7.2K 
As the City of Toronto’s buildings reach for the skies with more storeys and units, a proposed development in Summerhill is seeing a massive increase in scale. Woodlawn Residences Corp have resubmitted their Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment applications for 1233 Yonge Street. With the site now within a Major Transit Station Area classification, the resubmission for the site north of Summerhill subway station calls for a considerably larger project.
When UrbanToronto first covered the initial proposal from December, 2021 it called for a BDP Quadrangle-designed 13-storey mixed-use rental and condominium building. Fast-forward to May, 2023 and that number has skyrocketed to 49 storeys. The proposed height has more than tripled to 163.55m.
Over at the southeast corner of Yonge Street and Woodlawn Avenue, the current building at 1233 Yonge Street is a 3-storey apartment with 40 rental units. Known as the Aeneas Court Apartments, the building was constructed over 80 years ago. The site also includes 9 Woodlawn Avenue, which contains a 3-storey detached house form building with 3 commercial units. The site is approximately 1,913m² in area.
While the original proposal called for increased density with 110 new residences, the resubmission — designed by Arcadis — the Amsterdam-based global firm that acquired Toronto-based IBI Group in Fall 2022 for Woodlawn Residences — has ballooned to 764 units. In both cases, all units in the Aeneas Court Apartments would be replaced. The redesign responds to the provincial governments desire to build more homes near rapid transit stations, and the lessening of density ad height restrictions near them.
The newly submitted architectural plans call for three low-rise and three high-rise elevators to serve the 764 units, higher than the 1 elevator per 100 unit threshold that UrbanToronto tracks.
With the City’s goals for a greener future through its Toronto Green Standard, the one aspect of the redesign that has shrunk is the parking. Originally featuring three levels of underground parking with 99 vehicle parking spaces, those numbers have dropped significantly to one level and 15 spaces, with nine spots for visitors and two for car-share. The resubmission, meanwhile, follows the City's requirements through an increase of bicycle parking spots from 116 to 688, with 78 for short-term use.
The redesign features a five-storey podium in comparison to the six storeys of the initial proposal. This would include 390m² of retail on the ground floor. The proposed built form would incorporate grey brick-faced panels for the podium with fritted glazing, while the tower element would feature white metal panels along with both clear and dark glass, and dark grey mullions.
The total gross floor area of 46,603m² is four times the previous submission’s total of 11,248m². The larger influx of residents would be provided more amenity space, but less per suite, with 764m² indoors and 522m² outdoors, whereas the proposal from 2021 called for 564m² in total.
The site is well-serviced by public transit, being only 250m from Summerhill subway station to the south and 450m from St Clair subway station to the north. Bicyclists have the option of protected bike lanes on Yonge Street, with planned future improvements set out in the Cycling Network Ten Year Plan.
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.
* * *
UrbanToronto has a research service, UrbanToronto Pro, that provides comprehensive data on construction projects in the Greater Toronto Area—from proposal through to completion. We also offer Instant Reports, downloadable snapshots based on location, and a daily subscription newsletter, New Development Insider, that tracks projects from initial application.
| Related Companies: | Arcadis, Bousfields, Janet Rosenberg & Studio |
