Toronto 950 King West | 60.5m | 18s | Intentional Capital | Sweeny &Co

Scrap the design :(

Councillor Joe Cressy hosted a community consultation meeting on Monday with residents of Liberty Village to discuss the development, and evidently, the neighbourhood isn't pleased with the design
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A small clarification - from what I could tell, the most, if not almost all the participants at the meeting were from the area north of the railway lines - the townhomes and houses on Strachan, Massey Street, Stafford, etc. not the Liberty Village area which is south of the tracks, and a fair bit further away. And very definitely, not in favour of the proposal - a lot of very strong feedback was provided to both the City and to the development team. Mixed feelings about the building itself - some interesting design aspects, but a lot of compromises to try to make the design work, and in particular to accommodate the replacement housing requirements.
 

Event Information: 950 King St West - Community Consultation Meeting #2
Date and time: Wednesday, October 14, 2020 7:00 pm
Eastern Daylight Time (Toronto, GMT-04:00)
Change time zone
Duration:1 hour 30 minutes
Description:
City Planning has received an application to amend the Zoning By-law to permit a 13-storey mixed use building with an overall height of 46.5 metres (inclusive of mechanical equipment) containing 284 square metres of retail uses and 193 dwelling units. The design proposes to retain the southern and western elevations of the existing Palace Arms building in its entirety. The proposed development would have a total gross floor area of 12,146 square metres, which would result in a Floor Space Index of 8.9 times the area of the lands. The application proposes 68 vehicular parking spaces and 147 bicycle parking spaces.
 
New renders for the project:

Screen Shot 2020-10-08 at 6.08.58 PM.png


Screen Shot 2020-10-08 at 6.09.23 PM.png
 
Yeah....this one is just off.

If you're going to do the brick facade thing, do it throughout the entire tower portion. There's no need to half-bake it. Additionally, introducing a curve that stretches along the corner of the tower would really help this out.
 
I can't say I like this (and this development is in general a potent symbol of how affordability in the city is being squeezed out by luxury housing) but I wonder how much it is even possible to add on to a building like this in a graceful way that compliments or works well with the original building — which is itself already strange, full of its own juxtapositions and chaotic with its varied rooflines. I've always found this building to have a somewhat spooky feeling to it, like horror movie mansion. How do you build a condo on top of this kind of building and not have it seem terribly strange? Maybe it's possible with the right eye and a careful touch and budget for good materials and careful execution, but I've never had much hope for this one. And in a way I don't entirely mind since the original building is so strange and haphazard that adding another layer seems appropriate in a way.
 
Looks like there are things lurking out there worse than Covid19. Would it be too much to ask for the old and new structure to have something remotely in common?
 
I can't say I like this (and this development is in general a potent symbol of how affordability in the city is being squeezed out by luxury housing) but I wonder how much it is even possible to add on to a building like this in a graceful way that compliments or works well with the original building — which is itself already strange, full of its own juxtapositions and chaotic with its varied rooflines. I've always found this building to have a somewhat spooky feeling to it, like horror movie mansion. How do you build a condo on top of this kind of building and not have it seem terribly strange? Maybe it's possible with the right eye and a careful touch and budget for good materials and careful execution, but I've never had much hope for this one. And in a way I don't entirely mind since the original building is so strange and haphazard that adding another layer seems appropriate in a way.

Agreed about it being very difficult to actually blend in with the existing structure....it is for that reason I'm one of the minority that actually liked the first proposal as it didn't try to blend in and instead tried to do something unique (which this city lacks and which would in that sense symbolically fit in with what is already there - though I acknowledge that it was very odd)
 
Wow - looks like they really called it in with the new design. At least the first one was unique. Didn't Sweeny do the "Innovation" Centre as well?
 

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