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The Financial District’s Brookfield Place may finally be getting its long-awaited third phase — but not in the way that many would have expected. An application has now been submitted to the City of Toronto by Brookfield Residential, contemplating an infill development in the form of a 53-storey residential tower above 20 Front West, on the southern edge of the historically commercial complex, offering a total of 593 purpose built rental units.
Designed by KPMB Architects with Core Architects serving as the Architect of Record, the project looks towards the future of the Financial District with the goal of transforming Brookfield Place into a more rounded mixed-use community situated at the heart of the city’s transit network.
The proposal focuses on the redevelopment of the southern central portion of the site, where the complex’s third-phase commercial tower was initially planned but never constructed. Currently occupying this part of the property is the heritage-listed Gowans Kent Building, addressed to 20 Front Street West. Constructed in 1923, the 8-storey building was expanded in the 1980s, raising the building to 14 storeys while significant changes were also made to the heritage elevations; the primary (south) elevation was retained, however, as well as the interior columns and floorplans.
The building has housed office uses for the the extent of its century-long lifetime, but has struggled to meet the needs of contemporary office tenants, according to the proponents. The main issue relates to the ceiling heights; when the building was expanded, the ceilings were not increased, in the interest of preserving the interior character of the heritage building, but over time, this has become an issue for commercial tenants, who generally occupy spaces with much higher ceilings. In this way, the proponents argue that residential uses, which generally tolerate lower ceiling heights, would represent a more effective use of the heritage component.
The design for the proposed infill development contemplates the demolition of all components of the building that were added on in the 1980s expansion, namely, the additional six floors, and the altered east and west elevations. The heritage components, however, would be retained once again and incorporated into the redevelopment, acting as an eight-storey base building volume from which the new-build tower would rise above.
The tower volume takes on a generally rectangular massing above the irregularly-shaped floorplate of the existing building. Stepping back from the base building marginally from all sides at the ninth level, the tower then rises 40 storeys before stepping back significantly from the south elevation. A smaller stepback from the north elevation also occurs right above the 52nd and final residential level, separating the tower from the rooftop mechanical facilities.
As for the exterior expression, the tower is defined by a simple and repetitive rhythm of punched windows; details about the finishes, however, remain minimal, and won’t be expanded upon until the application moves on to Site Plan Approval (SPA) stage.
More design work has also gone into reconfiguring the east and west elevations of the base building, which were altered significantly during the 1980s expansion. The primary goal is to enable the building to contribute to a more animated and vibrant pedestrian realm, so a scheme has been developed to improve the relationship between the west elevation and Garden Court, the public courtyard space which it fronts onto.
The scheme sees the design language of the heritage facade recreated on the west elevation, inserting a series of large arched windows to enliven the expression of what is currently a rather hostile streetwall. Above the grade level, the elevation is reconfigured further, with the creation of more frequent and larger windows, again mimicking the heritage facade. This same treatment is applied to the eastern elevation, which features no street frontage.
Residential uses make up the majority of the proposal’s 43,313m² gross floor area (GFA). The unit breakdown includes 31 studios (5%), 327 one-bedrooms (55%), 166 two-bedrooms (28%), and 69 three-bedrooms (12%), offering a mix of layouts intended to meet the needs of a wide demographic of future tenants. Meanwhile, no new vehicle parking is proposed for the building, which instead offers 594 bicycle parking spaces.
The proposal has been submitted to the City with an application for Zoning Bylaw Amendment (ZBA) in order to permit the requested height of 182 metres, as well as an Official Plan Amendment that would permit the project to relocate the current office uses to 2 Bloor Street West, rather than reinstating them in the new development. The project is at the forefront of the ongoing debate over the future of Toronto’s Downtown, and could represent an effective strategy to create more all-day activity in a core that has struggling to recover from Covid.
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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