National Post – Alex New­man (www​.integri​ty​commu​ni​ca​tions​.ca)

The times they are a changin’ along Car­law Avenue. Orig­i­nally a working-class neigh­bour­hood with a score of indus­trial sites — Wrigley’s, Colgate’s, Wood’s and a host of gar­ment fac­to­ries — it was said you could find a job just by walk­ing up the street.

But with the man­u­fac­tur­ing sector’s demise, the ware­houses fell empty, and the nar­row row­houses on adja­cent streets started fill­ing with a “lot of multi-family arrange­ments,” accord­ing to Paul Young, who co-authored a 2000 study of the area.

In the late 1990s, how­ever, sev­eral things came together at once. Jack Lay­ton was coun­cil­lor of the Don River ward, Jane Jacobs was vocal about strength­en­ing neigh­bour­hoods, and the city had started receiv­ing a trickle of appli­ca­tions to turn build­ings into legit­i­mate live/work spaces.

Res­ur­rect­ing this neigh­bour­hood, though, meant find­ing a com­mon focus among the mix of res­i­dents — high tech and media arts pro­fes­sion­als along with a siz­able working-class population.

Nat­u­rally, the build­ings play­ed a role. “It was an old indus­trial pocket but the build­ings are hand­some, and made it quite a desir­able area,” espe­cially for peo­ple in Toronto’s bur­geon­ing film indus­try, says urban plan­ner Denise Graham.

It was also the dawn­ing of legit­i­mate live-work lofts for cre­ative types who liked the raw space, big win­dows and high ceil­ings. And hous­ing was sta­ble — you couldn’t get kicked out for liv­ing in your work space.

When the study came out in 2000 — over­seen by Mr Lay­ton — it became a devel­op­ment touch­stone. It iden­ti­fied neigh­bour­hood defi­cien­cies such as dimmer-than-average street­lights, and made rec­om­men­da­tions about land­scap­ing, parks, pub­lic art, her­itage preser­va­tion, con­nec­tions to the water­front and how to improve the liv­abil­ity of Dun­das Street.

For devel­op­ers, the area pre­sented an oppor­tu­nity. When loft devel­op­ment began on Car­law, “nobody really knew about the area,” says Brad Lamb, who has mar­keted two devel­op­ments (Gar­ment Fac­tory Lofts at 233 Car­law and Print­ing Fac­tory Lofts at 201) and devel­oped two oth­ers (Work Lofts at 319 and Flat­iron Lofts at 1201 Dun­das). “It was dead and scruffy-looking, but a lot of peo­ple look­ing for authen­tic lofts liked the idea of a new-found area.”

That’s when land there sold for $16 to $18 a build­able square foot; prices have now tripled to $40 to $50 per build­able square foot (still low com­pared to $125/sq. ft. in Yorkville and $80 at King and Cortland).

And with unit prices ris­ing cor­re­spond­ingly — $500/sq. ft. com­pared to the orig­i­nal $310/sq. ft. — the area inhab­i­tants have changed. Mr. Young recently exam­ined growth pat­terns for a park process he was facil­i­tat­ing, and found dog own­er­ship was up while birth rates were down. The find­ings jibed with what he noticed was sell­ing: “a lot of bach­e­lors and one bed­rooms … to buy­ers who are mostly single.”

That’s not exactly news, but it did raise ques­tions about how the neigh­bour­hood was chang­ing, and whether it was still afford­able. But afford­abil­ity is a com­pli­cated issue and depends on land costs, fin­ishes and unit size. While ear­lier devel­op­ments ben­e­fited from cheap land, they got fewer breaks on height and density.

The neigh­bour­hood was a mix of mid-rise indus­trial and two-storey res­i­den­tial, so new con­struc­tion was meant to be a buffer. Although the height limit on Car­law is 18 meters, or about six storeys, devel­op­ers have suc­cess­fully appealed for increases — the Flat­iron Lofts, for exam­ple, is 11 storeys on Car­law and 10 on Dun­das. And on the north side of Dun­das, The Car­law will have 10 storeys on Dun­das and 12 on Car­law, plus a row of town­homes along Boston (they’re launch­ing in a sub­se­quent phase).

The changes in den­sity and height allowance indi­cate to Mr. Lamb that the “area is due to inten­sify.” Given the avail­able indus­trial land, the press­ing need for hous­ing and the city’s direc­tive for inten­si­fi­ca­tion, he antic­i­pates the next build­ings may be higher still.

But the city wants some­thing in return. When Mr. Lamb first bought on Car­law, he says he was told by coun­cil­lor Paula Fletcher that these were “employ­ment lands, and we’re not crazy about con­dos, so you have to offer employ­ment back to the city.”

With the area’s job base chang­ing — Mr. Lamb believes the notion of an artist pop­u­la­tion is false — most of the newer projects must include an employ­ment com­po­nent. The sec­ond floors at Worklofts and Flat­iron Lofts, for exam­ple, have busi­ness cen­tres with board­rooms and wash­rooms. And from what he’s seen, the buy­ers are not artists, but den­tists, lawyers, media types and small businesses.

Though Flat­iron has almost sold out its 80 suites, about 35% of raw com­mer­cial space is left. It’s not expected to last, espe­cially in the 400 to 500-sq.-ft. range, Mr. Lamb says, because there’s a “huge mar­ket for small-business space.”

With so much change afoot, there’s a feel­ing of excite­ment. And design reflects this, espe­cially with the level of design skill seen in the new build­ings, by archi­tects skilled in graft­ing mod­ern skins — of glass, brick and steel — on to older indus­trial brick bodies.

The Car­law is grounded with brick at both Car­law and Dun­das ends. Using brick, explains Prish Jain, the building’s archi­tect, “is meant to speak to the indus­trial her­itage of that neigh­bour­hood, speak to the exist­ing character.”

The building’s large expanses of glass also “look for­ward and upward and be the urban build­ing that it is,” Mr. Jain adds. “It’s not enough to sug­gest his­toric, you also need to look for­ward by using mod­ern mate­ri­als, like the glass cur­tain wall fac­ing downtown.”

Across the street at the Flat­iron Lofts, Core Archi­tects was hired to deal with the “strange” jog­ging inter­sec­tion at Dun­das and Car­law. Their con­cept — a mod­ern take on the flat iron — was to accom­mo­date the pie-shaped lot (a for­mer gas sta­tion) as well as the intersection.

The Print­ing Fac­tory Lofts (at Queen and Car­law) took a preser­va­tion approach, res­ur­rect­ing the ware­house by retain­ing its orig­i­nal height at street level, and insert­ing a new-build mid-rise condo into the mid­dle. At the Gar­ment Fac­tory Lofts, authen­tic loft spaces with con­crete floors and huge win­dows com­prise the orig­i­nal four floors, but the top four floors are new with glass, steel and brick.

Worklofts, a new-build ware­house, has four floors in grey-purple Amer­i­can brick meant to blend with the street’s indus­trial look, while the upper seven floors — stepped back — are a lighter glass and aluminum.

Design can also fos­ter more street-level pres­ence. Although much has changed since the 2000 study, its design rec­om­men­da­tions are still moti­vat­ing developers.

Street­car CEO Les Malen, for exam­ple, was inspired to cre­ate an 11,000-sq.-ft. pub­lic lobby and court­yard at The Car­law in an attempt to relate to the street, and encour­age greater com­mu­nity engagement.

Mr. Malen is cur­rently in nego­ti­a­tions with groups who will take respon­si­bil­ity for the pub­lic space. The ideas for its use are end­less: com­mu­nity events such as fash­ions shows or art exhibits; sea­sonal retail — the pop-up trend — for Hal­loween cos­tumes, or win­ter sport­ing goods; an inside farm­ers mar­ket — like the St. Lawrence Mar­ket — but with the option of spilling out­side into the courtyard.

The con­cept, says Mr. Malen, is not “unusual down­town, but it is for the east end.”

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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toronto print­ing fac­tory archives

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