Aspen Ridge’s Stu­dio on Rich­mond: An authen­tic artis­tic experience

Ryan Starr – Yourhome​.ca

The Ontario Col­lege of Art and Design is con­stantly on the hunt for addi­tional space.

OCAD — which in June was granted uni­ver­sity sta­tus — has grown a fair bit lately, expand­ing its domain beyond the McCaul St. cor­ri­dor to include the pur­chase of three build­ings along Rich­mond St. in what is Toronto’s dwin­dling club zone.

“We’re try­ing to cre­ate a crit­i­cal mass of activ­ity in one loca­tion as opposed to being scat­tered around town,” explains Peter Cald­well, the school’s vice pres­i­dent of finance. “And we’re devel­op­ing quite a foot­print on Richmond.”

So when Aspen Ridge Homes unveiled plans for a two-tower condo project that will essen­tially wrap around one of OCAD’s recently acquired prop­er­ties, the school rec­og­nized a golden opportunity.

Fol­low­ing meet­ings between OCAD, the devel­oper and the city, a deal was struck: Aspen Ridge would set aside 8,000 square feet of space for OCAD to use as a gallery in their build­ing at the north­west cor­ner of Rich­mond and Duncan..

“It’s a good part­ner­ship,” says Aspen Ridge prin­ci­pal Andrew De Gasperis. “It pro­vides a ben­e­fit for OCAD, and for the city, which is try­ing to revi­tal­ize the area. And obvi­ously it’s a great cross-promotion for us, as well.”

The project, dubbed Stu­dio on Rich­mond, will include two tow­ers: one 31 storeys, the other 41.

The smaller tower, which will be built first, will have 337 units and a nine-storey podium that will incor­po­rate the OCAD gallery. The taller tower — the sec­ond phase of the project — will likely include 400 con­dos and around 25 town­homes.

Units range from 419 to 1,294 square feet, not includ­ing the pent­houses. A 2,500-square-foot pent­house will occupy the building’s entire top floor, with four sub-penthouses on the level below.

The con­dos will have floor to ceil­ing glass, open floor plans and “great kitchens,” De Gasperis says.

Prices start at around $240,000.

Eleven% of the homes at Stu­dio on Rich­mond — or about 36 suites in the first tower — will be three-bedroom units.

De Gasperis says this stems from an agree­ment with local coun­cil­lor Adam Vaughan, who has been push­ing devel­op­ers in his Trinity-Spadina ward to include 10% “fam­ily hous­ing” in their projects.

“In the last four years, we’ve approved 7,000 new units of hous­ing in the ward, and every sin­gle project, save for one, achieved 10% fam­ily hous­ing as a mix,” says Vaughan.

“The real­ity is we know there’s a grow­ing need for fam­i­lies in the down­town core, and for hous­ing more fam­i­lies in the down­town core close to work.

“And we’re either going to build a city that can be flex­i­ble and man­age the diver­sity going for­ward or we’re going to build for the con­di­tions of what sold yes­ter­day. This is about build­ing a city for the next 50 years.”

Crit­ics say it will be tough to sell con­dos of that size down­town. De Gasperis fig­ures a three-bedroom unit at Stu­dio will go for “north of $700,000.”

“Is there a mar­ket for that? Well, we’re going to test it,” he says. “If not, we’re just going to have to dis­count those units even­tu­ally. It’ll be dif­fi­cult, there’s no ques­tion, because of the end price.”

Sales are slated to launch in November.

Aspen Ridge is tar­get­ing exist­ing area res­i­dents and young pro­fes­sion­als work­ing in the finan­cial dis­trict. It’s also look­ing to entice back to the area those who were dri­ven away by all the clubs.

“It’s a highly sought-after site,” De Gasperis says. “And it’s a slick building.”

Quad­ran­gle Archi­tects designed the two tow­ers, which fea­ture a series of stacked cubes. There will be ter­races on some floors, “which breaks it up so it’s not a monot­o­nous build­ing,” De Gasperis says.

The first tower — which will incor­po­rate the OCAD gallery — will have an out­door party room, walk-out kitchen, BBQ and lounge area on the ninth floor. Inside there will be a party space that can be divided into a series of smaller rooms.

Details have yet to be worked out for the taller building’s podium space.

De Gasperis says the tower might have town­homes at its base, or retail space with res­i­dences above.

“It really depends on how revi­tal­ized the area gets once we get to the sec­ond phase,” he says. “Retail is sort of suf­fer­ing at the moment because Rich­mond is almost a high­way. It’s a lit­tle rushed for retail.”

He notes there are plans in the works to turn Rich­mond and Ade­laide back into two-way streets. “We’re hop­ing that with those pro­posed changes, it’ll cre­ate more foot traf­fic in the area, which will help the retail.”

OCAD’s 8,000-square-foot space will be used pri­mar­ily for exhi­bi­tions, with a por­tion leased out to a food and bev­er­age ser­vice operator.

“Some peo­ple may come to have lunch and wan­der next door to see what’s on in the var­i­ous gal­leries,” says Cald­well, “or peo­ple may come to see our gal­leries and stay for a glass of wine and a light dinner.”

The exhibit space will be divided into dif­fer­ent areas, he says, allow­ing for dif­fer­ent events to be held simultaneously.

“The idea is for it to be a bee­hive of activ­ity, with con­stantly chang­ing exhibits, not shows that’ll stay there for four months. We want it to be a very dynamic space.”

Aspen Ridge plans to com­ple­ment OCAD’s space by car­ry­ing cer­tain of its design ele­ments through into the condo build­ing and by fea­tur­ing stu­dents’ art in the lobby.

“We’re going to inte­grate their space with ours,” De Gasperis says. “We want to do some­thing sort of funky, a lit­tle bit more in tune with the gallery space, and we want to incor­po­rate that into the design of our podium.”

OCAD obvi­ously ben­e­fits from the donated space. But as Cald­well points out, the school’s pres­ence in the neigh­bour­hood in turn will ensure the area is ani­mated and vibrant.

“Hav­ing pro­fes­sors and art and design stu­dents in the com­mu­nity, work­ing in the com­mu­nity, study­ing in the com­mu­nity, enlivens it in a won­der­ful cre­ative way,” he says, not­ing that the school will also sup­port restau­rants and ser­vices in the area.

“It’s a real win-win-win sit­u­a­tion,” says Vaughan. “(OCAD) gives the build­ing a unique iden­tity in a crowded mar­ket, it deliv­ers a strong anchor to a res­i­den­tial prop­erty and it helps us revi­tal­ize Rich­mond St. all at the same time.

“In my view, it rep­re­sents a respon­si­ble and cre­ative way to build a city.”

And when it comes to woo­ing would-be buy­ers, the OCAD gallery will pro­vide Aspen Ridge with a nat­ural mar­ket­ing hook.

“Peo­ple who move into this build­ing will be sur­rounded by real artists and design­ers,” Cald­well says. “This will be an authen­tic experience.”

Increased height = Increased benefits

The OCAD-Aspen Ridge part­ner­ship has its basis in Sec­tion 37 of the City of Toronto’s Plan­ning Act, which enables the city to change zon­ing bylaws to allow for height or den­sity increases in return for “com­mu­nity benefits.”

Under the arrange­ment, devel­op­ers can either build cer­tain cap­i­tal facil­i­ties — such as libraries, recre­ation cen­tres, com­mu­nity cen­tres and health cen­tres — or make cash con­tri­bu­tions to fund con­struc­tion of such facilities.

The goal is “to address ser­vice needs or defi­cien­cies in the exist­ing community.”

Sec­tion 37 funds can be used for pub­lic art, parks, streetscape improve­ments or the con­ser­va­tion of her­itage properties.

They can also go toward build­ing rental hous­ing to replace demol­ished rental hous­ing, or to pre­serve exist­ing rental housing.

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