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A proposed mixed-income redevelopment of a public housing complex in Toronto's Queen and Coxwell area has advanced with a new planning submission. Originally proposed seeking rezoning and an Official Plan Amendment in November, 2019, plans for the Don Summerville Apartments Redevelopment were resubmitted earlier this month, detailing changes to the plan from the team of Toronto Community Housing Corporation, The City of Toronto Housing Secretariat, RioCan Living, and Context Development.
Designed by Teeple Architects, the proposal calls for a mixed-use west building with 16 and 17-storey volumes, and a 10-storey TCHC residential east building replacing two existing buildings containing 120 Rent-Geared-to-Income (RGI) units, along with a current surface parking lot to the east. The new buildings would bring 766 units to the site, including replacements for the existing RGI units housed on site today. Of the total, 138 units would be housed in the shorter TCHC east building.
The remaining 628 units are in the larger market building to the west. According to RioCan Living's official website for the project, it is being marketed under the name Queen Ashbridge, and that onehalf of the west building will be condominiums, while the other will be rental units.
The resubmission includes details of the materials proposed for the buildings' exteriors. Both west and east are proposed to be clad in a mix of a projecting white metal spandrel window wall system, a white aluminum window wall system, balcony guards with clear glazing and white slab edge covers, as well as precast brick panels and curtainwall glazing.
A number of revisions have been introduced since the initial submission, responding to comments from various City divisions and other agencies. These have resulted in a number of changes to the buildings' proposed built form and public realm, the most significant being a change in the west building's shorter volume, rising from 15 to 16 storeys in the latest plan. Several other design changes have been included, such as added stepbacks, the addition of bays, changes to the four-storey street wall along Queen East, breaks in massing, changes in materiality, and elimination of a previous cantilever for more of a fine-grained street-level presence.
Other changes include an increase in the proposed retail area, raised from 1,578 m² in the original submission to 1,657 m², a slight increase in tower separation between the west building's two volumes, a reduction in balcony area for the west building, and a slight reduction in overall parking and bicycle parking counts.
The revision removes five market rental units from the mix for a new total of 183 market rental units, while maintaining the previous mix of tenures of 120 RGI units, 100 affordable units, and 363 market condominium units. While the number and tenure of units remains largely the same, the breakdown of unit types has changed considerably. 391 studio and one-bedroom units, 264 two-bedrooms, 108 three-bedrooms, and 3 four-bedroom units are now proposed. This shakes up the previous submission's mix of 402 studio and one-bedroom layouts, 271 two-bedrooms, 95 three-bedrooms, and 3 four-bedroom units.
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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