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More planning news is pouring out of Toronto’s Midtown area. A June submission to the City is a proposed development at 141 Davisville Avenue from Osmington Gerofsky Development Corp that would see a 32-storey residential condo, designed by Wallman Architects, erected on a site which shares its area with an existing 20-storey, slab-style, apartment building. Located at the southwest corner of Davisville Avenue and Pailton Crescent, the proposal intends to bring 423 new units to the Davisville Village neighbourhood, on a site roughly 500m south of Eglinton, sitting midway between Yonge Street and Mount Pleasant Road.
Applications were submitted for an Official Plan Amendment (OPA), a Zoning By-law Amendment (ZBA), and Site Plan Approval (SPA), that would allow the proposal to be built in an area characterized by a concentration of Tower-in-the-Park style high-rise apartment buildings east of Davisville subway station; in the wider surrounding area to the north, 2-3-story residential and commercial buildings make up the majority of the developed context.
The proposal argues that the site qualifies for intensification based on different guidelines, making reference to the City’s Official Plan (OP), that promotes the redevelopment of sites in already built up areas. With a considerable number of high-rises already standing in the area, the proposal also points to 17 proposals either pending or approved within an area referred to as the ‘immediate context’ that indicate the inevitable increases of height and density on the near horizon. To its benefit, the site is located within a Major Transit Station Area (MTSA), with Davisville station 450m away.
The site is mostly rectangular, with a total area of 5,359m², and frontages along Davisville Avenue, Pailton Crescent, and Balliol Street to the south. The southern portion of the site is occupied by the existing 20-storey slab-style rental building, constructed in the 1970s, which spans the majority of the site’s width. On the northern portion of the site, the existing building’s 52m setback from Davisville Avenue has allowed for a driveway leading to surface level parking, and an open green space landscaped with several mature trees to occupy the remainder of the site’s area. These spaces, which the application qualifies as currently under-utilized, represent the 2,768m² of developable land on the site.
The proposal from Osmington Gerofsky, which was submitted in late June, is the second proposal seeking to redevelop this site, after a proposal from CAPREIT failed to be realized; the approach from the new proponents, however, shares few characteristics with its predecessor. Back in 2017, CAPREIT was contending to erect a 16-storey rental apartment building with a design by BDP Quadrangle that sought to reflect a contemporary take on the slab-style apartments populating the surrounding area. The new proposal from Osmington Gerofsky nearly doubles the former in height while offering over twice the number of units, sporting a design less derivative of older styles and more reminiscent of the current urbanist vision for tower design.
The goal of the new proposal’s design, as outlined in the documents, is to "re-urbanize" the site. This begins with the massing of the new building, which features a 6-storey podium as the base for the 26-storey tower, climbing to a total height of 110m. Metal panelling in a dark grey tone is used for the external cladding, with narrow segments of white panelling forming right-angles across 2-storey square sections, travelling up the building from the podium to the top of the tower in a diagonal pattern. At the grade level, window walls emphasize the 6m height of the lobby space, while the same window wall treatment is found on the seventh storey where the tower emerges from the podium.
Significant improvements to the public realm are also in the works, with landscaping plans showing how the remaining open space on the site would be reinvigorated to serve residents of both buildings. Proposed improvements include an enclosed children’s play area, a pet relief area, and an expanded walkway along Pailton Crescent, while a newly designed POPS (Privately Owned Publicly accessible Space) would act as the buffer between the two buildings.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, 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, Counterpoint Engineering, EQ Building Performance Inc., Grounded Engineering Inc., Osmington Gerofsky Development Corp |
