It's a curious series of takes, both optimistic and pessimistic.
There's this:
After which, Alex suggests the connection is less than obvious
He then offers
" There is an uncanny-valley quality here; the buildings feel like a reproduction of some non-specific cityscape."
He also notes the similarity to a development in Belfast, Ireland.
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From there Alex moves on to his traditional lament, that Toronto must spend 365 days a year in darkness, completely free of trees and flowers, and with everyone suffering anemia and vitamin D deficiency due to lack of sun:
"Three lambent, finely proportioned glass boxes by architectsAlliance line Front Street, while three brick-clad midrises along Wellington Street are by Wallman Architects. (The latter are the real clunkers in this ensemble. Their poorly composed facades step down like Mayan temples, following Toronto city planning’s directives, to avoid shading the nearby street.)"
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He then, amusing applauds the CCxA design for Wellington, which would not survive if the buildings had Alex' preferred sheer street wall blocking most sunlight.
I like the CCxA design, though I am concerned about some of the tree/plant choices, I'll be interested to see how they perform next season.
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From there, Alex goes on to slag Riocan for a less than brilliant activation plan for the retail space thus far; he's not wrong on that; and one can hardly ever go wrong slagging Riocan who are cheapskates who lack an ounce of creativity or imagination in their organization.
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This bit needs to be singled out for a couple of reasons:
1) We need a discussion here about the changes the Ford gov't made to development charges and what the impact would be if a similar development were approved today.
2) 1M for affordable housing is slightly less than what the City spent building 2 modular housing units; or if treated as an endowment with operating funds spinning off, the roughly $40,000 per year one could draw down is just shy
of enough to subsidize 2 rent-geared-to-income units.
The above is certainly not a bad thing; but I'm not sure that 2 units out of 1,700 (in effect, as there are no actual affordable units on site) ought to be seen as reasonable.
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We later get a reference to Eaton Centre when evaluating the urbanity of the place:
Say what? LOL Zeilder did a great job on Eaton Centre interior, which CF has subsequently molested, but I digress.........
But the exterior facing Yonge was always a colossal fail. CF hasn't improved that any, but TEC's original Yonge facade was as anti-urban as they come.
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Next Alex digresses to blast the Reform movement of 1970s Toronto, which gave us the St. Lawrence neighbourhood, and a host of benefits in valuing history, sunlight and context. He derides all this and then Riocan for suggesting the development seeks to 'fit in'.
Whether 'The Well' fully succeeds in fitting in is up for debate; but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that goal. One can absolutely build towers and density, while seeking to create the illusion of more human-scaled architecture while making use of more traditional cladding materials such as brick at street level.
That's exactly what reduces nimbyism and allow for greater density is making the perceived negatives of the density disappear.
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Thereafter Alex wanders in thought again to suggest Toronto unduly limits large development to just a few places.............while I have been a leading support of EHON and certainly agree there ought to be higher as-of-right zoning on major streets, including outside the Avenues...............
I always have something of an allergy to hyperbole.
UT does report on some shorter developments, but the vast majority are midrise or hirise.
Lets look at the development map shall we:
Yup, that looks like density is only permitted in 2 or 3 or 4 dozen spaces doesn't it? Hmmm, or maybe it's a couple of hundred spots? Math is a thing.
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While I think 'The Well' deserves some plaudits for its more interesting and quality choices architecturally, and CCxA deserves plaudits for Wellington, and I share Alex's allergy to Riocan, and would
love to see more architectural diversity...... I end up feeling the column has a few too many points, some with which I clearly take issue.
