Arch Record: A Conservative Outlook for TO Offices

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A Conservative Outlook for Toronto Offices

December 8, 2006


Much has changed about Toronto since Paul Goldberger, as architecture critic for The New York Times, noted in a 1992 column that the city “hasn't been much of a place for architecture.â€

Since then, an uncharacteristically adventurous agenda initiated C$1 billion worth of cultural facilities, including a Frank Gehry remake of the Art Gallery of Ontario and a Daniel Libeskind addition to the Royal Ontario Museum, that are underway. Yet Toronto will not quite retreat to its more subdued status quo next year when work begins on 3.1 million square feet of space in three office towers. Tall, sleek, and sedate, they are the first to be built in the downtown core since the early 1990s, when a recession froze office construction.

Brookfield Properties Corporation is resurrecting Bay-Adelaide Centre, a 1.1-million-square-foot, 50-story office tower with adjacent hotel and condo whose clock stopped 13 years ago; local architects WZMH designed the first scheme for Trizec Hahn, the original developer, and its subsequent incarnations. A 30-story, 780,000-square-foot tower, a joint venture of Menkes Developments, Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan, and Halcyon Partners Fund, is designed by Adamson Associates in association with Sweeney Sterling Finlayson & Company. And the Cadillac Fairview Corporation will build a 43-story, 1.2-million-square-foot tower while also co-developing an adjacent 53-storey Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Residences; Kohn Pederson Fox Architects designed both buildings. All three projects will be completed by 2009.

Bruce Kuwabara, a founding partner of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, Toronto, and one of Canada’s most prominent architects, says the three new towers do not challenge the city’s architectural fabric because “after a long drought in office buildings, neither Toronto developers nor the market can make a big statement about design.â€

The city’s entrenched conservatism is compounded by the unnerving memory of the early 1990s, when downtown Toronto’s office vacancy rate shot past 20 percent. While the three new tower developers landed the anchor tenants they needed to warrant construction, they are by no means heading into an unstoppable market that would handily fill the rest of the space.

In late September, a CB Richard Ellis Limited report noted that growth in the office sector had stopped nationwide, except for Calgary. Toronto’s vacancy rates during the second quarter rose from 8.7 to 9 percent, and CB Richard Ellis expects that rate to increase to 10.2 percent when the three towers are completed. “Developers looking to build new office towers in the downtown Toronto core are probably taking a hard look at office vacancy rates,†the report noted.

Even though neither the current crop of office buildings nor market forces promise to give Toronto office developments an architectural jolt in the near or even distant future, the three forthcoming projects do set a higher urban-design standard among the mainly undistinguished structures on the city’s skyline.

James Parakh, an architect and senior urban designer in the City of Toronto’s planning department, enthuses about their contributions to the public realm, which include new plazas and extensions to the downtown’s underground PATH system, the 4 million-square-foot underground shopping complex.

Kuwabara concurs, adding that the three towers will rebalance the mix of uses in the wake of a condo boom downtown: “It’s the vibrant mixed-use downtown that Toronto should be about, connected to the commuter line, with an urban design that emphasizes pedestian connections.â€

Albert Warson

 

[green22]

City goals

James Parakh, an architect and senior urban designer in the City of Toronto’s planning department, enthuses about their contributions to the public realm, which include new plazas and extensions to the downtown’s underground PATH system, the 4 million-square-foot underground shopping complex.

Cities whose downtowns have been ruined by under or overhead PATH-type systems such as Houston and Minneapolis are now trying to disconnect buildings from these systems. The Brookfield development will have a negative effect on Bay street by eliminating active uses at-grade.
Tourists do not travel to Toronto to visit the sterile PATH system, they can find this level of shopping excitement within your average airport terminal without embarking on a plane.
A city whose streets are barren and lifeless is a dead city. PATH stores should accommodate the overflow of retail from the street, not replace streetlife.

We should take advantage of downtown mixed-use density to create an attractive 24-hour city centre, not a typical tower in the park/plaza downtown where street life is forced underground. Let's follow the vibrant centres of New York and London, not the mistakes of central Dallas and St. Paul. Remember these cities at one time had exciting downtowns before embarking on suburban models prescribed by city planners in co-operation with large corporations.

Officials had to admit that neither the heat in Houston nor the cold in Minneapolis was the reason citizens abandoned their sidewalks. The major factor was the competition created by a parallel retail environment growing out of the actions of corporations reacting to years of city policy.

If skylines are a symbol of a successful downtown then central Detroit and Houston would likely rank ahead of Paris and Rome. However the life of downtown streets form a large part of a region's psyche. A downtown whose streets are full of plazas and lobbies but lacking in active use is likely to repel pedestrians activity.

This recent essentially positive National Post article on the PATH system nevertheless reveals a few of the weaknesses of it being a replacement for downtown.
Follow the PATH to surprise
www.canada.com/nationalpo...e7b255479e

 

[TdotTrickyRicky]

I agree with the notion of fostering an active at grade street-life. Why however do we need to use examples of failed off-grade pedestrian planes to justify our decision making here? PATH is here and here to stay so why don't we foster the development of both PATH and the street? If they are both reasonably successful as is the case now there will exist a hive of human activity with an intensity that exceeds what can be offered in cities mentioned like New York or London who rely more exclusively on the ground plane. Our inclination towards covered mall retail and the vast network of underground parking make an underground pedestrian plane a natural organic development pattern in the city.

 

[boiler2000]

As someone who lives downtown and walks nearly everywhere, I find the PATH extremely useful on freezing winter days (and nights) - it allows one to walk great distances without being exposed to the elements. Especially in the core, the large towers really create wind-tunnel effects in a lot of places, and walking around is brutal when it's very cold out.

Also, where at grade would we fit all those fast-food joints and convenience stores and shoe repair shops and all the other stuff that people use down in the PATH? Clearly, there is a need for such services there, and downtown would look pretty junky if all of that was at street level...

Fostering street life is fantastic, of course, but when you have such huge density as we have in the financial district, with tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people working within a few blocks, you might need something else. The PATH works, and it exists mainly in an area that's dominated by office uses, where it doesn't threaten lively street-level commercial districts. It's a fairly unique feature of our city, and comes in real handy when you need to get out of the cold, which is the case for much of the year in these parts...

That's my (humble) view anyway.

 

[adma]

Re: City goals

Cities whose downtowns have been ruined by under or overhead PATH-type systems such as Houston and Minneapolis are now trying to disconnect buildings from these systems.

Except that in practice, it's the overhead system that's more readily remediable (cf. Minneapolis, Cincinnati). And when it comes to underground, more often than not it hasn't been a matter of "disconnecting buildings from these systems"; it's the fact that said buildings/complexes with underground/enclosed shopping seldom seemed to be guided by an overall urban rationale. Their problem is that they weren't connected *enough*--or (as with so many failed urban Eaton Centre wannabes in places like St. Louis, etc) any "connectedness" hinged too much upon some vain, overwrought, and quickly-dated "destination retail" fantasy. They had to disconnect themselves from *their own* systems, because urban planning and urban-core demographics (retail and otherwise) failed them.

By this standard, PATH (and satellite systems, Bloor/Yonge especially) succeeds, because it *does* connect into a cohesive, critical mass (subway included) with *plenty* of active use (at least on weekday business hours, harrumph harrumph--but even outside of that, it feels like it's just "slumbering" rather than dead). And it does so very disarmingly matter-of-factly--to me, the most characteristic PATH retail are those clothing purveyors for schlumpy secretarial staff like Strut or BeBeJoon. In response to the claim that "tourists do not travel to Toronto to visit the sterile PATH system", I'd counter-claim that it's not meant for the "tourist". It's meant for the "user". And if it were the "tourist" (or "suburban daytripper", as the case may be) that was paramount, well, that'd be the death of PATH, much as it was for any number of downtown ped malls or Eaton Centre clones. (And as proof of how "critical mass" is important, imagine what it might be like if some of PATH's "minor" components--like, say, 55 University--were standalone affairs, unconnected to neighbours, unconnected to the subway, etc.)

Yes, maybe it's not "at-grade"--but, all things considered, I feel PATH is more of an augmentation rather than negation of what exists at-grade. It *does* "accomodate the overflow", whether one likes it or not. And when it comes to "abandoned sidewalks", well, the downtown core was no more or less deserted after-hours and on weekends 50 years ago than now; such is the fact of the CBD.

If one must attack Bay/Adelaide as a deadening influence, it's for its perpetuating the sterile-corporate-megadevelopment status quo, not for its perpetuating the PATH network. (And conversely, my defence of PATH hinges somewhat upon accepting the necessary-evilness of said status quo.)

And remember: the "deadest" (by overzealous anti-PATH standards) place of all downtown is, in certain respects, the greatest of all: the T-D Centre...

 

[adma]

Also, where at grade would we fit all those fast-food joints and convenience stores and shoe repair shops and all the other stuff that people use down in the PATH? Clearly, there is a need for such services there, and downtown would look pretty junky if all of that was at street level...

Is "junky" bad? After all, Novelty Shoe Repair has been thriving on Yonge N of Adelaide for ages now, and long may it stay. (And even when it comes to the chain-iest fast-food and convenience, the various street-level Tim's or the Sterling Tower 7-11 aren't--aside from the "chain" factor--negatives in the very least.)

At-grade and PATH are symbiotic.

 

[Brighter Hell]

PATH is here and here to stay so why don't we foster the development of both PATH and the street?

That's exactly what green's suggesting:

PATH stores should accommodate the overflow of retail from the street, not replace streetlife.

It's not a one-or-the-other scenario. PATH retail doesn't have to preclude street retail. Why can't new office buildings have both?

 

[Citywriter]

It's not a one-or-the-other scenario. PATH retail doesn't have to preclude street retail. Why can't new office buildings have both?

Because, clearly (thanks to PATH???) there's not much demand for street-level retail space in the inner financial district. I mean, how much rent can the dollar stores and mattress shop -- even Novelty -- be paying?

 

[Mark Dowling]

well, in the depth of winter or the height of smog-mer I'm damned glad of the PATH.

A subgrade shopping complex makes sense in the context of a city with a subway. Plainly retail happens over multiple levels in downtown, a concept lost on, say, Eglinton West.

 

[Archivistower]

I have no problem with path, and largely agree with Adma's comments. I think the assertion that PATH has been harmful to Toronto's street life needs to be proven or disproven, not simply stated, and I would think that in the end the impact of PATH on the city is quite complex. green did not cite, for instance, Montreal with a very comparable network but which is also reknown for its street life. Also as regards this comment: "Let's follow the vibrant centres of New York and London" - I went to photograph the St. Mary Axe building in London on a Sunday, and for blocks and blocks and blocks around it, there was not one business open. I mean, nothing. At all. We have no corresponding area in Toronto as dead or as empty that I've ever seen.

(It was actually sort of amusing. The only people on the streets were, like me, there to see and photograph the gherkin. There we were on the dead streets, with our cameras, like moths to a flame.)

My point being, financial districts around the world are dead during off hours. Period. The streets that matter - Yonge, Queen, Bloor - don't seem necessarily to have been badly hurt by the PATH network.

 

[cdl42]

"I went to photograph the St. Mary Axe building in London on a Sunday, and for blocks and blocks and blocks around it, there was not one business open. I mean, nothing. At all. We have no corresponding area in Toronto as dead or as empty that I've ever seen."

I've experienced the same thing. It really is remarkable how dead The City is evenings and weekends.

I think the most important fact to remember in Toronto is that both the streets and PATH are packed with people during the day and both the streets and PATH are dead or quiet during evenings and weekends. It's not one or the other, it's both.

 

[adma]

Because, clearly (thanks to PATH???) there's not much demand for street-level retail space in the inner financial district. I mean, how much rent can the dollar stores and mattress shop -- even Novelty -- be paying?

Maybe the nature of the landlords has something to explain for, too. It's a tough choice; either corporate-developer sterility, or the chintzier "small retail" lower end which may, in many cases, be benignly or unbenignly neglected and holding out for the developers--with nary any middle ground--and besides, there's very little "lower-end" critical mass in the core left, compared to a generation ago.

At this point, I'd agree; there's not just "not much demand", there's not enough street-level retail space as it stands. Though part of that is an illusion generated by all that's indoors these days--in effect, PATH may double or even triple the amount of retail that'd otherwise be "outdoors", even if the existing development was "retail-streetfronted". So, in effect, there's *more* demand than the streets, by themselves, can offer.

About the only way to "induce" outdoor-retail dominance, I guess, would be if Bay-Adelaide were replanned along the lines of the St. Lawrence Starch site in Port Credit...

 

[Degnaw]

(and satellite systems, Bloor/Yonge especially)

Could somebody explain that?

 

[cdl42]

Not sure what you would like to be explained. Basically, there's a second mini-PATH network up around Yonge and Bloor. Not the main system, hence a satellite system.

 

[maxy505]

Downtown NYC is dead on weekends too.

That's not a defense of Toronto's financial area, though -- can't we aim for something better, for once, than NYC and London?

Well anyways, I personally don't mind a minor dead zone.