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A zoning-approved plan for a new rental tower in Downtown Toronto has been resubmitted to the City, gearing up for construction of the new project at 8 Gloucester Street, on Yonge Street between Wellesley and Bloor subway stations. The project from Tricon Capital and Angel Developments is planned to rise 34 storeys from the northeast corner of Yonge and Gloucester, incorporating a pair of heritage buildings into the base of the Graziani + Corazza Architects-designed development.
A resubmission for Site Plan Approval (SPA) was recently filed for the site, following an initial November, 2018 SPA submission and a first resubmission in April, 2019. This latest SPA resubmission aims to iron out several details as crews mobilize to begin the earliest stages of site preparation work. The proposal was originally tabled for rezoning way back in 2011, though the plan spent a considerable amount of time held up in planning purgatory following a moratorium on new developments as the City mulled over the implementation of a Yonge Street Heritage Conservation District.
The building's 2011 design was by Hariri Pontarini Architects, but as of the first SPA application in the Fall of 2018, Graziani + Corazza had taken over architectural design. Shortly after the second SPA submission last Spring, the project appeared before Toronto's Design Review Panel to a chilly reception: while it retained the same massing and heritage components as the earlier design, its developers had pushed for a less costly exterior. The latest images show how the revised design responds to the DRP’s criticism, now with fewer mullions and more polish.
Like previous SPA applications for the project, the latest conforms to the approved site-specific zoning, with a gross floor area of 20,792 m² and a height of 116.4 metres measured to the top of at the mechanical penthouse level. The building is proposed primarily as residential, which accounts for 17,594 m² of the total gross floor area, along with 295 m² of street-fronting retail space. Unchanged from previous plans, the building will include 232 rental units to be built in a mix of 95 one-bedrooms, 113 two-bedrooms, and 24 three-bedrooms.
The tower base includes heritage preservation moves with the partial retention/reconstruction of the existing 1868-built Charles Levey House on Gloucester Street, and a full rehabilitation of the 1888-built Masonic Hall/Gloucester Mews building on Yonge Street, all overseen by heritage specialists ERA Architects. The first steps of work are now evident at the south side of the site, where crews are mobilizing to prepare the Charles Levey House at 8-12 Gloucester Street for its rebirth.
The building’s façade will be carefully removed and transported in panels to an industrial warehouse. The panels will eventually be reintegrated into the base of the development after the tower’s main structure is erected, with the rebuilt heritage element to sit closer to Gloucester Street upon completion.
Linking both heritage elements with the modern tower above, a new-build three-storey residential entrance area on Gloucester will feature a red brick cladding designed as a modern interpretation of the site’s existing Victorian residential and commercial architecture.
You can learn more from our Database file for the project, linked below. If you'd like to, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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| Related Companies: | CCxA, EQ Building Performance Inc., Graziani + Corazza Architects, SKYGRiD, Tricon Residential |
