Remember when I had the audacity to suggest (gulp!) that building a $20 Billion subway line across Eglinton Avenue should make us consider adding density along that line?
What a crazy idea!
Well, at least the neighbours in Leaside thought so, as they put up yellow lawn signs arguing against “bad planning.”
Ironically, “bad planning” is the exact opposite of what the neighbours suggested, ie. spending $20 Billion on transit, only to have nobody use that transit, on account of nobody living in density surrounding the transit stops.
But that’s a topic for another day! Or, perahps yesterday…
Now, the Eglinton LRT is a new piece of infrastructure, so it could take some time to allow for the amount of density that would make the new line worthwhile.
Meanwhile, on the Yonge line, we have a series of transit stops with varying levels of density.
Yonge & Sheppard is a city unto itself with tens of thousands of people using the subway stop every day.
Meanwhile, the Rosedale TTC station might see a handful of prep school kids coming-and-going with every stop at a very quiet station.
When I was growing up, Yonge & Eglinton wasn’t all that busy. I remember in the late-1990’s when the new “SilverCity” movie theatre opened, and that seemed to be the turning point for this area.
Today, Yonge & Eglinton is its own Metropolis, sort of like Yonge & Sheppard, but perhaps less frenetic.
For years, people have sought out Yonge & St. Clair as they might not want a quieter, quainter alternative to Yonge & Eglinton.
But a few recent projects, both approved and in approval phases, are going to change the face of Yonge & St. Clair forever.
Let’s look the main residential buildings in the area just for context.
We’ll go oldest-to-newest, just for fun…
61 & 63 St. Clair Avenue West
“Granite Place”
1979
18-Storeys
–
47 St. Clair Avenue West
“The Westclair”
1988
13-Storeys
–
40 Rosehill Avenue
“40 Rosehill Avenue Condos”
1988
15-Storeys
–
5 Rosehill Avenue
“5 Rosehill”
1998
7-Storeys
–
1 Balmoral Avenue
“One Balmoral”
1998
9-Storeys
–
33 Delisle Avenue
“33 Delisle Avenue Condos”
2003
11-Storeys
–
10 Delisle Avenue
“The St. Clair”
2004
15-Storeys
–
48 St. Clair Avenue West
“Park Avenue”
2005
13-Storeys
–
55 Delisle Avenue
“The Carlyle”
2006
12-Storeys
–
60 St. Clair Avenue West
“60 St. Clair”
2007
14-Storeys
–
1430 Yonge Street
“The Clairmont”
2008
14-Storeys
–
6 Jackes Avenue
“The Jack”
2021
11-Storeys
Alright, so perhaps with photos, that was a bit long in the tooth, but you get the picture.
The first of the major condominiums in the area came along in 1979, aka the year before I was born, and the most recent is about 2-years-old now and looking pretty sharp! Although, who doesn’t miss seeing “CHUM FM” on the east side of Yonge Street in huge letters?
If we look at the number of storeys, we see a low of seven and a high of eighteen.
What’s more interesting is that there are so many buildings in such a small range of heights:
7-Storeys
9-Storeys
11-Storeys
11-Storeys
12-Storeys
13-Storeys
13-Storeys
14-Storeys
14-Storeys
15-Storeys
15-Storeys
18-Storeys
This is why we always felt that Yonge & St. Clair was “quaint” when compared to something like Yonge & Eglinton, which is home to a multitude of 40, 50, and 60-storey condos, with a lot more on the way!
But if you’ve been following the development plans around the Yonge & St. Clair area like I have, you’ll undoubtedly have seen the signs for a posh new development called “One Delisle.”
One of anything is, for some odd reason, attractive.
Perhaps it’s like the gold medal or first place, I don’t know.
But 10 Delisle, 33 Delisle, and 55 Delisle can all eat their hearts out as they fawn over “One Delisle.”
Now, personally, I think this is ugly as hell, but I’m not an engineer nor am I in architecture, plus, my friends say I’m boring. So what do I know?
But it looks like a cylindrical version of an upside-down pineapple:
You’re trying to picture a pineapple, aren’t you?
It’s some sort of fruit or vegetable that’s banging off the walls of my brain, but I’m not sure.
One Delisle was launched in mid-2021 and is slated for occupancy in 2026.
Prices are, from what I can gather, around $2,300/sqft in pre-construction, but those prices may have fluctuated with the market.
Parking spaces are a mere $160,000.
But it’s the height of this tower that I find interesting as it’s going to soar some 47-storeys high!
That’s a far cry from the thirteen towers we noted above that range from 7-storeys to 18-storeys.
However, this is not going to be the tallest building in the area.
Nope.
Those 47-Storeys were trumped pretty quickly by this tower which will be built at 1365 – 1375 Yonge Street (at Rosehill Ave), and will rise 50-Storeys:
See the small building in the foreground, on the right?
That’s 5 Rosehill Avenue. A 1998-built condo, rising a mere 7-storeys.
For those residents in the area who don’t love the idea of a 50-storey condo, this has to be a lot tougher to swallow, given what this development was originally planned to be.
Are you ready for this?
A nursing home.
Yes.
A nursing home was scrapped in favour of a 50-storey condo, but the nursing home was “only” going to be 17-storeys, so I suppose it’s tough for any developer to give that up…
HERE is the City of Toronto zoning bylaw application amendment, dated November 16th, 2020.
An investment trust called “Welltower Inc” owned the site and had planned to build a total of 239 “bedsitting rooms” (123 assisted living and 116 memory care rooms) and an additional 5,000 square feet of
non-residential floor area.
The site was sold to three Toronto-based firms, Cameron Stephens Equity Capital, Originate Developments and Westdale Properties, which will all partner in the new development.
Next up, we have an entire redevelopment of the east side of Yonge Street, across from the site of “The One.”
Four buildings are slated for this project, at 47, 39, 27, and 13 storeys respectively:
This project is massive.
It encompasses all of 1481 through 1485 Yonge Street, plus 1 to 31 Heath Street East, 30 to 36 Alvin Avenue, and 26 St. Clair Avenue East.
HERE is the application on the City of Toronto’s website.
These buildings will encompass 1,361 new condominium units, a new park at the northwest corner of the site, and a courtyard privately owned publicly-accessible space
Not to be outdone, there is a another high-rise planned, although this one is only 39-storeys:
This will be called “The Hill” and is by Metropia, which was founded by the former CEO and founder of better-known Tribute Communities.
39-storeys, 406 units, and sales apparently starting this fall, but projects like this are tough to pinpoint.
Had enough yet?
I hope not!
Because there’s even more on the way!
Slate Asset Management controls all four corners of Yonge & St. Clair.
An application has been filed to build a 49-storey tower at 1 St. Clair Avenue west which would contain residential, office, and retail.
Here’s the rendering:
It’s pretty, I’ll give it that!
There’s not a lot of information just yet, and the website for the project simply links to a 2021 page from Urban Toronto, but you get the idea.
Slate Asset Management is going to have a huge hand in how this intersection looks as the next generation of Torontonians take roots, and personally, I don’t hate it.
There’s a subway stop at the intersection. There’s a streetcar running west and a bus running east. Yonge Street is literally and figuratively the “major artery” of the central core, and I think that every single 2-storey retail shop on Yonge Street, from Front Street all the way to Finch Avenue, is eventually going to have high-rises.
No, the neighbours in Rosedale, Summerhill, Chaplin Estates, Davisville Village, Allenby, Bedford Park, Sherwood Park, Lawrence Park, Teddington Park, et al might not like it, but it’s coming.
Don’t even get me started on The Danforth and how/when/why we’ll see high rises lining the street from Broadview eastward.
Density makes sense when it’s on a subway line in a city with one of the worst public transit systems of all comparable major cities across the planet.
Or should we still be NIMBY’ing our way to building 6-storey towers?
JF007
at 7:49 am
“It’s some sort of fruit or vegetable that’s banging off the walls of my brain, but I’m not sure.”- Maybe an Asparagus @David F😜
hoob
at 8:59 am
I coulda sworn this was already posted on Monday…
JL
at 11:19 am
You’re not wrong… I think I lost my original comment when it was taken down.
The gist of it was the observation that Yonge/Eglinton and areas like it lack a “transition” zone around them. While most cities have detached lowrise suburbs, with a midrise inner suburb before the hyper dense inner core, Toronto seems to go from lowrise housing to 50 storey towers on the other side of the street. Maybe its just a function of developing in the new century (and deliberately skipping the less economical? midrise stage that more mature cities undertook last century and then later selectively upgraded into high rise), but it does contribute to the disconnect (and friction) between these neighborhoods and everything around them.
David Fleming
at 10:12 am
Sorry guys!
I post Mon/Wed/Fri as you know. I accidentally scheduled this for Tuesday, and I’m not up at 6am when the blogs go live, so I didn’t notice for about two hours! 🙂
Ace Goodheart
at 7:25 pm
They are currently building a subway (well actually an underground street car) from Eglinton and Weston to Mississauga, along Eglinton West.
The bus route that runs here I’d always 3/4 empty.
The stations front on single family home backyard fences.
I’ve ridden the University extension up past Pioneer village Station (which is located in a lovely farm field).
I’ve ridden the Sheppard subway to nowhere.
I’ve walked the leafy, single family home neigjbourhoods, wide expanses of sprawling suburbia, where the multi billion dollar Scarborough subway will have its station stops (are they still avoiding the Scarborough town center as a station stop location because, well there are just too many people there!)?
The folks in charge of GTA transit are highly skilled at building subways to nowhere in the middle of nothing at all.
The hope always seems to be that density will follow.
But why not build a subway where density already is?
Does that just make too much sense?
Izzy Bedibida
at 9:43 pm
The hired help/domestic workers need to get to their job sites in reasonable time. They can not spend up to 2 hrs on transit to get to different domestic jobs and either risk getting fired or putting in 12 plus hrs and only putting 2-4 hrs of cleaning jobs put in.
Since they can’t afford cars…this is the best option for them.
Ace Goodheart
at 8:12 am
If you walk through the neighbourhoods that back onto the west extension of the Eglinton crosstown underground street car…
The houses all have two car garages. And driveways that would fit another three or four cars.
The houses are larger than many medium sized Toronto apartment buildings.
The back yards are like parks. Many have private swimming pools.
When I walked through last, a group of kids were playing hockey in the street out front. Not a car in sight. No traffic at all.
These people are getting a subway.
Meanwhile, downtown, people are crammed and packed onto over crowded strreet cars that inch through never ending bumper to bumper traffic. You often have to wait for multiple street cats before you find one with space for you to get on. If you have a stroller or are mobility challenged, forget about it.
The downtown is crying out for more subways.
They build them up in millionaire suburbia.
Nick
at 10:54 am
The Eglinton West is designed to connect to the airport.
That said should it be a priority? No, the UP Express needs two additional stations. One(being built) at Eglinton and one at St Clair.
The Eglinton East now, that should not be built at all. The trips in that area won’t gain versus the current BRT and regular bus service. What would help is the Midtown GO Line. Scuttle all the other projects and do that. Malvern to Summerhill Station. Get all those cars off the road.
Ace Goodheart
at 11:14 am
That was the thing that confused me about Eglinton West crosstown.
There is already going to be an UP Express station at Weston and Eglinton, where the Eglinton West begins.
So people at that station have two options. The UP Express or the eglinton West cross town.
The UP Express will be much quicker.
So who is actually going to use the West Crosstown to get to the airport?
It would make no sense. It’s a much longer trip and not direct (there are lots of stations along the way).
Steve
at 2:45 pm
The UPX is the better option for travellers and workers literally going to the airport itself, the LRT and bus connections will be better options for people working in the industrial areas around the airport.
There is of course also something to be said for redundancy in transit planning, people always complain that we don’t have double tracked subway lines to allow for expresses, bypassing stations, etc. but as soon as they build even an ounce of redundancy into transit planning it is positioned as a waste…
Steve
at 2:46 pm
Oh and of course the fares between the two will be quite different…you are paying a premium for the convenience of the UPX (and even then that’s with a massive taxpayer subsidy).
Ace Goodheart
at 8:29 pm
Here’s a first for news media (blog.to but still technically a news source):
A person apparently crashed their car into the median on the DVP, while drinking Vodka from the bottle (straight up is the best up) and then ran around the highway while drinking from the bottle. When caught, she tried to kick.the window out of a police car.
The news media blames this incident on “the current cost of living crisis .. appallingly high rents … and high bills for everything from hydro to groceries”
So now inflation is a valid excuse for impaired driving?
You heard it first here!
David Fleming
at 10:14 am
@ Ace
Get used to it. This is the way the world is working now.
My Dad says, “Bury your head in the sand, it’s the only way to stay sane.”
Josh Hryniak
at 12:29 pm
Sure, grandpa, whatever you say…
Got any more yarns you want to spin before it’s time for your afternoon nap?
Jenn
at 5:17 pm
Soooooo home prices and grocery bills are an excuse for drinking and driving and violence?!
Derek
at 8:20 pm
Read the article. The gist of the last few paragraphs was that Torontonians are dealing with those general hardships and also idiots on the roads. Ace made a disingenuous comment about the media making excuses. Rage farming.
Vancouver Keith
at 1:23 pm
I’ll offer what is to me a terrifying comment. I believe in transit oriented density, done with some reasonable thought to liveability – (setbacks, variety of building heights, some green and public space – Coal Harbor and False Creek north in Vancouver being excellent examples).
To that end, the long established Commercial Drive station, which is the first station outside of downtown Vancouver proper is finally getting high rise development for a few blocks around the station. Fair enough. The entire neighborhood, at some risk to the funky businesses along the Drive is getting a lot more density – hopefully for the better.
Here’s the rub. After the typically lengthy bureaucratic process, the plan to substantially rebuild the somewhat seedy and essential Brittannia community center has been downgraded to necessary repairs due to (wait for it) – a lack of funds. So all the charges to developers, the rezoning fees for higher density, the community amenity contributions apparently aren’t going to fund enough money to rebuild a community center in a neighborhood that badly needs the best that money can buy.
If density only benefits the real estate industry, while making life somewhat worse for the majority of people, you’re pining for a nasty backlash.