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Official Plan Amendment and Zoning By-law Amendment proposals have been submitted to the City of Toronto’s Planning Department for a 12-storey mixed-use condominium building at 25 Old York Mills Road on the southwest corner with Campbell Crescent in Toronto’s affluent Hoggs Hollow neighbourhood. Designed by Toronto-based IBI Group for the Agricola Finnish Lutheran Church, the scheme seeks to redevelop the under-utilized site and allow the Finnish community to consolidate its place of worship and community-based facilities into a single facility.
Located just east of York Mills subway station, the site is deemed to be within a ‘Major Transit Station Area’, thus presenting itself as the ideal candidate for development intensification per the Province’s Growth Plan. Currently occupied by the Agricola Finnish Lutheran Church’s existing 2-3 storey red brickwork building and ample on-site surface parking, the site is under-utilized from a development standpoint and is overshadowed by the 9-storey mixed-use condominium at 10 Old York Mills Road to the North.
The design is informed by Toronto’s prevalent mid-rise housing typology, which sees a chamfered 45-degree angular form tapering towards abutting low-rise residential neighbourhoods, in this case, the 1-2 storey dwellings of Campbell Crescent to the south.
A captivating origami-style form applied to the church portion of the proposal is somewhat reminiscent of Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter’s Community Church in Knarvik, Norway and gives the Agricola Finnish Lutheran Church its own distinctive Scandinavian identity that it so desires. The church's dark-coloured engineered wooden cladding goes some way to softening the lower floors against the Jolly Miller Park backdrop, creating an organic transition in doing so. The church is then finished with a series of infill frosted glass panels subdivided by grey colour louvres and mullions.
The highest point of the 138 ft / 42.05 m proposal abuts the northern site perimeter. Finished in a combination of light colour engineered wooden cladding to the upper residential floors, beige-coloured limestone panels that define the commercial community space and residential lobby, and Stopsol Supersilver Spandrel panels that cap the uppermost floor, it consciously juxtaposes the church with a staggered rectilinear form that deals with the 45-degree angular plane. As is typical with many condominium buildings, a series of glass-clad external balconies provide some articulation to the external form.
Over the 9,547m² of Proposed Gross Floor Area, the development provides 98 residential units split into one studio, 65 one bedrooms, 22 two bedrooms and 10 3 bedroom apartments. These will have access to the 82 dedicated car parking spaces split over two subterranean floors and 80 bicycle parking spots on the first and second floors. Of the total 9,457m² Proposed Gross Floor Area, representing a Proposed Gross FSI of 2.7, 7,657m² will be residential, and 1,890m² will be non-residential.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow updates for this development, but in the meantime, 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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