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For many people in Toronto, the mention of College Park conjures up a myriad of memories and nostalgia. Over its 95-year lifespan, the grandiose structure at the corner of Yonge and College has become one of the defining architectural monuments of the city. Whether you’re old enough to have passed through its doors on the way to catch a Leafs game at Maple Leaf Gardens; if you’ve recognized it on TV as a backdrop to one of the many parades down Yonge Street; or if you’ve dressed up to attend a gala at the Carlu, the imposing limestone facade has imprinted itself in the collective memory of Torontonians. Now, ahead of its 100th anniversary, GWL Realty Advisors are planning to transform the iconic building into an even more grandiose landmark, aiming to fulfill the vision of its original creators.
UrbanToronto had the pleasure of speaking with Daniel Fama, Vice President of Development Services for Eastern Canada at GWL, and David Pontarini, Founding Partner at Hariri Pontarini Architects, to discuss their ambitious plans for College Park.
The College Park redevelopment would see three towers of 65, 75, and 96 storeys - the latter being a supertall tower at 333m in height - constructed atop the preserved and restored original College Park building, along with a new extension added to the podium along Yonge designed in a style that closely follows the existing facade. Included in the development are 2,334 residential units, 21,380m² of retail space, 24,861m² of commercial space, a hotel, a daycare, and the historic event venue The Carlu, which will be preserved and expanded.
When GWL first considered redevelopment of the property, they knew that it had to be something special. “We had put together what we thought was a really solid design team, some of the best minds in Toronto for urban design and heritage,” explained Fama. “We really gave them a blank canvas in terms of telling them we want a bold vision. This is a really important landmark site, and we don’t want to shy away from what it should be.” GWL also had an eye to the past and were inspired by the original vision that was never fully realized: a cascading tower that would have defined the Toronto skyline for decades, a vision that was scrapped due to the onset of the Great Depression. “On the overall perspective of the project, we knew we wanted to really respect that original architecture, not just preserve it,” Fama added.
The team set out to define what the building could be, with the idea that College Park is not just a building that people pass through on their way out of the subway, but that it can become a destination in itself. They looked for inspiration elsewhere from some landmark projects around the globe, like Rockefeller Center in New York City, the Ned Hotel and Battersea Power Station redevelopments in London, and The Well here in Toronto. “The stuff we are looking at, a lot of it does not exist in Canada,” said Fama. According to him, the project contains a lot of ‘firsts’ that take inspiration from elsewhere, but that will be uniquely Canadian.
The project is a complicated puzzle of many different programmatic elements stacked on top of each other. At its base, there are three levels of new retail planned, the contents of which are not yet fully hashed out, with only a grocery tenant being mentioned as a likely component. The floor plans show some grandiose architectural gestures, with large multi-floor-height spaces, sweeping stairwells, and a proposed winter garden facing the park to the south.
The layout of the retail levels is guided primarily by pedestrian flow. The design team wanted to maximize porosity and connection between Yonge Street, College Street, the subway station, and the park. This includes reconnecting the currently severed heritage arcade that runs parallel to Yonge, and introducing more flexible retail areas that facilitate pedestrian flow through the building. Current floor plans show a sweeping curve in the plan connecting the park to 777 Bay and College Street, with feature stairwells at either end. Facing the park, a ‘winter garden’ is planned, the design of which is currently vague, as Pontarini stressed that this part was still in development as they work out this important connection to the outdoors.
Above the retail floors, there are four levels of commercial space. Currently there are no projected tenants or specific uses, as GWL and the design team are aiming to make this space flexible while exploring a variety of diverse options beyond simply offices. “We want to make it as flexible as possible,” explained Fama. “The office floors lend themselves to that given the natural light and the extensive floor-to-ceiling heights. Whether it's a lecture hall, some kind of sports complex, we're looking at different things like pickleball courts. It can be a variety of different uses.”
The seventh floor of the building houses the Carlu event space. The existing venue is under a heritage easement and will be meticulously preserved and restored, while an expansion is planned that will increase the capacity and potential uses of the facility. “We've done a number of studies for the market of event spaces in the city and there is a lack of them,” said Fama. “There are not enough spaces for the amount of events that Toronto should have for the population that it has. We think that the Carlu, having the history, is already attractive for a number of different reasons, and we're looking to make it a lot more efficient from an operations perspective, as well as making it function better as an attractive venue for any user that may want to come in the future to use the space.”
Rising above the heritage base are three residential towers, one of which will be another supertall added to Toronto's growing count. Fama confirmed that the first of the three — the northern 75-storey tower — will be rental units, with the other two towers undetermined as to whether they will be condo or rental, depending on market conditions. The 75-storey tower will contain all 244 rental replacement units from the existing residential 1970s addition that will be demolished as part of the redevelopment.
Pontarini explained that the inspiration behind the tower forms comes from the concept of the ‘urban mountain’ popularized in the early 20th century, which stemmed from Hugh Ferris’ iconic drawings of towers cascading from a wide base to an ornamental peak, and which can be seen in early skyscrapers like the Royal York Hotel and the Canada Life Building. The original design for College Park from the 1920s would have been the largest ‘urban mountain’ in the city. “How do you take a podium and then transition it into an urban mountain without making it an urban mountain in the traditional sense of the word?” Pontarini elaborated. “You could never put residential into it because the floor plates are way too big, so we tried to create this idea of stepping up through the three towers.”
The articulation of the towers is also inspired by 1930s skyscrapers like Rockefeller Center, with solid elements running the full height of the towers creating a slender verticality, while bay windows give texture and depth to the facades. Each residential tower will be accessed via a sky lobby on the first level above the podium so as not to take up valuable space on the ground floor.
Perhaps the most notable component to the project is the southern extension of the podium along Yonge that looks to complete the missing portion of the original facade that was never built. The new podium continues the rhythm of pilasters seen on College Park’s original facades, and will likely be clad in stone to be compatible with the heritage building. The new extension will house the hotel, whose floor-to-ceiling heights are smaller than those of the commercial floor plates in the existing building. This discrepancy is masked in the sizing and details of the fenestration of the new podium, a subtle move that differentiates the new from the old while still maintaining the same architectural language.
“We thought that the original design was really authentic and timeless,” Fama stated. “Just given that everyone knows about it, it already has a location, it already is a place that people go to, so we really wanted to carry that design language forward. We decided upon completing that base building facade as close as possible, and since it already lasted 100 years, it'll carry forward another 100 years.”
“It's not mimicking exactly what was there, but it's a reinterpretation of what was there,” Pontarini added. “It's done in a really kind of nice, simple, elegant way, and it is figuring out the kind of big facade moves that make it read, if you squint, that this was all built at one time. You're also going to see these beautifully articulated details that aren't exactly like the windows of the existing heritage building, but they have some connection. They're part of the same family, part of the same DNA.”
Both Fama and Pontarini repeatedly came back to the idea of College Park as a destination and an attraction, with a vision to create something unique, bold, and groundbreaking at one of Toronto’s premiere locations. The ambitions of the team were clear, that this is not a task that anyone is taking lightly, and that this is going to be a precedent-setting development that will both create and enhance one of the city’s architectural gems. But above all, as Pontarini emphasized, “this project is, first and foremost, about the heritage.”
Stay tuned for a coming feature taking a deeper dive into the heritage components of the College Park redevelopment. In the meantime, you can learn more about the project 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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