I don't agree with Hume on this, but frankly, these reviews are highly beside the point anyways. If you cut through his blather, then this is the sum total of what he actually addresses about this building:
The miserable green metal columns that support the glass canopy clutter the sidewalk and the building. You just want to get past it as fast as possible.
The frontage on Bay and Gerrard Sts. has been broken up into a series of bays that reach up from a four-storey base. The bricks are beige and the results aren't pretty.
The rest could really be about any building anywhere. I do agree that the green metal columns are unfortunate (and we've discussed that a lot here), but I find his statement that you want to get past it as fast as possible to be bizarrely overstated. I have no problem with the brick colour, and find that throwaway comment thoughtless.
As for the row of four houses that survived nearby - they were boilerplate in their own time. The developer who put those up made a row of houses did more or less what every other developer did at the time, in the same style, with a profit motive. Sometimes I find Hume weirdly sentimental, without thought.
Myself, I would say that this building does a reasonable job of what it needs to do. It provides retail along both Bay and Gerrard in a way that is quite useful, it defines the street with its mass, the entrances for cars are as discreet as they can be, it acknowledges that it is on a corner with its rounded edge on the second floor and its angled window treatment.
It sort of reminds me of a Berlin loaf. Of such things are cities built.
