Toronto Aura at College Park | 271.87m | 78s | Canderel | Graziani + Corazza

This sight actually makes me sad.
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Geekaroo said:
This sight actually makes me sad.
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:-(
My idea...combine a bunch of units and make it a pod hotel

Or add a small kitchenette and bathroom and you got yourself a condo with easy access to the subway. No day light? Can't be too picky in this market!
 
WillTo said:
:-(
My idea...combine a bunch of units and make it a pod hotel

Or add a small kitchenette and bathroom and you got yourself a condo with easy access to the subway. No day light? Can't be too picky in this market!
Click to expand...

Perhaps there's a spark of genius in your suggestions. Do nothing is clearly not an option. Nothing's going to skate the retail use on-side. Adaptive reuse of failed real estate is happening globally. The suite owners have no choice but to seek out creative alternatives, together as one. Separately, it would be suicide. And the City bears some responsibility as well. This notion that retail must be included in every condo development is ridiculous. There's only so many dry cleaners and nail salons required.
 
Christopher Brown said:
Perhaps there's a spark of genius in your suggestions. Do nothing is clearly not an option. Nothing's going to skate the retail use on-side. Adaptive reuse of failed real estate is happening globally. The suite owners have no choice but to seek out creative alternatives, together as one. Separately, it would be suicide. And the City bears some responsibility as well. This notion that retail must be included in every condo development is ridiculous. There's only so many dry cleaners and nail salons required.
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While 'something" clearly needs to be done it is not going to be easy as each Unit was sold to a different owner and I doubt they can get their acts together to agree on what is best to be done - there is no obvious "one solution" . Not sure the City has any real responsibility as that retail space COULD work if it had been properly laid out and sold (or even better leased) to the right kinds of 'destination" store and if there was a real and obvious connection to College Park and, one day, further south. The developer certainly does have a great deal of responsibility - these folk were sold a bunch of garbage in a mall that is poorly (to be kind) connected to the rest of the 'underground City'. We may snicker but people DO seem to use nail salons and dry cleaners - unfortunately this 'mall' has little else, almost no passing traffic due to the poor connections and it looks like shit.
 
I don't think the owners have a choice. It's a question of either how much money are they prepared to lose (it's likely already an enormous amount, but will surely get worse with mounting carry costs) or are they willing to try to work together in search of a solution that delivers partial relief. I would think they probably know this already. The developer is responsible for what's there but their responsibility, and interest in a future remedy is nonexistent. The City is however a stakeholder and they too are responsible for the disaster that's there. Countless condos have ridiculous inclusions of retail that could have otherwise been dedicated to.......townhouse design, common area ?? It's incumbent on the City, in my mind, to encourage someone, anyone to facilitate creative use of otherwise failed real estate.
 
Geekaroo said:
This sight actually makes me sad
Click to expand...

I think even more sad is the food court.
... This place has had the same vibe for years. And every time I go down, there are a few random store owners chilling on chairs in the hallways outside their stores.
From a design perspective, if the underground connection to Gerrard was played up more, this place would have way more traffic (at least in the wintertime). There is no such signage to my knowledge to indicate that you can reach Gerrard from College Park... instead 'Shops at Aura' takes center stage. The entrance from College Park is usually closed (although this may be due to air pressure differences between the two complexes) but at least they could have made them transparent or sliding doors. Worst of all, the secret Gerrard Entrance (by Scaddabush), really is a secret back-alley route that most people don't know about or isn't supposed to be used, not to mention, more flights of unnapealing stairs.
Escalators, better and more appealing/illuminated signage, and a different paint job could have made this place less of a dungeon (cubicle format aside).
 
I think this basement will make a great self-storage place. Think of how small some newer condo units are and that to buy a locker could cost 000s, and some may only need temporary storage as they transition from bigger homes into smaller condos, so buying one may not make sense.
 
That would be a waste - what it should be used for is large format retail that doesn't like having to deal with windows. The BBB or even Marshall would have made more sense there.

AoD
 
Expected traffic of 30K "approximate" daily? Please, can the lies get more blatant than that?

On another note, there is a skateboard retail store in the basement and it seem to be attracting a crowd. Hyper-niche retail that don't depend on walk-in may have a future in that space.

AoD
 
They could lease it out to a data storage company. Date centers are a hot commodity these days.

Other possibilities: (some of these are from Breaking Bad) laser-tag, meth lab, govt marijuana mall, red light district (similar to the one in Amsterdam but indoors), shopping mall for zombies (when the ZA happens), pet shark storage units, car wash, glow in the dark bowling, exotic food emporium (could be combined with the marijuana mall idea)...I could go on.
 
Avenue said:
Saw this a couple of weeks ago.

View attachment 102444
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hmmmm. $1100 net+$1000 TMI..... that's $2200 Gross rent per month for 223 square feet which works out to $118ish per square foot. That puts it above other prime downtown high foot traffic retail which ranges from $45-$100 a foot (Yorkville,Cumberland,Davenport etc etc). There are 52 "storefront" units on MLS for this building (sale and lease) some are offering free net rent for a year... I'm curious to know what logic this particular Landlord used to come up with $2200 a month when there is so much competition and basically zero interest, I haven't even calculated 13% HST which would add another $$
 
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Downtown Toronto said:
hmmmm. $1100 net+$1000 TMI..... that's$2200 Gross rent per month for 223 square feet which works out to $118ish per square foot. That puts it above other prime downtown high foot traffic retail which ranges from $45-$100 a foot. There are over a dozen units on MLS for this building, some are offering free net rent for a year... I'm curious to know what logic this particular Landlord used to come up with $2200 a month, I haven't even calculated 13% HST which would add another $$
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Well, the ad is almost two years old and the unit has never been rented so it clearly wasn't thought out well.
 
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