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Located in Downtown Toronto, directly west of Chinatown and South of Kensington Market is Toronto's Alexandra Park. Although the area is surrounded by two ethnic enclaves and four busy streets—Spadina Ave., Dundas St. West , Bathurst St. West and Queen St. West—Alexandra Park faces challenges of isolation. Developed in the 1960s in a manner similar to Regent Park, where the city's street existing grid was interrupted with cul-de-sacs, Alexandra Park developed similar problems.
With the success of the Regent Park revitalization now clear, the City of Toronto, Toronto Community Housing, Tridel and local residents are working together to revitalize Alexandra Park as well. Ultimately, the revitalization will improve housing and social services while maintaining affordability and introducing market condominiums, the road networks will be reconnected to the surrounding neighbourhoods to create greater pedestrian accessibility, and a mixed-use community will grow from new retail space and more local jobs.
As of February 11 2014, the project began its Phase One demolition. Tridel has a webcam positioned to take in the progress at the site which updates every half hour. The view below is from February 25, 2014, just before noon. You can see a current shot here.
The five-year Phase One portion of the project is estimated to finish in early 2019 with 61 RGI (rent geared to income) rental units, two market condominium buildings, one new street and an extension of another street. The first of those market condominiums, Tridel's avant-garde modern SQ Condos designed by cutting edge Toronto firm Teeple Architects, is now on sale.
SQ's name—which stands for Spadina and Queen—can also be understood as a reference to its eye-catching geometric design which engages the viewer in part through its square-framed protruding balconies. Stephen Teeple's playful assemblage in total is meant as a bold declaration that with this building, Alexandra Park confidently turns a new corner, reaching out to a city that is becoming more and more eager to seek out creative expression in its built environment.
Future Phases of the neighbourhood revitalization will include a new central park, and a larger community centre. The full plan will take an estimated 12-15 years to complete. For more information about Alexandra Park's Master Plan, visit UT's earlier story. For more information on SQ, click on the dataBase link below. Want to talk about SQ? Please click on one of the associated Forum thread links or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
