchap
Active Member
sunnyraytoronto
Senior Member
PMT
Senior Member
steveve
Senior Member
Today (on the left). They've really gutted this!
PMT
Senior Member
sunnyraytoronto
Senior Member
Nope. That's not preliminary work for the apartment tower. In the previous photo, see that light tan cube structure near that bright orange tractor on the roof of the loading docks,.... that's where the apartment tower will be. Here's a photo of where the apartment tower will be built,.... on Greenfield Ave between Yonge Street and Doris Ave just left of the driveway & current loading docks where the dumpsters, walkway and patch of grass are currently,...
As I discussed previously, the now flat site you're discussing is for the new indoor loading docks. Right now, it looks more like its mainly just being used as a staging and storage area.
http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/thread...-riocan-quadrangle.17901/page-12#post-1131858
This new indoor loading docks have to be built before they can convert the current semi-outdoor loading docks on Greenfield Ave into space for the relocated daycare facility. All this and the mall renovation itself should finish in about 1.5 years from now. Then they'll start the next major phase which is building the apartment tower in Spring 2018.
That white crane seems to be at the new loading dock area and there to upgrade the water sewage system for the entire SheppardCentre,...
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PMT
Senior Member
My mistake. Thanks for the clarification @sunnyraytoronto.
sunnyraytoronto
Senior Member
I too am eager for preliminary work on the 39-storey apartment tower,.... It should be interesting to watch the preliminary work done for the apartment tower when they finally start it in Spring 2018. The reason being is since the current SheppardCentre (3 apartment buildings, 2 office building and retail mall) has so much excess parking spaces according to today's City Planning standards that to add this new 39 storey apartment tower, it doesn't need to provide any additional parking spaces,... the current underground parking at SheppardCentre will suffice.
Thus, whereas most new building development requires a large hole to be dug out and new underground parking and foundation to be built,.... adding about a year to construction time,.... this doesn't need to be done for the new apartment tower at SheppardCentre. But they will have to reinforce the current foundation and underground parking structures directly under before they can build the new 39 storey apartment tower on top,.... The question is how? Do they just reinforce the existing underground parking structure,... or do they completely rebuild that part of the underground parking structure directly underneath the new 39 storey apartment structure stronger,.... logistically interesting especially since this part of the underground parking lot is basically where some of the ramps are,... the ramps that direct cars from one level of underground parking to the next level,....
sunnyraytoronto
Senior Member
I find the above photo by PMT quite interesting,.... in that it shows the newer I-beams from the cineplex movie theatre which was added to the roof around 1998 (notice some of the diagonally placed I-beams for the seating area) VS the older insulated I-beams on street-level from the original structure built around 1976. And when they added all that new structure for the new rooftop cineplex in 1998,... it seems they didn't need to add any reinforcement to the older I-beam structures below,... no cross-braces,.. no reinforced joints,... nothing! You want to add a whole new cineplex on my rooftop,... no problem!
Since they're dividing up the former cineplex space into 2 floors (one for Longos and top for LA Fitness), I was always under the assumption that they'll just keep the current I-beams structure and add more I-beams in the middle to create a floor,... sounds simple. But from the PMT photo it shows they're starting to take down the I-beams from the rooftop cineplex,.... and since they're taking down the newer I-beams from the cineplex built in 1998,.... they'll likely take down the I-beams below from the original structure built in 1976,... which means it seems they're really going to totally demolish this part of the retail podium right down the the basement,... the question is how far back will the demolision go,.... since the rear 1/3 of the retail podium is still occupied with stores and pedestrian mall traffic on both levels.
PMT
Senior Member
Here's a photo I took of the ongoing demolition yesterday:
I also cropped these sections from an architectural drawing on the Dev App site (from October 2015), which tell me they will just demolish the existing second floor, gut the first floor, and build two new ones above.
I also cropped these sections from an architectural drawing on the Dev App site (from October 2015), which tell me they will just demolish the existing second floor, gut the first floor, and build two new ones above.
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mkerian
Active Member
Any idea on what will happen to the tunnel between Sheppard Centre and the Federal govt building/Madison centre? It's currently closed, but is that just a construction thing or will there be actual renovation done?
I tried to do some research but all I seem to have found was that apparently the Madison office building owns the underground tunnel (and shops underneath 100 Upper Madison) so renovation may not happen.
I tried to do some research but all I seem to have found was that apparently the Madison office building owns the underground tunnel (and shops underneath 100 Upper Madison) so renovation may not happen.
sunnyraytoronto
Senior Member
My understanding is that underground pedestrian tunnel is just closed temporarily as they do renovation work at SheppardCentre - it goes next to the former Keg/GoldenGriddle restaurant site in the moat (southeast corner of Yonge & Greenfield). I never heard anything about it being closed permanently so I doubt that's the case. But it is very poorly maintained,... water leaks and foundation damage.,... they used a tinfoil catch bin and rubber hose to catch water dripping from ceiling and redirect it to floor drain!
The SheppardCentre mall renovation will make this underground tunnel much more visible from both inside the lower level of the mall and out on the southeast corner of Yonge and Greenfield in terms of pedestrian flow,... previously, it was a maze, a hidden maze!,... you had to find the former restaurant door in the moat and make a sharp left into a darken corner of the moat then right to find the pedestrian tunnel! At the community consultation meetings for SheppardCentre mall renovation and tower development, we tried to get improvements to this underground pedestrian tunnel,.... but since the underground tunnel is not owned by RioCAN SheppardCentre, they have no plans to improve the underground pedestrian tunnel itself.
The underground pedestrian tunnel itself was built well after SheppardCentre was completed in 1976; it was built as part of Mel Lastman's plan for a great downtown in North York,... with an underground PATH-like system connecting the corridor of office buildings along Yonge Street - of course, that never really materialized and once Menkes Ultima was completed the North York underground PATH system was officially dead since Menkes Ultima restricted public access through their underground Parking levels. Now, CityPlanning has no vision of improving or expanding the North York underground PATH-like system,... although some private developers are adding to it,.... ie: Sobara's Beacon and G-Groups Centrium2/Ellie will have underground connection (likely restricted access to residents only) to Menkes GibsonSquare which is now building underground pedestrian tunnel under ParkHomes Ave to connect to NorthYorkCityCentre which is already part of NorthYork's underground PATH-like system.
steveve
Senior Member
I did not expect how extensive the work would be on this revitalization. I was expecting something more along the lines of the Yonge-Eglinton Centre (interior portion), but the amount of work done here looks like they're almost starting from scratch.
NorthYorkEd
Active Member
That tunnel was creepy. It was often empty, and you were just hoping that someone sketchy wasn't hanging around down in there.