Toronto Four Eleven King Condominiums | 149.04m | 45s | Great Gulf | KPMB

The ironic thing is that we have the LCBO supposedly to prevent young people from drinking and overall to have more control over alcohol sales. Do young people need more encouragement to drink? Their sales are up quite a bit this year anyway because fewer people are going out and more are staying home and buying alcohol without the ridiculous entertainment district markup. And yeah, lower prices would be nice, especially on Californian wine, which is still priced as if the USD/CDN exchange ratio was about .70. Ridiculous. And how about some real sales, instead of 40 cents off a bottle of scotch?

Is there an LCBO thread? Mods, sorry for the tangent, please feel free to move...

Yes, I just don't understand the lack of outrage at such a flagrant conflict of interest. Is gambling any different? Have you seen the pathetic 'gamble responsibly' signs posted - but almost hidden - at the province's casinos? Who are they kidding??

Why are Canadians so willing to compromise principles by numbly accepting government propaganda? Ride programs are an infringement of personal rights, no matter what extremist interest groups will tell us. Booze running and gambling are not the jurisdiction of governments no matter what cash-hungry bureaucrats will tell us. Quebec language laws are discriminatory, point of fact. We are just far too willing to make deals of convenience with the devil.
 
1 November 2009 photo update

Whether 100 stories or 1 storey tall here, it felt odd approaching this intersection by car yesterday, like something was missing. (A big open space allowing one to easily see on-coming traffic.:)) So even shorty LCBO really changes this intersection's feel...for the better. (Unless you're an 18 wheeler truck driver unloading booze....)

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As a minor adjustment, they should of either matched or slightly exceeded the roof line of the Winners to the south. It would have made it more palatable.
 
Christopher Hume on King/Spadina LCBO

One-storey LCBO at King-Spadina makes no sense

By Christopher Hume

It's enough to drive a person to drink. There it is, one of the most important intersections in Toronto, King and Spadina, and what appears on the corner – a liquor store?

Nothing wrong with that, really, but it's a one-storey LCBO. One paltry storey in a location that could have used many.

Perhaps in a city obsessed with towers, it's not surprising that there are no minimum height requirements. But at a time when density forms the subtext to most if not all growth plans, it no longer makes sense to allow projects such as this.

The neighbourhood could easily handle 10 floors or more; Spadina, north and south, is lined with tall buildings, as is King. Which is why it hurts to see critical downtown spaces underused so gratuitously. The explanation may be that having the LCBO as a tenant allows the landowner to bide his time; in that scenario, the store won't be around for more than a few years, maybe a decade, at which point something else gets built.

Again, at a time of environmental restraint there's no justification for this sort of disposable structure. It is inexcusably wasteful.

And why would the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, an agency of the provincial government, be involved with a project as misguided as this? To be fair to Premier Dalton McGuinty, his government has made a serious attempt to curb sprawl and replace it with urban-scale transit-based development. Look no further than the Green Belt legislation, the Growth Plan and Metrolinx.

The corollary, of course, is to take maximum advantage of mature urban centres, where the infrastructure, though crumbling, already exists. That means transit and sewers as well as condos and culture.

The LCBO outlet underlines the disconnection between what the government says and what the government does. An agency such as the LCBO, which returns more than $1 billion annually to provincial coffers, has its own way of doing things and fails to see beyond that.

As a result, Toronto and other cities in Ontario are filled with inappropriate LCBO buildings, designed and constructed without a thought to context. The board simply moves in and does its thing.

And it isn't alone: Other offenders include The Beer Store and Shoppers Drug Mart, both of which build with a level of indifference that borders on contempt.

The mayor himself has acknowledged the need for minimum height bylaws, but nothing seems to happen. In the meantime, sites and opportunities are squandered with abandon.

The better way is that seen at Dundas and Bay, where the most recent arrival is Ryerson's Rogers School of Management. It shares space with a Canadian Tire and an above-grade parking garage. Building this sort of mixed-use project might not interest the LCBOs and the Shoppers Drug Marts, but both could easily be tenants of such a complex. And perhaps the mix would attract more customers.

This suburbanizing of the city, intentional or not, has never made sense and less so now than ever. Often it's developers and retailers just in from the hinterland who are to blame. But as the LCBO makes clear, not always.

And if the city itself permits such projects to go ahead, it must also be held accountable. If we don't take planning seriously, why should anyone else?

Yet no activity is more essential to civic well-being. Still there's no rule that can't be broken, no process that can't be subverted, no decision that can't end up at the Ontario Municipal Board for others to make.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/722961--one-storey-lcbo-at-king-spadina-makes-no-sense
 
Thanks for posting and kudos to Hume for making this an issue. Where do we send our letters/emails of protest?
 
I heard from a friend that that TD just signed on to split the LCBO location.TD to get the King St Front, while LCBO will take the Spadina/King St corner . It looks like its going to be a very small LCBO location
 
I think the only TD space might be some atm's along King Street. If you look in the windows, the whole space is open and it looks like they are building the vintages section towards the northeast corner.
 
It's a little late now, don't you think?

I suppose but I prefer this to doing nothing. At the very least it may make them think twice if they thought people were watching... wishful thinking, I know.
 
Actually according to the article "Mega Bylaw" that appears in the October issue of the Annex Gleaner the new amalgamated bylaw document addresses these issues. Infact such bylaws may actually already exist applying to new developments (not existing buildings that are grandfathered in).

Bylaws include:

-commercial properties on main streets must have a residential component
-Businesses operating as sole entities are not allowed
-basement apartments occupying exclusively below grade floor space are not permitted

I do not support or condone these rules. They will have their consequences, intended and unintended.
 
I don't get what the big deal is, we already know that the LCBO is temporary and that once the lease is up for Winners and The LCBO we can expect something pretty much taking over that whole corner.

Who in their right mind would invest into a multi-story building only to have it come down in a few years?
 
So, I guess Hume's position is multi-storey building or nothing?

It can't be anything more than a parking lot in the interim? How does that benefit the street?
 

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