Toronto Forma | 308m | 84s | Great Gulf | Gehry Partners

AlvinofDiaspar said:
First of all, what does CN Tower has to do with real estate cycles? Second, my understanding of real estate cycles has to do with the square footage of commercial (particularly, in this context, class A offices) - I don't think anyone would consider the 80s a particularly quiet period in that regard; and the current boom can be regarded as compensation for the early to late 90s. So in other words, the cycle is probably tighter than you've posited. Also note that all the towers you've listed are bank towers - a form of business is a) saturated and b) has moved away from prestige developments to selling and re-leasing space. You'd be hard pressed to find a local firm that demands a statement to be made with architecture.

And back to Toronto getting it done - it's pretty easy to argue that phase happened in the 60s - the 70s was a period of retrenchment, picking the lowest hanging fruit (and no surprise there, given the stagnation of the period) leading to the stasis and wasted opportunities of the 80s.
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I wish I knew where to find 40 years of inflation-adjusted Toronto construction data to prove you wrong. You'd be see plenty of cycles. Anyway we're way off track.
 
This may be a minority opinion, but I do not accept the narrative that a 60-storey building is acceptable while an 80-storey building is a negative precedent or somehow decreases the quality of life of an area. A well designed building, especially at the base and its interaction with the street, is so much more important than height.
 

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fedplanner said:
This may be a minority opinion, but I do not accept the narrative that a 60-storey building is acceptable while an 80-storey building is a negative precedent or somehow decreases the quality of life of an area. A well designed building, especially at the base and its interaction with the street, is so much more important than height.
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I completely agree with this point. Which is why I support Mirvish Gehry going as high as possible while retaining as many of the existing heritage buildings on site as they can.
 
The height issue is less about the actual height of this project, but the precedent it will set for the neighbourhood. When the festival tower was built in 2010, it broke the height limits for the King West neighbourhood, but the developer maintained that the condominium was needed to pay for the tiff Bell Lightbox at the base. Since Festival was completed, we've seen lots of new building in King West due to developers saying "If they are allowed to build a 50-storey building, then why can't I?".
Now we have 3 buildings proposed that are nearly double the height of the festival tower. Council is worried that if these get approved, we will see a new slew of developers vying to build their own 80 storey building in King West simply because one project managed to get through on account of exemplary architecture and cultural facilities.
 
Council is worried that if these get approved, we will see a new slew of developers vying to build their own 80 storey building in King West simply because one project managed to get through on account of exemplary architecture and cultural facilities.
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Council is worried about subsequent M&G calibre projects??? They shouldn't be worried about them...they should be encouraging them.
 
At least the Loblaws will go through. It already has approvals and there really isn't anything the city can do. Its not even that big of a loblaws either, only 20k square feet. most suburban grocers that these people think about are 80-100k in size.
 
verticalvillage said:
The height issue is less about the actual height of this project, but the precedent it will set for the neighbourhood. When the festival tower was built in 2010, it broke the height limits for the King West neighbourhood, but the developer maintained that the condominium was needed to pay for the tiff Bell Lightbox at the base. Since Festival was completed, we've seen lots of new building in King West due to developers saying "If they are allowed to build a 50-storey building, then why can't I?".
Now we have 3 buildings proposed that are nearly double the height of the festival tower. Council is worried that if these get approved, we will see a new slew of developers vying to build their own 80 storey building in King West simply because one project managed to get through on account of exemplary architecture and cultural facilities.
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So what? if the precedent is for outstanding streetscape, greatly improved cultural and educational amenities, then who cares about height?

its located downtown where we want people to be. It's just a block or so west of a major subway line and potentially on top of the new DRL (or within a block or so of it).I would be happy to see more developments of this calibre whether they are 80 storyes or 120 storyes
 
junctionist said:
It's regressive to demolish entire blocks of heritage buildings for a single project.
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In case there are non-Torontonians reading this I'd suggest inserting single quotes around 'entire blocks' and 'heritage buildings'. We're talking about a couple of buildings, nothing noteworthy by any stretch, which were designated heritage but wouldn't qualify as such anywhere else in the world. Also, the 'single project' are three masterpiece 85 story towers designed by Frank Gehry.

I thought some context would be helpful.
 
verticalvillage said:
The height issue is less about the actual height of this project, but the precedent it will set for the neighbourhood. When the festival tower was built in 2010, it broke the height limits for the King West neighbourhood, but the developer maintained that the condominium was needed to pay for the tiff Bell Lightbox at the base. Since Festival was completed, we've seen lots of new building in King West due to developers saying "If they are allowed to build a 50-storey building, then why can't I?".
Now we have 3 buildings proposed that are nearly double the height of the festival tower. Council is worried that if these get approved, we will see a new slew of developers vying to build their own 80 storey building in King West simply because one project managed to get through on account of exemplary architecture and cultural facilities.
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I understand the "precedent" argument to a degree, but it seems to make at least one questionable assumption.

If M-G was approved, would there would be a flood of >80 storey mega towers proposed in the area? This seems like a pretty flimsy assumption. I get the "precedent" with the Festival Tower, but the economics of a 50 storey building are a bit different from larger buildings. It's not like Aura has led to a flood of similar proposals (thank god...). Even super high rise friendly cities don't seem to have many 80storey residential buildings, which from what I understand is just a reflection of building economics. How many sites in the City, let alone the area, really have the economics and layout to support these kind of buildings?
 
I wouldn't have thought so myself if it weren't for this and others:

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Building large amounts of 80-story residential towers makes no sense from a planning perspective in Toronto, yet Yonge-Bloor, the waterfront, and now the ED are seeing a significant amount of proposals in this range. Surely it's become economically advantageous.

I think one of the bigger problems here with regards to the heritage components here is that the precedent of destroying them would be set for all towers and not just for 80-story ones.
 
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