Toronto 1900 Yonge Street | ?m | 45s | CreateTO

[Northern Light]

Beltline Trail expanded? The area they have greened off in that map is what that said trial is now currently...so what are they planning to expand with it?

The deck that would go over the TTC building and yard facilities north of the Beltline would become new parkland between the Beltline and the existing Oriole Park.

 

[Northern Light]

While it's beyond the scope of this redevelopment exercise, I wonder if the city has looked at options for developing over the tracks south of the Beltline bridge that face onto Mt Pleasant Cemetery? Given the width of the right of way there, they could cut Yonge Street down to 2 lanes and shift it to the east up against the cemetery. This would free up space for some small format retail and building entrances to enliven this segment of Yonge while allowing towers and midrise above.. Tower separation (to the west) would only be a problem at the south end. Servicing could be provided by the new N/S service and access road.

To further ease development, they could eliminate much of the grade change in this area on Yonge and bring it in line with the subway tracks. It would create an elevation drop off down to the cemetery, but access to the cemetery here is blocked by a fence under the current conditions. You could actually start this leveling out of Yonge at Merton as it wouldn't effect the existing building at the southeast corner of Merton and Yonge (it would actually improve its relationship to the street). You would need to raise the Beltline bridge though.

I raised some question about that myself just above:

TTC Headquarters Redevelopment 1900 Yonge (City of Toronto, ?s, ?)

https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/planning-studies-initiatives/next-stop-davisville/ An in-person meeting happening tonight!

urbantoronto.ca

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That said, the City would not likely consider raising the grade of Yonge here, in part because:

1) There is major infrastructure under Yonge which would then be much deeper when you need to access it. Raising the sewer in particular is not feasible, because Toronto's sewers all drain by gravity, no pumps.

2) This would mean cutting down literally well over 100 mature trees

3) It would position Yonge above the cemetery in some areas and that not only has shadowing implications, but drainage ones as well.

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Also, you couldn't place retail here, because the TTC mainline tracks aren't moving, and raising Yonge to the point where the retail was over said tracks would be enormous there's be a huge wall at the edge of Mt. Pleasant.

None of that, however, precludes building over the southern section, it simply wouldn't address Yonge really.

I assume some of the complexities I noted in my post, along w/shadowing the cemetery and potential ROI figured into not looking at that area more closely (but don't know)

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

The deck that would go over the TTC building and yard facilities north of the Beltline would become new parkland between the Beltline and the existing Oriole Park.

Oh...so they're planning to add width to it as opposed to lengthening it....

*Pats rounding belly*

...or at least I get that kind of expanding. >.<

 

[Northern Light]

A good Front Page story on this one, from Julian Mirabelli:

"Intensely Aspirational": Feasibility Study Lays Out Vision for TTC Headquarters Redevelopment | UrbanToronto

Toronto is exploring options of redeveloping its TTC lands at Yonge and Davisville, and along with a significant amount of residential and commercial uses, the proposal also includes nearly one hectare of parkland, all of which would be decked over the existing subway tracks, station, and rail yard.

urbantoronto.ca

The first part is good re-cap of what's already known and posted in a thread, but is a solid refresher in advance of the second half of the post, looking at the Design Review Panel's comments on the proposal.

From that portion of the article:

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For the full piece, follow the link above.

 

[W. K. Lis]

...

2) This would mean cutting down literally well over 100 mature trees

....

I would be fine if they "harvest" the mature trees to manufacture some fine Canadian wood furniture.