Dave LeBlanc – Globe and Mail

There is a glow around archi­tect Paul Oberst when he talks about Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket Lofts.

The 64-year-old trans­planted Ken­tuck­ian seems a rather pos­i­tive fel­low to begin with, but when he casts his mind back, the enthu­si­asm is pal­pa­ble: “I think the building’s quite good, but I thought the story was really, really good.”

It’s a triple-scoop of a good story, actu­ally, from lit­tle things such as what was retained in the three her­itage struc­tures, the big­ger story of the complex’s his­tory as var­i­ous edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions and, finally, to how a neigh­bour­hood came together in the 1990s to see their vision realized.

Stand­ing in dap­pled shade of the building’s pri­vate court­yard, he points to where a siz­able chunk of the glazed-terracotta-clad 1952 build­ing was removed to allow for this ameni­ties space. Set back into the new facade are gen­er­ous bal­conies with zigzag­ging cur­tain walls, and below these are lit­tle square win­dows into the park­ing garage made from reclaimed glass block. “So you walk into the park­ing deck and there’s nat­ural light in there,” he says, pleased.

Sure, it’s a lit­tle thing that he and the other design­ers did, but it’s thought­ful: so too was keep­ing the many orig­i­nal, wide ter­razzo stair­cases. The stairs are wide, he reminds, because of the “hun­dreds of peo­ple” that stud­ied here.

The first group arrived in the form of lit­tle chil­dren, when the William Hous­ton Pub­lic School – a hand­some three-and-a-half-storey build­ing of rug brick and over­sized win­dows – was built on Nas­sau Street in 1923–24. Sur­rounded by a large yard with a base­ball dia­mond (a local res­i­dent who attended the school showed Mr. Oberst where it had been), by the Depres­sion it was all but empty as kids were pulled out of school and put to work.

After a stint as a mil­i­tary train­ing facil­ity dur­ing the war and then as the Ontario Col­lege of Art after­ward, the build­ing became the Provin­cial Insti­tute of Trades in the early 1950s, when the two ter­ra­cotta build­ings were built to train plumbers, gas­fit­ters, welders and electricians.

When Mr. Oberst first moved to the city in 1970, he’d often walk past and mar­vel at the light­show pro­vided by stu­dent welders behind the glass block: “In the evening there’d be all of this spark­ing in the win­dows, it was really fun.”

George Brown Col­lege took pos­ses­sion of the build­ings in 1968 and would train an entirely new gen­er­a­tion of trades­peo­ple until 1993. When the col­lege declared the build­ings sur­plus shortly after that, Coun­cil­lor Rosario March­ese got the neigh­bour­hood together to dis­cuss their fate.

Mr. Oberst was at that meet­ing, as was another archi­tect, Robert Bar­nett, who had worked on the build­ing for George Brown. Inter­est­ingly, Mr. Barnett’s father, also an archi­tect, had worked on the build­ing decades before.

Despite their size, every­one wanted to see the build­ings stay put, and while some ideas weren’t finan­cially sus­tain­able (such as an art cen­tre), the two archi­tects con­vinced the group that hous­ing was the only real choice. The com­mu­nity work­ing group then came up with a wish list – such as bring­ing retail back to the Bald­win Street side­walk, hav­ing front yards on ground floor units along qui­eter Nas­sau Street and for­bid­ding pedes­trian access between the two streets via the com­plex – and even though they weren’t oblig­ated to do so, offi­cials at George Brown agreed to present the list to poten­tial buyers.

Sur­pris­ingly, find­ing a buyer wasn’t easy. The provin­cial gov­ern­ment, which could have pur­chased the com­plex for seven dol­lars, thought it was a “white ele­phant,” says Mr. Oberst, shak­ing his head at the mem­ory: “An acre-and-a-quarter in down­town Toronto, 200,000 square feet of build­ing and you don’t want it for seven bucks?!”

The munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment didn’t want it either, and a deal with Artscape fell through, so the com­mu­nity group decided to pre­pare an offer; tak­ing into account var­i­ous defi­cien­cies, they came up with a mar­ket value of $1-million.

Unfor­tu­nately, George Brown’s num­ber was sev­eral times that amount, so the com­plex hit the open mar­ket. “I don’t think it was even 20 groups that came through,” remem­bers Mr. Oberst. Regard­less, the col­lege did get at least one offer, which was, iron­i­cally, $1-million, and it was accepted.

When that devel­oper couldn’t close the deal, Mr. Oberst con­vinced a friend and col­league, archi­tect Lloyd Alter and his then devel­op­ment part­ner Howard Cohen (who, with­out Mr. Alter, started Con­text Devel­op­ment before project’s end) to come take a look. They were able to buy the exist­ing con­tract and secure financ­ing from the Ontario Realty Cor­po­ra­tion due to meet­ing the afford­able hous­ing threshold.

“We had Auto­CAD draw­ings ready to go,” says Mr. Oberst, who at that point still wasn’t sure he and Mr. Bar­nett would get the nod as chief archi­tects on the project. How­ever, because of his rela­tion­ship with Mr. Alter and an agree­ment to hire the “new, up-and-coming, hot guys on the block” Mar­tin Kohn and John Shnier as co-designers, it hap­pened. Good thing, since mar­ry­ing three vin­tage build­ings, carv­ing them into lofts, adding three lev­els of park­ing and ful­fill­ing the com­mu­nity wish list wasn’t easy.

Less than a year after hun­dreds of happy new own­ers moved in, the project won Hon­ourable Men­tion at the City of Toronto’s 2000 Archi­tec­ture & Urban Design Awards. “The community-driven devel­op­ment process for this project is com­mend­able,” began the awards book­let, which hailed the design as a “skill­ful reha­bil­i­ta­tion of a sur­plus building.”

While no men­tion was made of the new glow in the sky over­head, it’s still there if you look long enough.

———————————————————————————————————————
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.
———————————————————————————————————————

provin­cial insti­tute of trades

Related posts:

1. Toronto’s iconic Flat­iron Build­ing up for sale The build­ing, also known as the Good­er­ham Build­ing, was constructed…
2. Mer­chan­dise Build­ing Lofts — 155 Dal­housie Street The Mer­chan­dise Build­ing Lofts is def­i­nitely the biggest loft conversion…
3. A last look at the Impe­r­ial Oil Build­ing (pre-condos) Work­men have already begun gut­ting the office floors of the…
4. Can a build­ing be invis­i­ble? In the mythol­ogy of Mod­ern Toronto, Yonge and Eglin­ton is…
5. Why is it tak­ing so long to build that build­ing? The project at 799 Col­lege St., between Shaw Street and…