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The City of Toronto recently approved an application for the rezoning of 252 Parliament Street. Originally applied for in 2020 by Core Development Group, the Studio JCI-designed, 9-storey, mixed-use building was proposed to bring 71 rental units with 140m² of at-grade retail and office space to the property. A particularly enticing feature of the proposal is its geothermal heating and cooling component.
Located mid-block between Shuter Street and Dundas Street East, the revised proposal incorporates numerous changes from the original application. The residential gross floor area (GFA) increases from 4,958 to 5,121m², despite which the number of units drops from 71 to 69. At the same time, the commercial/retail GFA drops from 140 to 129m², still leaving most of the building frontage on Parliament Street occupied by commercial/retail space. The remainder of the Parliament Street frontage is allocated for a residential entrance and mail-room. Floors 2 to 9 remain dedicated to residential uses.
While the proposal has maintained a building height of 9-storeys, (31 metres high including the mechanical penthouse), now that the mixed use building consists of 69 dwelling units, the unit breakdown has been readjusted to include 35 studios (51%), 10 three-bedrooms (14%), and 24 four-bedrooms (35%), an unusually high number of larger units.
The proposal's indoor amenity space, of which a total of 163m² is offered, is to be located on the 9th floor, except for a pet wash room on the ground floor. The outdoor amenity space, which increases from 227 to 250m², is in the form of terraces on the 9th floor, and two courtyards located at the north and south sides of the building, on the ground floor and 2nd floor respectively. The amenity space has been designed so that the indoor space is adjacent to the outdoor space.
With the changes to the suites, other changes to the building also include a decrease in the number of vehicle parking spaces from 20 to 10, as well as a decrease in the number of bicycle parking spaces from 88 to 78.
The Planning Department applauded the work on the project, saying in their final report, "the proposal has also adapted to provide a better quality of life within the development, including relocating bicycle parking spaces closer to the bicycle stair ramp, and allocating a greater proportion of the outdoor amenity space towards usable and programmable space instead of landscaped area."
The non-residential component of this proposal is subject to a 2% parkland dedication while the residential component is subject to a 10% dedication, which the developer is planning to satisfy through a cash in-lieu payment. The money is meant to be used by the City within the surrounding community within six months, or if a suitable site cannot be found in that time, to be retained for another place of need. Parks, Forestry and Recreation staff have also commented on the need to provide onsite dog relief stations to help alleviate the pressure on neighbourhood parks; as you can see in the image below, the site is some distance from a park, but is across the street from a fenced off property where the TDCSB is considering that a school be potentially built.
Finally, the site is within a 500 metre radius of the planned Ontario Line subway station at Moss Park, which should bring significant growth to the community. For the moment, the property is within walking distance to streetcar routes on Queen and Dundas streets
You can learn more from our Database file for the project, linked below. If you'd like, 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: | Bousfields, LEA Consulting, Menard Canada Inc., RWDI Climate and Performance Engineering, STUDIO tla, Tarra Engineering & Structural Consultants Inc |
