Toronto Motto | 47.85m | 13s | Sierra | RAW Design

Took that long to have a judge dismiss my speeding ticket. LOL

Is the cost to appeal a $20 million condo still a couple $100? Who is not going to appeal a decision against them? There's your 15 months. Asking for too much and then appealing when the city rejects it. Planning has become a negotiation in Toronto. It's a main reason for the OMB replacement.
 
when you step on the land of Westmoreland Park you may feel how the subway track and land vibrate (train slowing down and braking):eek::eek: right at this point. Will it be a big issue?

I felt the subway in the subbasement of a building close to Yonge Station but, it didn't reverberate up the building. You barely noticed it in the basement one storey up.
Assuming this is built the way that Daniels High Park was, (similarly close to the subway) with rubber pucks at the bottom of the columns to absorb the vibration, you won't feel a thing in the building. Same thing was don at the Four Seasons Centre too.

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This site appears on Trinity Group's portfolio: http://www.trinity-group.com/property/bloor-dovercourt/

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Awful everything. Glass retail frontages around the entire building. Is this the beginning of the end for the annex, Koreatown, Bloorcourt area??
 
Yes it really has become unacceptable at this point that the city is expected to lose much of its fine-grained vibrancy on main streets when — as can be seen in that aerial photo above — a similar sized building could be built in the residential area to the north west by assembling a few house lots together.

I don't even super super hate this building (grading on the curve of Toronto standard) and I think some of this scale should be built on the main streets and I don't even really super love these storefronts, but instead of bulldozing a fine-grain irreplaceable city streetscape with a generic anonymizing glasswall situation, what if the focus was more on developing the areas *around* and with our major streets creating new urban districts.

What if the encouraged areas of development were intensifying, say, one block to the north and one block to the south of Bloor St. with medium to medium/high density housing that also had retail/office/community style spaces at streetlevel/mixed in. Some single family houses would remain, of course, and become beautiful features of the neighbourhood, and some could be converted into other purposes. What were once private backyards could become parks. Whole new ideas of what the city could be could become possible. Our quality of life could be increased while realistically also dealing with affordability and sustainability. But! This type of city-building is treated as not even possible here. We sacrifice much that the city will never be able to regain and yet doing the same to single family homes, of which we have thousands upon thousands upon thousands all in a row forever is considered unthinkable, treated as not even a possibility.

Perhaps, I hope, we will come to see the scale of this type of change as an inevitability before we lose too much of the parts of Toronto that make the city a good place to live.
 
Per Bailao's newsletter:

980-990 Bloor Street West Development Update
In September 2016, the owners of 980 - 990 Bloor Street West (northwest corner of Bloor St. West with Dovercourt Road) hosted a pre-application community meeting. In July 2017, a Zoning By-law Amendment application was submitted to City Planning proposing the construction of a 14-storey mixed use building containing 102 residential units and ground level retail.

Upon receiving the application, the City responded requesting some changes that they wished to see made to the proposal, specifically in relation to height, density, over-development of site, and the fact that replacement of rental housing units had not been addressed. On December 17, 2017, the applicant decided to appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), but following a change in the ownership of the property, the new owners decided to work with the City on a settlement.

I am pleased to inform you that both the applicant and City have since reached a settlement, which was endorsed by City Council in November 19, 2019. The following community improvements in this development application were secured:

  • The original 14-storey height has been reduced to 11-storeys, to prevent shadowing in the parks and residential areas;
  • The building step-back has been lowered from the 4th floor to the 3rd floor on the south and east sides of the building;
  • The south, east and west facing balconies have been replaced with Juliette balconies
  • The façade of the west building was reduced from 8 to 6-storeys, with a new 5.5 meter step back;
  • The replacement of all rental units lost form the existing building demolition have been secured; and
  • A $400,000 contribution was secured from the applicant to be used towards parks and laneway improvements.
Thank you to all the residents who participated in the process and helped to achieve this result.
 
What a shame that we're losing these storefronts to another generic glass wall condo.


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Heritage status or not, they should preserve the red-brick facades in the middle of this image. They're lovely Victorian facades. The corner building was likely handsome when it was built as well and could be nicely restored with a cornice and period storefront design. Facade preservation would force them to create a finer grained street level than just a long wall of glass.
 
^With the way facendectomy is consistently done in this city, I honestly dont even think it's worth it.

If we had stronger preservation laws that required more than just keeping a facade, then I would agree with you.
 
^With the way facendectomy is consistently done in this city, I honestly dont even think it's worth it.

If we had stronger preservation laws that required more than just keeping a facade, then I would agree with you.

You have to look at the context. Sometimes, there's nothing more that's worth preserving than a facade. Other times, preserving the facade is too little. These commercial buildings' interiors have most likely been renovated dozens of times. There may not be any heritage features left beyond the facades.
 

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