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Yonge-Dundas Square/Sankofa Square (Brown + Storey Architects)

It's amazing, isn't it!?

Pre-year-2000, the city recognized that Yonge-Dundas needed revitalization. And so Yonge-Dundas square came to be, along with that ghastly thing on the northeast corner (known at that time as "Metropolis"), and the dreadful reworking of the former Eatons exterior on the southwest corner ...

... and voila ... it is 2018 and Yonge-Dundas needs revitalization.
 
Maybe it will just become like Times square, in that only tourists visit it, and Torontonians avoid it completely when possible...or perhaps it already has become that.

We could always build another square someplace central, with decent architecture surrounding it. Oh to dream...
 
Urban-Affair said:
We could always build another square someplace central, with decent architecture surrounding it. Oh to dream...
Click to expand...

Yes. it's called Berczy Park. As to Times Square - tourist or not, they got Snohetta to put up something decent and dignified, not this trash. This is drag - bad drag.

AoD
 
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Yonge-Dundas Square (and environs) was mishandled, badly, in the last 'revitalization' era.

There were 2 sets of mistakes in my mind.

The first was 'concept'. There was, day one, much yammering about Toronto's Times' Square.

Even if Times' Square were worth emulating (which I would argue it is not); I'm simply not a fan of 'copycatting' some other place's idea.

In the best of all worlds, it typically feels understandably unoriginal and like a ripoff. In fairness, there are rare occasions where the 'copy' exceeds the original, but Y-D Square is not
and was never going to be that.

But I finish point one, by coming back to the notion of Times' Square itself. I always found it gaudy, jarring, un-attractive and not a place conducive to stopping and soaking up the ambiance. I have
no clue why one would ever bother to repeat it.

That said, the design of Y-D Square itself and its surroundings suffered from poor ambition, even allowing for the T-S emulation, and poorer execution.

'Metropolis' started out as an indoor Disney Theme Park, which might have been in line w/the T-S emulation vision, if a bit more family friendly.

When that came un-done, what replaced it felt like an effort to fill the already conceived building envelope with whatever would justify getting a shovel in the ground.

While most of us here at UT would have just said 'start over', and I think rightly so, we also could have done much better on the 'execution'.

From a poor material pallet that never met the concept in the renders, to the absence of a prominent main entrance, to a poor choice of 2nd floor retail (Future Shop) and allowing the same to block its Y-D facing windows rather than address the square, there was little, if anything, this developer did well.

The Eaton Ctr re-do destroyed an iconic entrance, which had its failings (didn't address the street edge well), and replaced it with something just as bad, but uglier and forgettable.

While the Square never delivered anything to bring it to life naturally, when it isn't hosting an event.

It isn't just that it's cut-off from Dundas, it's that it lacks a natural focal point, and it really is insufficiently green.

It's not that it needed to be confused for a park, but rather it needed to be some place attractive to sit and talk and sip a coffee.

It isn't, it wasn't, and it isn't savable by half-baked alterations.

While the whole disaster will need to be redone in the fullness of time, I can't say it's the most pressing use of public dollars right now.

From homelessness to transit there are myriad investments to be made.

It does remain a shame this one was so badly bungled.
 
Northern Light said:
Yonge-Dundas Square (and environs) was mishandled, badly, in the last 'revitalization' era.
There were 2 sets of mistakes in my mind.

The first was 'concept'. There was, day one, much yammering about Toronto's Times' Square.

Even if Times' Square were worth emulating (which I would argue it is not); I'm simply not a fan of 'copycatting' some other place's idea.

In the best of all worlds, it typically feels understandably unoriginal and like a ripoff. In fairness, there are rare occasions where the 'copy' exceeds the original, but Y-D Square is not
and was never going to be that.

But I finish point one, by coming back to the notion of Times' Square itself. I always found it gaudy, jarring, un-attractive and not a place conducive to stopping and soaking up the ambiance. I have
no clue why one would ever bother to repeat it.

That said, the design of Y-D Square itself and its surroundings suffered from poor ambition, even allowing for the T-S emulation, and poorer execution.

'Metropolis' started out as an indoor Disney Theme Park, which might have been in line w/the T-S emulation vision, if a bit more family friendly.

When that came un-done, what replaced it felt like an effort to fill the already conceived building envelope with whatever would justify getting a shovel in the ground.

While most of us here at UT would have just said 'start over', and I think rightly so, we also could have done much better on the 'execution'.

From a poor material pallet that never met the concept in the renders, to the absence of a prominent main entrance, to a poor choice of 2nd floor retail (Future Shop) and allowing the same to block its Y-D facing windows rather than address the square, there was little, if anything, this developer did well.

The Eaton Ctr re-do destroyed an iconic entrance, which had its failings (didn't address the street edge well), and replaced it with something just as bad, but uglier and forgettable.

While the Square never delivered anything to bring it to life naturally, when it isn't hosting an event.

It isn't just that it's cut-off from Dundas, it's that it lacks a natural focal point, and it really is insufficiently green.

It's not that it needed to be confused for a park, but rather it needed to be some place attractive to sit and talk and sip a coffee.

It isn't, it wasn't, and it isn't savable by half-baked alterations.

While the whole disaster will need to be redone in the fullness of time, I can't say it's the most pressing use of public dollars right now.

From homelessness to transit there are myriad investments to be made.

It does remain a shame this one was so badly bungled.
Click to expand...

Metropolis didn't actually start off as a Disney Theme Park - Disney was not part of the original vision, and came after the approvals were in place. But the development was certainly delayed for a long time, and other tenants were lost, while PenEquity chased after the Disney Quest concept.

The Olympic Torch was another grand idea for the square, but it was never thought through, and the implementation was done on the cheap.

The only positive is that 10 Dundas and City-TV are both cheaply constructed and on valuable land. As @Filip points out, they will probably both eventually be redeveloped.

Right now the biggest problem is the mess the City itself has made in the actual square.
 
Northern Light said:
Yonge-Dundas Square (and environs) was mishandled, badly, in the last 'revitalization' era.
There were 2 sets of mistakes in my mind.

The first was 'concept'. There was, day one, much yammering about Toronto's Times' Square.

Even if Times' Square were worth emulating (which I would argue it is not); I'm simply not a fan of 'copycatting' some other place's idea.

In the best of all worlds, it typically feels understandably unoriginal and like a ripoff. In fairness, there are rare occasions where the 'copy' exceeds the original, but Y-D Square is not
and was never going to be that.

But I finish point one, by coming back to the notion of Times' Square itself. I always found it gaudy, jarring, un-attractive and not a place conducive to stopping and soaking up the ambiance. I have
no clue why one would ever bother to repeat it.

That said, the design of Y-D Square itself and its surroundings suffered from poor ambition, even allowing for the T-S emulation, and poorer execution.

'Metropolis' started out as an indoor Disney Theme Park, which might have been in line w/the T-S emulation vision, if a bit more family friendly.

When that came un-done, what replaced it felt like an effort to fill the already conceived building envelope with whatever would justify getting a shovel in the ground.

While most of us here at UT would have just said 'start over', and I think rightly so, we also could have done much better on the 'execution'.

From a poor material pallet that never met the concept in the renders, to the absence of a prominent main entrance, to a poor choice of 2nd floor retail (Future Shop) and allowing the same to block its Y-D facing windows rather than address the square, there was little, if anything, this developer did well.

The Eaton Ctr re-do destroyed an iconic entrance, which had its failings (didn't address the street edge well), and replaced it with something just as bad, but uglier and forgettable.

While the Square never delivered anything to bring it to life naturally, when it isn't hosting an event.

It isn't just that it's cut-off from Dundas, it's that it lacks a natural focal point, and it really is insufficiently green.

It's not that it needed to be confused for a park, but rather it needed to be some place attractive to sit and talk and sip a coffee.

It isn't, it wasn't, and it isn't savable by half-baked alterations.

While the whole disaster will need to be redone in the fullness of time, I can't say it's the most pressing use of public dollars right now.

From homelessness to transit there are myriad investments to be made.

It does remain a shame this one was so badly bungled.
Click to expand...

I recall being struck by the utter lack of confidence all the participants in the Y-D efforts were showing, back around 2000. They went for just anything rather than hold out for something good and worthwhile and lasting.
 
TonyV said:
I recall being struck by the utter lack of confidence all the participants in the Y-D efforts were showing, back around 2000. They went for just anything rather than hold out for something good and worthwhile and lasting.
Click to expand...

More importantly - the public decision makers failed to safeguard public interests and used state power to advance private ones. Bluntly - we expropriated private properties and made allowances for private intrusion into public space for this cr*p?

AoD
 
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Urban-Affair said:
Maybe it will just become like Times square, in that only tourists visit it, and Torontonians avoid it completely when possible...or perhaps it already has become that.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Mind you it has drastically cut down the time it takes me to walk to the Imperial Tavern from the Eaton Centre.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
More importantly - the public decision makers failed to safeguard public interests and used state power to advance private ones. Bluntly - we expropriated private properties and made allowances for private intrusion into public space for this cr*p?

AoD
Click to expand...

To be fair, speculative landlords were letting buildings on these sites rot. At the time, any assembly of the land by private interests was accurately seen as improbable, and certainly would not have led to any public space. The initial plans for the square were ambitious, and despite value engineering and other flaws, the original square was a significant improvement (at least physically, if not always operationally) to the intersection. I think where public officials failed to safeguard the public interest is when they handed control over to a Board of Management, whose mandate was to generate revenue as much as it was to provide a public space. That's how we ended up with the current defacement of the square.
 
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