wow, once again Toronto falls terribly short of the mark.
I dont mind the one at the base of Church Street, south of The Esplanade. It has 5 levels with co-op / public housing units above. Its my favourite place to park when I visit the city...
Here's a wet blanket for ya
55 THE ESPLANADE: Few buildings in Toronto are as depressing as this behemoth.
Sitting like some giant concrete bunker south of the Esplanade and north of the railway tracks, here's a mixed-used project that might have seemed like a good idea at the time – combining residential and parking – but which went all wrong in the doing.
Architecturally, the less said the better. With five floors of residential plunked on top of a four-storey parking garage, it looks like a brick box stacked on a concrete box.
The only part of the complex that has anything to recommend it is a second parking garage that stretches east to Jarvis.
It, at least, has the virtue of a few architectural details such as the arches that extend along the top floor. By contrast, the garage at 55 is so raw and minimal, it might as well be unfinished.
To make matters worse, the site is divided east/west by a laneway. It separates the entrance to the residential slab from the residential slab itself. The former is a tall thin tower connected to the latter by a series of bridges.
Its main purpose seems to be to save residents the humiliation of having to cross the laneway and the garbage bins that clog it.
Then, of course, there's the larger issue of how the complex effectively blocks all future access to the waterfront.
True, the railway embankment is already a barrier, but we could have tunnelled beneath it.
Its location at the foot of Church St. means the building functions as one huge obstacle.
We could have had a lively, pedestrian friendly thoroughfare linking the thriving east downtown north of the tracks with the East Bayfront area on the lake. No matter how you look at it, this building is in the way.
GRADE: D
