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Despite it being long established, the Queen West neighbourhood of Downtown Toronto is no stranger to development, with new buildings occasionally being inserted in amongst the area's low-rise topology. With the City's Queen Street West Heritage Conservation District (HCD) plan in place here, new buildings fronting on Queen here must blend size-wise with the existing heritage buildings.
Following the completion of the first phase of the 17-storey Queen Richmond Centre West (QRC West) in 2015, Allied Properties REIT has recently been moving ahead with the second and final phase of the commercial project. To stand seven storeys, the second-phase, low-to-mid-rise component is now close to topping off at the southwest corner of Queen and Peter streets.
Since demolition of previous low-rise buildings on the site began in the final weeks of 2020, work has progressed at a regular pace, with the majority of the concrete framing now in place that will make up the terraced massing of the Sweeny &Co Architects-designed building. Fronting Queen Street West with a street-wall that maintains the low-rise scale of the neighbouring buildings, a series of step-backs transitions the new building to its 7-storey mark without impeding on the HCD's required 45 degree angular plane that ensures some uniformity to the amount of light reaching the busy shopping street.
As it stands currently, the phase two building has been formed up to the sixth storey. Above the sixth floor slab, the concrete columns that will support the final floor have been poured and cured, and the forms for the seventh floor slab are in place ahead of the next pour. Focusing in on the phase's northeast corner, we can see a cutout at the third level where the eventual structural glass corner volume will complete the glazing of the street-wall.
Moving west, we can see the 6-storey frame of the building also emerging above the four neighbouring properties to the west. Formerly occupied by a surface level parking lot, the lands behind these street-fronting properties (owned by others) were incorporated into the L-shaped plans for the second phase of QRC West from the beginning, where a significant amount of the total area of the phase is located.
With a new facade for the corner volume outlined in the design for the second phase, the retained facade of a heritage building immediately to the west, known municipally as 381 Queen Street West, will be restored to make up a portion of the phase's Queen Street frontage. Supported throughout the demolition process by a steel facade retention structure, the facade is now connected to the new concrete frame behind, and the temporary steel structure has been removed. While the uppermost floor of the heritage facade remains mostly in its original state, a more extensive restoration process is required to return the heritage attributes of the second level. Meanwhile, the glazing plan for the ground floor (where all heritage elements are long gone) will be a modern take on the original design.
Viewing the site from the southeast across Peter Street we get a better sense of the scale of the mid-rise volume, its bulk hidden from view for those walking along Queen Street's south sidewalk. From this angle, with the various step-backs pushing the massing further south and close to this vantage point, even the impending seventh floor will be visible.
Still to come for the new phase is an enclosed multi-storey bridge that will connect across the lane between it and the first phase, to provide access to the first phase elevators at levels three through seven.
With topping off in the near future for this project, we can expect to see the first glazing panels to appear in the coming months. Once complete, the phase will add a total of 6,571m² of new office space to the QRC West complex, while creating new retail space of 1,526m² with premium frontage on Queen Street West.
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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