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

Do you have something to say about the M+G staff report?:p

Peepers posted an excellent guide on how to send your comments to community council. I hope he doesn't mind, but I adapted his version for the vote at City Council. It's not too late to express your opinion on Gehry+Mirvish prior to vote.

Email addresses:

clerk@toronto.ca; your_councillor@toronto.ca

Subject Line:

My comments for 2013.TE28.2 on December 16-17, 2013 City Council

Body of the email:

To the City Clerk:

Please add my comments to the agenda for the December 16-17, 2013 City Council meeting on item 2013.TE28.2, Request for Direction - 266-270 King Street West and 274-322 King Street West - Zoning Amendment Application

I understand that my comments and the personal information in this email will form part of the public record and that my name will be listed as a correspondent on agendas and minutes of City Council or its committees. Also, I understand that agendas and minutes are posted online and my name may be indexed by search engines like Google.

Comments:
 
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From the doc:

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Definitely a step backwards if the alternatives are put through.
 
Good thing we have the OMB

I'm not so sure the OMB will approve this one outright. It will give more than enough fodder to those trying to get Toronto exempt from its jurisdiction. I'm hoping Adam Vaughan and the other sane members on council reach a better outcome when they vote on it tomorrow. Fighting something this important at the OMB has the potential of resulting in an undesirable outcome for all parties involved. Remember folks, this planning report is merely a recommendation. (Thank God!) Here is to hoping that City Council does the right thing tomorrow, which is why its so important to let your views be know.
 
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Let me preface this by saying that, in the grand scheme of Toronto, the outcome of any one project is more or less irrelevant. Basically, it doesn't really matter either way if M-G is cancelled outright, follows this 'modified' scheme or is built with no major alterations. Toronto will go on and no one will mourn for demolished warehouses or unbuilt starchitect towers.

Yet this is just stupid. It's just a tepid, lukewarm idea. Shortening the towers is stupid. What could have been powerful standout buildings in the all-in-all bland sea of condos that is the Entertainment District end up looking silly. The proposed towers simply look much better than the alternative concepts. Planning can hardly use the excessivedensity/notenoughcapacity argument since the alternative design would only have, what, 800 fewer units? That's trivial in the context of planned development in the area, let alone an urban region of millions.

The heritage preservation schemes look equally stupid. Granted, they're not architectural designs, but it should be obvious that the heritage "retention" schemes end up adding to way less than the sum of its parts. Obviously some architects have made good use of heritage retention but in this case doing so would really ruin the overall design. It ends up looking like the bad-guy from Jeepers Creepers.
 
Mirvish+Gehry project faces uncertain future

Keesmaat told Galloway that the demolition of these heritage sites is only one of the project’s issues.

“Aside from the soft and hard infrastructure concerns, we have a problem with transit in this area,” Keesmaat said in the interview. “We don’t have enough community space in this area. Those are very real concerns and, as city planners, we have to figure out how they are going to be addressed and resolved.”

She told Galloway that the proposed towers are “too bulky” and would cast a shadow reaching all the way to the Heritage Conservation District on Queen St.
 
So because transit in Toronto and on King sucks, this should not be built. Why doesn't she recommend that nothing gets built since transit in Toronto will always be inadequate. Choosing to reject developments based on transit is nonsense. It's not developers fault that Toronto's transit is garbage. The politicians and bureaucracy have sat on their behinds for 30 years and allowed our transit to rot away, don't try and shift the blame to developers.
 
its a good thing these pics are from a distance so that you can't see how ugly they are.

My last little off-topic bit - you are plain and simply just wrong. From up close or afar, Toronto's skyline and buildings are beautiful.

url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/grantd/9606728573/]
9606728573_92087a5896_b.jpg
[/url]
From the CN Tower by enedkl, on Flickr


Law & Order by Jack Landau, on Flickr


Home by cookedphotos, on Flickr

I could post an endless amount of photos, but unfortunately a closed-minded individual will never see the beauty in anything.

Anyways, back on topic. The changes proposed are ridiculous. Let's hope this one is further debated in favour. I'm tempted to email the city.
 
Anyways, back on topic. The changes proposed are ridiculous. Let's hope this one is further debated in favour. I'm tempted to email the city.

It worked for Massey Tower. KWT no less brought forth a motion to overrule the planning department's recommendation for rejection. I believe strongly that the emails of support for the development from concerned citizens played a role in its approval.
 
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But didn't we know that the Planning Department had already rejected M-G? What's new is this hamfisted, "modified" counter proposal.......created by true cretins.....their motto: let's just draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa....

As already commented, hopefully council will ignore this last attempt to derail the project.....

/notice they even included skyline tapering in their "plan".......meddlesome twits......
 
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So because transit in Toronto and on King sucks, this should not be built. Why doesn't she recommend that nothing gets built since transit in Toronto will always be inadequate. Choosing to reject developments based on transit is nonsense. It's not developers fault that Toronto's transit is garbage. The politicians and bureaucracy have sat on their behinds for 30 years and allowed our transit to rot away, don't try and shift the blame to developers.

Is the Relief Line being factored at all into the decision? It's scheduled to open sometime around 2025 and will be running right past M+G. IIRC M+G is to be built in three phases, so it's unlikely that buildings will be completed by time the Relief Line opens.
 
So because transit in Toronto and on King sucks, this should not be built. Why doesn't she recommend that nothing gets built since transit in Toronto will always be inadequate.

It's actually even stupider than that. Since future Mirvish-Gehry residents wont cease to exist if Mirvish-Gehry ceases to exist, transit demand would remain more or less unchanged if slightly redistributed. Since most of Toronto's downtown transit network is short on capacity, reducing the scale of Mirvish-Gehry would do nothing to reduce overall capacity shortages.

I assume that Keesmat imagines more development occurring on the 'Avenues', many of which eventually feed on to the Yonge subway south of Bloor to reach the CBD. Channeling more development there may well exacerbate a more serious capacity gap.

(one caveat: In a simple model, any new housing supply should lead to a higher quantity of housing being demanded. So, in that sense, it could be said that building M-G increases aggregate transit demand. But of course the relative shift in housing supply implied by M-G is negligible in the overall context of GTA housing or even downtown housing and hence the marginal impact on demand would be equally negligible.)
 
BREAKING NEWS

No Deal! Toronto City Planning takes the unusual step of presenting an alternative plan for 60, 55 and 50s max. Fight M+G at OMB.

CLARIFICATION: This is just the City Planning Depts. recommendation not to approve this project as is and presenting a plan that conforms with the current precendent. No surprise here as this was already mentioned earlier in this thread. This still has to go before council for a vote. Note they also recommended not approving Massey and Eau du Soleil, both of which were approved; Massey with no changes and Soleil with a minor variation.
Rumor has it that council will approve this as is, or with some minor concessions.
Stay tuned folks...
 
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ok, so I didn't need to post all of THIS?

How Canadian, a compromise!! We can have everything!! Too Tall? Cut them in half! Don't want to lose two warehouses, keep them as well!!

Keesmatt is small time, small town. She sees something that overwhelms her so she falls back on platitudes about public space. So all of a sudden we need a frickin park? Here?? Just improve the park directly across the street - its called David Pecaut square!

And transit, I am amazed our own chief planner has fallen for this red herring. Even I know it will in aggregate take cars OFF the streets, increase pedestrians (on the wider sidewalks M-G will create), or put people on TTC against the flow. Fix the transit Keesmat if you're so worried about it and stop droning on about bike lanes.

I know some people on this board HATE & DETEST famous architects but are more forgiving of innocuous ones. Only Hogtown would, after all the crap that's been built, decide to draw a red line at the most visually stunning proposal (quite possibly in the world, yes I said it) because we couldn't part ways with 2 warehouses. I am beyond words.

Adma, congratulations. Its academics like yourself working tirelessly to obstruct that we have to thank.

M-R should just withdraw. Seriously.

I think the warehouses would be an ideal site for a Comedy Central franchise.
 

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