Leaside SmartCentre Addition (Laird-Eglinton 3s Calloway REIT)

[someMidTowner]

I am sure a thread exists for this already but I searched for a while to no avail.

Please move this to the proper thread if one exists

Today:

 

[flonicky]

What a miserable place. And now there's more of it.

 

[Therion]

I shop there every week. It is such a waste of potential that it makes me cry. Whoever commissioned, designed and approved this thing should burn in heck.

 

[Chip?]

A while back I read that John Parker demanded that the entire shopping complex be designed with high quality architecture. I guess kitsch qualifies as 'aesthetically pleasing'.

 

[AlbertC]

The Leaside Smart Centre reminds me of something you would find in an Arizona or SoCal suburb. It's such a bizarrely awful place.

 

[pw20]

The Leaside Smart Centre reminds me of something you would find in an Arizona or SoCal suburb. It's such a bizarrely awful place.

For all of the amazing things happening in Toronto - I would put this block as one of the largest planning errors of the last 15 years in Toronto. Maybe this and Liberty Village. Both aren't huge areas in terms of development - but both had so much "easy potential" (in that they were right next to existing successful urban neighbourhoods) yet turned out remarkably horrible (Liberty Village less so - although in my mind its a greater error simply because its scale is much larger). I question how we can build "urban" from scratch in areas like Markham Centre, or VCC, or Square One, which are isolated from pre-existing urban grids, when we can't even figure out a brown field development that's right next to one of our most successful urban villages (and one that will eventually be right on top of an underground LRT line).

Boo urns to this piece of dreck.

 

[adeel]

i visit this place once a week...just curious as to why the consensus is dislike...what is so bad about it?

What would y'all have envisioned as something worthwhile for this location.

 

[taal]

i visit this place once a week...just curious as to why the consensus is dislike...what is so bad about it?

What would y'all have envisioned as something worthwhile for this location.

Simple mixed use development, I have no problem with the big box stores, though I'm sure some will complain.


I think the design review panel even admitted this was bad design but fit the area, or something along those lines.


I was imagining, 5-10 story buildings with big box stores underneath !

 

[realist123]

I seem to remember hearing that the lands east of Laird were heavily contaminated from years of industrial use, and therefore prohibited any residential / mixed use developments

 

[Southcore]

The Leaside Smart Centre reminds me of something you would find in an Arizona or SoCal suburb. It's such a bizarrely awful place.

I've lived in the GTA (mostly TO) my whole life and went to the Home Depot there for the very first time and was thinking the same thing.