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The Tenor (10 Dundas St E, Ent Prop Trust, 10s, Baldwin & Franklin)

  • Thread starter billy corgan19982
  • Start date
MetroMan said:
^ here! here!

The layout of this building is a mess. Looking at floor plans, the good spaces (on the nose) are discouraged from being leased because of the difficulty in gaining access to them from both the street and the lobby.

Somebody needs to take this off PenEquity's hands... there is lots of work to be done to fix the many mistakes that are limiting the potential of Toronto Life Square.
Click to expand...

Yes, taking down the ryerson garage would have dramatically changed this project, but that had nothing to do with Pen. I'm sure they would have preferred to have a perfectly square box just like you find in the suburbs....the whole massing of the project has constrained the flow.

IMO it looks like Pen has done as good of a job as you could do with all the challenges.
 
VoiceofReality said:
You know you're right...come to think of it the last time I went to Future Shop at Yonge - Dundas they didn't ask me how my day was, invite me in to the lunch room or ask whether I was looking forward to the sunset in Yonge-Dundas Square...instead they were too busy selling me one of those boxes and a warranty. I guess they could have piled inventory against the outside perimeter like most retailers.

Who can we complain to?
Click to expand...

The point is that they're not making the best use of available space - both on the floor and as far as advertising is concerned.

They could've become famous for their unique advertisements/shows fronting Dundas Square. Instead, we get to watch their employees eating lunch.

I give them credit for giving their employees a nice view. They still have time to do something unique with that prime ad space, but as it stands it's not a very smart use of space.
 
syn said:
The point is that they're not making the best use of available space - both on the floor and as far as advertising is concerned.

They could've become famous for their unique advertisements/shows fronting Dundas Square. Instead, we get to watch their employees eating lunch.

I give them credit for giving their employees a nice view. They still have time to do something unique with that prime ad space, but as it stands it's not a very smart use of space.
Click to expand...

So, we should encourage them to cover up the widows best use of available window space with unique advertisements/shows fronting Dundas Square'.
I dont have a problem with that...I'm sure they were just happy to be open for Christmas and will be more than happy to cut deals with apple / Panasonic / Sony for next summer. These design issues will resolve themselves once their suppliers see how the store performs. If the suggestion is that the lunch room should have been somewhere else I am not sure where it could have gone other than to another floor / mezzanine which would have had other impacts.
 
Milestones could just give the location a similar treatment that The Keg gave to their York Street location.
 
Here's what I think could have been done:

futureshoplayoutqv9.jpg


Actually, the current layout is not permanent. Changes can be done to improve the use of some of those spaces.
 
I'm no retail expert but sending people down a narrow hallway to the other end of the building for DVD's seems hardly ideal for traffic flow. You want people to make impulse buys. That's why they put the DVD's in the middle of the building, so you have to pass them to get to the other side, thus increasing the chance something will catch your eye. The problem here is the nose is in a poorly designed spot guaranteeing it will be back office rather than prime retail.
 
Conrad Black said:
I'm no retail expert but sending people down a narrow hallway to the other end of the building for DVD's seems hardly ideal for traffic flow. You want people to make impulse buys. That's why they put the DVD's in the middle of the building, so you have to pass them to get to the other side, thus increasing the chance something will catch your eye. The problem here is the nose is in a poorly designed spot guaranteeing it will be back office rather than prime retail.
Click to expand...

Stores also dont like having merchandise hiding away in a corner. The whole store should pretty much be seen from the customer service desk. That spot on the Victoria/Dundas side is not ideal for retail.
 
Let's hope they redesign the layout of the nose before summer.

Even covering the windows of the lunchroom with that crap the TTC uses on it's subways and streetcars could possibly work...
 
The current staff area/stock room could be used for flat panel TV's and/or as a home theatre showroom with tinted windows.
At best, the flat panel TV's and computer areas should be switched. The tint, cardboard, plywood or whatever could then be removed from the windows to open up the space and the flat panels would offer much better images under controlled lighting conditions.
 
^ Not necessarily. The hall between the two sides is actually quite wide. It's artificially made narrow because of the stock room built next to it.

If the stock room were to be built on the opposite side as per my layout suggestion, a "specialty room" could be placed in there.

Better yet... if FutureShop saw the need, they could add a new entrance at the "nose" on the main level and provide escalators to the second floor nose. This would work if FutureShop wanted to create a specialty shop for DVD's, CD's and Games for example.

There are plenty of possibilities but unfortunately, Futureshop has chosen none of the good ones.
 
Upon further inspection, it seems that the freight elevators are located near the hall between the main building and the nose, which is why the stock room needed to go where it is.

Perhaps PenEquity should have never connected the two. Instead, the main floor "nose" and the second floor "nose" should have been leased as one unit with access to the second floor from street level on Dundas and Victoria.

Ideally, a McDonalds or some other fast food place should have gone here with second floor seating.

I guess lots of configurations can and will happen as the building develops in the future.
 
Not trying to be a goof but McDonalds = a place to eat = a lunchroom. But I agree with your thoughts. Perhaps in the future a two floor operation will take this space.

Otherwise terrible design for this part. They should have thought things through. What kind of developer that specializes in retail would make this mistake? Oh right Penequity's involved.
 
could we at least wait until the whole building is finished and everybody has moved in for at least, say, 6 months, before we trash how they've set things up?

to me it's like walking into someone's house, a house they've just moved into over the weekend, and trashing them for having boxes lying around and having not put up their art work. or figured out where best to put the tv.

maybe. anyway.
 
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