Raja Mous­saoui – Toronto Star

The debate over how Toronto can absorb more peo­ple while pre­serv­ing old land­marks is unfold­ing in two very dif­fer­ent ways near the inter­sec­tion of Yonge St. and Eglin­ton Ave.

Well-publicized protests over the sale of Postal Sta­tion K to a pri­vate devel­oper high­light the tra­di­tional bat­tle between her­itage con­ser­va­tion and the demand for development.

But around the cor­ner, on Eglin­ton Ave., city plan­ners are test­ing a new con­cept to cre­ate more liv­ing space with­out destroy­ing much-loved old buildings.

This type of hybrid archi­tec­ture is being adopted in cities older and more dense than Toronto, such as Lon­don, Eng­land, and New York. The idea is sim­ple enough: Cre­ate rel­a­tively small, con­tem­po­rary exten­sions and slot them into and around his­toric mid-rise build­ings. Design experts call it “a del­i­cate adding of density.”

In Toronto, a new city plan­ning pol­icy that encour­ages this type of devel­op­ment is grad­u­ally gain­ing atten­tion. “It’s the first time the city has been pro-active in terms of artic­u­lat­ing the kind of devel­op­ment that we haven’t seen but that we want to see,” said Lorna Day, project man­ager for the Avenues and Mid-Rise Build­ings Study, which was endorsed by city coun­cil in 2010.

The study takes the gen­eral guide­lines set out in the Offi­cial Plan and applies to Toronto exam­ples of her­itage con­ser­va­tion tech­niques found in a num­ber of cities around the world.

Through this process, the city has decided that Toronto’s so-called Avenues (main arte­r­ial roads such as Eglin­ton Ave.) should grow through mid-rise devel­op­ment. The plan is to imple­ment zon­ing laws that enforce that decision.

“We cer­tainly don’t need tow­ers on the Avenues,” Day said.

The con­tro­versy over Postal Sta­tion K points to the wide­spread con­cern about los­ing sig­nif­i­cant her­itage build­ings to condo tow­ers. Local res­i­dents ral­lied but failed to stop the sale of the postal station.

The site of Postal Sta­tion K, an Art Deco build­ing built in 1937, has a long his­tory. In 1837, it was the site of Montgomery’s Tav­ern, where William Lyon Macken­zie orga­nized, launched and ended the Upper Canada Rebel­lion. The devel­oper has promised to work with res­i­dents to find a solu­tion every­one can live with.

Over the next few months, Day’s team will use these mid-rise per­for­mance stan­dards to deter­mine the new zon­ing reg­u­la­tions for Eglin­ton Ave.

“Addi­tion” rather than just “ren­o­va­tion” is the name of the game.

Retain­ing a neighbourhood’s his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter while adding more den­sity has its chal­lenges. There are sev­eral rea­sons why the hybrid model is not char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally seen in Toronto.

Ren­o­vat­ing an exist­ing build­ing poses risks: The build­ing may not be struc­turally sound and it may not meet build­ing code require­ments. Both prob­lems can quickly com­pli­cate a ren­o­va­tion and spike costs.

Janna Levitt, prin­ci­pal at Levitt Good­man Archi­tects, a Toronto firm with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in con­ver­sions of old build­ings, said that 15 years ago, devel­op­ers were unwill­ing to ren­o­vate and add to a his­toric build­ing. But now, with land val­ues so high, a devel­oper may be will­ing to absorb the cost of work­ing with a her­itage build­ing in a desir­able – and thus prof­itable – location.

Even now, devel­op­ers will­ing to restore her­itage build­ings will often do so only if they can incor­po­rate it into a tall build­ing that will yield the max­i­mum amount of density.

“We don’t con­trol the eco­nom­ics,” said Day. “What city plan­ning can do, through coun­cil, is to give pre­dictabil­ity and cer­tainty … It doesn’t guar­an­tee the devel­op­ment indus­try will build it, but it does help the speed with which a devel­oper can go from an idea to a building.”

SHoP Archi­tects, a New York City firm, worked closely with city plan­ning offi­cials there to com­plete two hybrid mid-rise projects: The Porter House, in Manhattan’s Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict, and the Gar­den Street Lofts in Hobo­ken, N.J. Both projects com­bine robust, his­tor­i­cal ware­houses with addi­tions of con­tem­po­rary res­i­den­tial units.

“A lot of these ware­houses are incred­i­bly flex­i­ble and can han­dle addi­tional weight,” said Christo­pher Sharples, prin­ci­pal at SHoP Architects.

One Toronto exam­ple of this hybrid form is the Print­ing Fac­tory Lofts, on Car­law Ave. near Queen St., where an early 20^th cen­tury ware­house was topped with a mod­ern steel and glass exten­sion that raised the entire build­ing to a height of eight storeys.

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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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plan­ner Eugene Faludi regent park

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