Toronto 19 Bloor West | 317.4m | 99s | Reserve Properties | Arcadis

Koops65 said:
One Yonge...
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That's a much larger block, and the buildings involved are offset enough so that there are views beyond the neighbouring tower. The towers also slim down as they rise so their is not so much elevator demand on the upper floors. Anyway,I'm not really a fan of that development either. so I don't know why I'm even defending it. Just noting that it is of sufficiently higher design quality than this thoughtless piece of dreck.

Overall, the sheer greed and lack of care for qualitiy of life that we're seeing in some recent proposals is just off the charts. Regulations need to be imposed to prevent scenarios where lives are at risk due to access issues. This proposal just shows, in such transparent fashion, how little the developer cares about the people who will be living in these traps.
 
mjl08 said:
In addition to these concerns, would this project be AODA-compliant?

I've never been on the elevator of a 70+ floor condo like Aura or One Bloor. How long is a typical wait for the elevator, say at 8:30 am or 5:30 pm?
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yeah just to piggy-back off of @Bayer 's comments - i lived on the 50th floor of 1 Bloor E for 2 years - the system in that building has 6 elevators - 3 elevators for "low rise" (floors 1-38) and 3 elevators for "high-rise" (39-78). We went through a period of time (a few weeks) where two of the "high-rise" elevators were out of order due to water damage which left only one for use, and some days it would take an hour round trip to do something simple like go down to check the mailbox. Obviously it wasn't like that all the time but I can't imagine what it must've been like for people with dogs. Unreal 🥴
 
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innsertnamehere said:
My old 350-unit, 4 elevator building where an elevator wait was never more than a few seconds feels dreamy compared to some of these storeys!
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Same. I was in a 22 storey 300+ unit building for 10 years, and with four elevators it had mostly reasonable waiting times. When one or two were down for move-ins or maintenance, it wasn't ideal though.
 
Here's a question for @ProjectEnd

Assuming it becomes increasingly clear to those in power that a minimum number of elevator per unit are essential, including in existing stock; what does the cost and practical effect of adding an additional elevator to an existing building look like?

I actually have some awareness of the theoretical costs, but I can't think of a real world example of this for a skyscraper, off the top of my head, where a new shaft is necessary; and where, if not mounted to an exterior wall, I assume one would have to displace a partial or whole unit on each level to make the space. (I presume you could just add additional elevators that don't climb the entire building and dedicate an additional existing elevator to upper floors? )

I also wonder, if in such a scenario, where a retrofit were imposed either by law, or by an exasperated condo board, if it might actually be more cost effective consolidate a couple of units on each floor and re-sell them; ie. reducing the unit count instead of increasing the elevator count.
 
I can't imagine a world where if a new by-law or code clause were added, existing stock wouldn't be grandfathered out. Like you say regarding overstretched condo boards, unless the Feds are willing to step in with cash to retrofit current buildings, it would cause undue hardship for those existing residents. Punching a new shaft in and adding the necessary infrastructure would be millions, possibly tens of millions for each building depending on the height. It's just not going to happen.
 
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For highrise towers you can gain a lot of efficiency by adding the panels where you call elevators to go to a specific floor, so they don't stop 10 times on every run up and down. But any law imposing standards on buildings typically only applies to new builds or major renovations (accessibility legislation is the area I know best, and it's definitely the case there).
 
ProjectEnd said:
I can't imagine a world where if a new by-law or code clause were added, existing stock wouldn't be grandfathered out. Like you say regarding overstretched condo boards, unless the Feds are willing to step in with cash to retrofit current buildings, it would cause undue hardship for those existing residents. Punching a new shaft in and adding the necessary infrastructure would be millions, possibly tens of millions for each building depending on the height. It's just not going to happen.
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100%. Just wouldn't happen as the cost would be astronomical and the condo boards all seem to be lacking reserve funds for the upcoming decades when all of those window wall systems will need to be retrofitted/upkept.

Being in the field on my current projects we are trying to keep near the 1/100 unit count as a base, but have had the city comment on us adding floorplate size above the 750sqm to accommodate the extra elevators.

I lived in one of the Chrysler towers in North York and with the 20-30 floors (can't remember exact) we had 3 elevators and it was horrible. One was constantly on service/move in and one of the other two seemed to be out of service. They liked to rotate lol. Lucky we were on the 11th floor so it wasn't awful, but not good.

Seems like we have an elevator problem in the city. They are down way more than they should be and from what I've heard, not enough technicians to repair them. Even after fixing they go down quite quickly.
The car elevators where I park for work (Rent in Condo) 1 has been broken or out of service multiple times in the 6 months I've parked there and has taken about a month or more to fix each time.
 
This is an awful proposal, imho. Once in a while, when I’m in the high rent district of Bloor/Bay, I cast an eye at The One, and anticipate the look of it when it’s done. Foster is providing something interesting for John Q. Public too look at, and even the thought of that is a breath of fresh air. But this mediocre proposed building will block the view of The One entirely from the west. This is a recurring theme. I hope this proposal is rejected.
 
Northern Light said:
@ProjectEnd is out with some thoughts on this proposal. As usual, he's completely on-the-fence in his opinions, and your just not clear on what his take is........LOL

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Seriously, PE is raising great points; I'd go a bit further........

Lets talk about potentially serious problems.

1) Evacuation in the event of a fire. 94 floors is along way down even for someone able-bodied, never mind the problem of someone in a wheelchair or the like. There's also a time elapsed question. If smoke is filling a building, how many minutes of breathing that in can one sustain? PS, the time model for an older adult using stairs is typically 1.3 seconds per step. Assuming 22 (or more) steps between floors, depending on ceiling height, that's 32 seconds per floor. At 94 floors, that's over 45 minutes to exit the building.

2) Evacuation/need to exit can be an issue for just routine life in the event of an elevator failure or power failure. Are we considering exactly what back-up power needs to be able to support?

3) We've seen examples of people who literally couldn't access their units by elevator for weeks. Sufficient redudency to each floor is crucial.

4) A few buildings have now made clear the problems of water supply to upper floors, both in the mainline risers and in fire suppression systems. Pumps are required, and pumps can and do fail. Not only do we need to reduce the risk of failure and ensure backup power for these; we also need to talk redundancy.

5) Even with firefighter operation of an elevator, we need to talk response time impacts over such long distances (same with EMS and Police).

That's without getting into myriad other details; and the complexity of future maintenance for condo boards as well. Many have performed poorly on much smaller buildings and simpler buildings, this becomes an even greater concern with a building such as this.
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How these problems were/are addressed in other high-rises like Aura or 1 Yonge ?
 
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