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After spending over a year under review by the City of Toronto, Plaza Partners’ proposed redevelopment of 2-6 The Donway East, in the southeastern quadrant of the original Don Mills community, has been resubmitted to the City; unlike many of the resubmissions we have been seeing lately, this one has come back with shorter height, compared to what was previously proposed. The latest iteration of the BDP Quadrangle-designed community still contemplates the redevelopment of the existing rental housing on the site with four towers, but the storey counts have been trimmed slightly, dropping from 32, 28, 24, and 16 storeys, down to 29, 25, 24, and 12 storeys.
The project has spent the last while being reconfigured by the development team in response to feedback from staff at City departments, who expressed a number of concerns over the initial proposal. Among the various ‘issues to be resolved’ outlined in the Planning Department's report, particular emphasis was placed on adherence to the City’s Tall Building Guidelines, which assert that the peak of a tower should fall beneath the 45 degree angular plane from adjacent property lines; in the case of the proposal, three of the four towers did not meet this criteria.
Based on this feedback, the rationale behind the reduction in building heights becomes clear, particularly in the context of Don Mills, the first master-planned community in Canada, and an acclaimed city building endeavour that became a model for suburban planning. Making an effort to minimize disruption on this community while balancing the demand for density is the unique challenge that Plaza is dealing with here. Referring to the pair of site plans below, we can see how the height reductions have altered each of the four buildings.
Meanwhile, we can also see from the site plans that some massing changes have been applied to each of the buildings, mainly to create a more terraced massing at the towers’ respective peaks. While the previous iteration saw each tower rise from the podium without any massing changes, the updated plan adds a number of stepbacks at the uppermost floors of taller buildings to taper them off slightly. As for the 12-storey building, the tower and podium configuration has been dropped for more traditional mid-rise massing.
Looking at the impact of these revisions on the proposal’s total unit count, the previous total of 1,185 drops by a surprisingly minimal margin of only 9 units, down to a new total of 1,176. What has changed more drastically though is the unit breakdown. The initial proposal detailed a distribution of 15% studios, 40% 1-bedrooms, 35% 2-bedrooms, and 10% 3-bedrooms; the revised proposal offers 1% studios, 59% 1-bedrooms, 31% 2-bedrooms, and 10% 3-bedrooms.
Changes were also made to the parking supply, with the previous total of 800 spaces dropping to 680. Bike parking remains relatively constant though, at 1,059 spaces, seeing a reduction of only 8 spaces.
Another concern outlined in the Planning Department's report was the proposal's failure to include an adequate allotment of public green space, falling short of the prescribed parkland area by a notable margin of 895m². Surprisingly, the revised proposal actually contemplates a smaller parkland dedication than the previous iteration, offering a parkland dedication of 1,704m² compared to the initial total of 1,790m².
How the City responds to this will likely depend on their evaluation of the other non-public outdoor spaces baked into the proposal’s landscaping plan; with a large central courtyard space as well as a POPS (Privately Owned Publicly accessible Space) at the southwest corner, the proposal may offer just enough in terms of outdoor programming.
Along with this revised Zoning By-law Amendment application, the proponents have also applied for Site Plan Approval at this time.
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: | BDP Quadrangle, Bousfields, Counterpoint Engineering, Resident, RWDI Climate and Performance Engineering, STUDIO tla |
