Toronto Queen Ashbridge + Bridge + Don Summerville | 60.15m | 17s | TCHC | Teeple + TF

flonicky said:
The first of the bike rings has become detached, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has experience with ... screws.

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Over time, I've grown to despise the square (I also hate the acronym, "POPs"). It's a miserable space and suffers from some of the same issues that plague Baseball Place, further down the road.

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Who did it better? The landscape architects or the render artists?

The 'fancy' renders showed a boardwalk and lights strung above the space.

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The render artist plugged in as much green detail and people into spaces that ended up empty and reserved for cars. There are still tree boxes, but they're not scattered in a haphazard way.

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In this earlier render, the artist imagined something more simple. There's also a boardwalk in this version.

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This version is the most minimal of all. A stark, white, empty space surfaced with cheap, aluminum panels. A bold proposal and I think it would have been a triumph.

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Instead. Barf. The design doesn't even acknowledge the view down to the park.

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One of my top 10 gripes about Toronto is how few places seem to be designed to present a framed view or have seating/windows that would encourage reflection on greenery. Can't fix the old buildings that focused on front & back yards with no side yard, but they could have done something really special with this new building adjacent to a park. Sad. 😥
 
I've heard it from quite a few people who visit the city who describe Toronto (at least the downtown core) as a city of skyscrapers and buildings everywhere, with random plots of green space sprinkled in as "park space".

I think what we see with this development very well epitomizes that description.
 
The Queen Street side is clear and it looks like Ambrosia Natural Foods is taking over almost the entire retail space.

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At least they are using this space on the south side for something. Bike posts.

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And yah... this. Not a good look for a brand new building. This is easily a month's worth of garbage.

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Amare said:
I've heard it from quite a few people who visit the city who describe Toronto (at least the downtown core) as a city of skyscrapers and buildings everywhere, with random plots of green space sprinkled in as "park space".

I think what we see with this development very well epitomizes that description.
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The more extreme YIMBY zealots' have cast Jane Jacobs as villain in their revisionist history but the problem of these east end squares is addressed by Jane Jacobs 101. These public spaces should be framed by a variety of uses at street level to keep them active throughout the day: for example, coffee shops and bakeries bring out the morning crowd, offices, shops and daycare keeps people around throughout the day, pubs and movie theatres bring people around at night, blah, blah, blah. And then it becomes all interdependent and gels and you build community.

Instead, we have Riverside Common aka Baseball Place which is surrounded by car infrastructure on all four sides and no amenities at all facing or fronting on the square, we have the Summerville Ashbridge space sandwiched between car space on two sides with a single coffee shop and an emergency exit fronting awkwardly on the square (and the east side has been planted so that nothing will ever face the square on that side), and Kishigo Lane is going to be the next failure with a single retail space and the childcare fronting on the lane and the theatre entrance on the corner but mostly blank walls on both sides. A square isn't a place, it's the things surrounding the square that bring it to life. These three squares are useless because there's no there there, anywhere, at all.

But industry and government leaders will solidly glaze each other for their failures at the ribbon cutting.
 
Amare said:
I've heard it from quite a few people who visit the city who describe Toronto (at least the downtown core) as a city of skyscrapers and buildings everywhere, with random plots of green space sprinkled in as "park space".

I think what we see with this development very well epitomizes that description.
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Unfortunately, I used to get this a lot from friends of friends who visited, only to discover that their "only" exposure to Toronto was that of the Downtown Core. So, I took them out to High Park, which they thought was cool but also scoffed a little. Then I gave them a geography lesson that high park links to another park, that links to another park, and another park and you could literally (almost) traverse the entire city from South to north through small, mostly medium size, and large parks.

Example: I grew up in North York, right by the Downsview Base. All I knew, more than anything, were parks. Huge parks. They were everywhere and I spent almost every waking hour in them. Shout out to Derrydowns Park and the Downsview Delves, which I then branched out into G Ross Lord Park, Earl Bales Park, Exbury Park, Roding Park, Chalkfarm Park, and many more. And all it took was a bike and determination. Good times. 😌

A bunch of friends say my youthful appearance, for my age, could be the result of all the time I spent playing, exploring, and biking in those parks. 😂
 
I always find the "my friends from another city were visiting and found x part of the city to be crappy" to be the most eye-rolling form of anecdata. It seems to be both a boast ("I have friends in another city and they have good taste") and a lofty complaint ("I suffer through this miserable city despite having good taste"). And people only relay anecdotes that they agree with, so it becomes a way to state your own opinion while pretending it is objective.

Anecdotes are ... well, anecdotes. Incredibly subjective and say more about the teller than the information being relayed.

That being said, the park next to this development is Grade A miserable, and I didn't need friends from out of town to tell me that.
 
I'm not really sure what more people want there. Is the expectation that a park must be right outside the front door of a build? Is it that that park must be an elaborate complex or paths, hills, turns, and the like? or else it's failure? If that's the case, where do we put sports related areas? You can't really pretty them up. They need to be open fields.

As for the park next to the development. You might want to take a closer look.

The park directly across the street from this build may not look like much because you're looking at a baseball field, then a rugby field behind it, a skate park, and a sewer treatment facility. It's a good use of space for sports and activities, though I wouldn't mind seeing some trails added through there going around the fields. Woodbine Park is on the adjacent corner and, though it has a unfortunately large parking lot, it's a good park. It has lots of space and trails for all sorts of activities. Ashbridge's Bay is also less than a 10 min walk away, directly south.

So, I'm confused what the issue is supposed to be here or is this a case of people not really knowing the area but crapping on it anyway?
 
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GameOnBrad said:
I'm not really sure what more people want there. Is the expectation that a park must be right outside the front door of a build? Is it that that park must be an elaborate complex or paths, hills, turns, and the like? or else it's failure? If that's the case, where do we put sports related areas? You can't really pretty them up. They need to be open fields.

As for the park next to the development. You might want to take a closer look.

The park directly across the street from this build may not look like much because you're looking at a baseball field, then a rugby field behind it, a skate park, and a sewer treatment facility. It's a good use of space for sports and activities, though I wouldn't mind seeing some trails added through there going around the fields. Woodbine Park is on the adjacent corner and, though it has a unfortunately large parking lot, it's a good park. It has lots of space and trails for all sorts of activities. Ashbridge's Bay is also less than a 10 min walk away, directly south.

So, I'm confused what the issue is supposed to be here or is this a case of people not really knowing the area but crapping on it anyway?
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Yeah, I'm confused too. I've biked around this area often, and it seems pretty green to me. Here's a snippet from Google Maps:
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This ridiculous parking lot should be named 'Bait & Switch Lane'. It was represented as landscaped space in the renders but has ended up being this constant car clog. Which is annoying, because this development was built with copious indoor parking,

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Anyhow, here's some more false advertsing:

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