Toronto 1233 Yonge | 163.55m | 49s | Woodlawn Residences | Arcadis

Hmmm..? Rental Replacement on City Planning says 40 units to be replaced, but City RentSafeTO data says 42 units today..?

Maybe an Owner unit - and a Building Supe unit that they've never rented out..?

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From Mike Layton’s Newsletter:

Virtual Community Consultation Meeting: 1233 Yonge Street Development Application​


City Planning is hosting a community consultation meeting where you can learn more about the development proposal at 1233 Yonge Street and 9 Woodlawn Avenue East, submit feedback, and ask any questions you may have about the project.

When: Tuesday, April 26
Time: 6:00pm-7:30pm
Webex Link: https://toronto.webex.com/toronto/onstage/g.php?MTID=eee44908e36abcf68aa684cfb5ef66266

The applicants are seeking permission for a 13-storey mixed-use building containing 110 dwelling units (including 40 replacement rental units) and 600 square metres of grade-related retail space. A 3-storey below-grade parking garage containing 99 vehicle parking spaces is also proposed.
 
I don't think many of us here thought this was BDPQ's best effort........

So many here might be pleased to know there's been a big change of plans here.............(until you see what we got instead)

Project is resubmitted at 49 storeys, and Arcadis **

* I didn't see a different Arch. name til opening the Urban Design Brief and you see Brook Mcllroy, if they are the design architect this is a very big slip up from them; and handing it off to Arcadis will take bad to worse.

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This is the most redeeming render:

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@ProjectEnd may have some thoughts on the unit layouts:

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Ground Floor Plan:

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Site Plan:

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@interchange42

Will take keen interest in 764 units and 6 elevators

15 parking spaces (broken clock and all that)

**

On the Landscape Plan.....

Definition of native is a bit problematic in spots...........but this is what really caught my eye....

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Soil Area 2 they averaged the soil volume from that tree south.........but the top tree has vastly more soil than the other (shown in green), making the average meaningless at best, and misleading at worst.

***

Comments:

Aesthetic disaster

Preposterously out of scale

Problematic landscape plan.

Absurd unit layouts

Low elevator ratio

Hit the trash button on this one, it's a waste of everyone's time.
 
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Low elevator ratio
It's clearly time to make construction hoists permanent!

That's my new thing. Gonna be a running joke/not joke. People are gonna be sick of it.

I think that of the major livability issues with new buildings that we see pop up in our Forum pages, the one that I believe have the best chance of making some headway on is adequate elevator service. (Poor layouts is the other obvious one, but the causes of that are more complex, the definitions more subjective, and I feel like that issue is likely more than we have the ability to bite off. I'd love to be proven wrong though.)

More study needs to be done on the elevator issue to come up with more refined recommendations, but yup, 1 elevator for every 100 units is an easily understood metric that is not an unreasonable target pending a magic, better informed algorithm that we could apply with more vigor.

The City does deduct elevator shafts (and stairs and garbage chutes) from the 750 square metre floor-plate calculations, so developers do not have that excuse for not adding another elevator shaft, and besides, the Tall Buildings Guidelines does have a vague reference to allowing larger floor-plates for taller buildings (without creating tables to set out expectations exactly), but all of that is about the elegance of the proportions that would be plunked onto the City's skyline, and has nothing to do with incrementally providing more elevators for buildings with incrementally more suites.

Anyway, here's what we could do: get more graphic about this by providing a visual reference of how many more elevators a proposal would need to make the 1 elevator per 100 suite threshold, and the best graphic I can think of is ugly construction hoists suggested as permanent eyesores on the exterior of buildings that don't meet acceptable vertical transportation service levels.

So, if anyone with Photoshop™ skills would like to volunteer to overlay images of construction hoists over a generic point tower rendering, I'd love to be able to use a graphic in our front page stories that would show how many construction hoists would need to be made permanent on the exterior whichever proposal for it to hit the target. This one, for example, would need a matched pair of construction hoists on the outside to do it.

Volunteers?!

42
 
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I don't even mind the height. But if you're going to shoot for the stars on height (and if successful deliver an extraordinary financial return), then at least make some effort on design, public realm, and lower potions of the building that will be experienced by pedestrians, especially the ground floor. It's just such sloppy work. Again, it's not the height that gets me. It's the lazy design at the bottom and zero effort to improve the public realm or enlarge it even slightly.

1233 Yonge and 9 Woodlawn Ave. E. (both part of the development site) were purchased together on March 28, 2023, for $30,000,000 by 1233 Yonge Holdings Inc.

A tidy profit for Plazacorp and Firm Capital who had bought the parcels together on February 5, 2020 for $17,500,000 as Woodlawn Residences Corp.
 
The City does deduct elevator shafts (and stairs and garbage chutes) from the 750 square metre floor-plate calculations,
The 750 sq.m. guideline is applied on gross construction area. I do see evidence of loosening on this guideline a bit more lately, and some developers try to use GFA (with stairs and shafts deducted) but the predominant practice is the 750 GCA and this is what the guidelines say.
 
The 750 sq.m. guideline is applied on gross construction area. I do see evidence of loosening on this guideline a bit more lately, and some developers try to use GFA (with stairs and shafts deducted) but the predominant practice is the 750 GCA and this is what the guidelines say.
Interesting. My mistake then. I was told that for Bylaw purposes, elevator shafts, stairways, and garbage chutes are not calculated into the GFA... but I extended that to the floor-plate issue too. If elevators etc. are included when calculating the floor-plate area for slenderness/minimizing of shadows issues, then I'm glad that the City is loosening up… but they should formalize that and not include fifth or subsequent elevators in the floor-plate calculations — the City should not be complicit in any way regarding poor elevator service, and should be making sure that if they are allowing buildings with 500 units, etc, they should be insisting on 5 elevators etc. Probably the the additional elevator should be required at the rounding point, every 50 eg, 450 suites gets 5 elevators, 550 gets 6, etc.

42
 
The new rendering is updated in the database. The height changed from 50.93m to 163.55m. The total storey count changed from 13 storey to 49 storey. The total unit count increased from 110 units to 764 units. Finally, the total parking space count was reduced from 99 parking to 15 parking.

Rendering taken from the urban design brief via Rezoning.
 
1233 Yonge Street - Community Consultation Meeting

Wednesday, September 27, 2023 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
(UTC-04:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Revised Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment application to facilitate the redevelopment of the site for a 49-storey mixed-use building having a non-residential gross floor area of 309 square metres and a residential gross floor area of 46,603 square metres. 724 residential dwelling units are proposed, of which, 40 are rental replacement units.

 
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I don't even mind the height. But if you're going to shoot for the stars on height (and if successful deliver an extraordinary financial return), then at least make some effort on design, public realm, and lower potions of the building that will be experienced by pedestrians, especially the ground floor. It's just such sloppy work. Again, it's not the height that gets me. It's the lazy design at the bottom and zero effort to improve the public realm or enlarge it even slightly.

Exactly this.
 

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