Toronto King Blue by Greenland | 155.75m | 48s | Greenland | Arcadis

and with the design of this tower it will effectively be about 50 storeys or taller (177 m)
this area is going to be unbelievable in another 5 years
 
I realize that. That is what makes your posts so much more valuable than the "I did not see any activity on the site for 30 minutes yesterday. I guess the project has been cancelled" posts.

As for the building, it certainly looks interesting in shape. I think the cladding will really be important and its impossible to tell much based upon this report.

The green/windmill element is interesting. It looks like a group of bells in a modern bell tower. I propose the marketing name: "The Jingle Bell Tower."
 
For anybody else like me that can't open a pdf for one reason or another here is the building.

2612969905_c8a6926195_o.jpg
 
Wow, wind turbines at the top (the little circles on the south elevation). The design reminds me of the 1987 (?) Team Canada logo (think Gretzky and Lemieux on that goal and crazy celebration). Overall I like it. I think Maldive over at SSP needs to do another future skyline rendering with all these 40+ storey towers in this immediate area
 
Not sure why they couldn't do this in the lot without destroying the Westinghouse building. My favourite part of that building is the "Westinghouse" on the western wall.

As funky as the shape is, this is really out of character for this neighbourhood. For those who were fighting against M5V or Lightbox saying these condos would only spur other, taller condos, I guess they were right.
 
Wow, that's a pretty striking design. I would've expected something as striking (though not necessarily similar) for the TIFF tower.
 
How could you like the King Street scale? They only show it from the first 6 stories. Guess your missing the 50 story shadow being cast on the neighbourhood.

I'm all for development but all these huge developments reek of a cash grab. There are plenty of amazing mid rize projects being built in places. What ever happened to building where appropriate and over time.
 
Jayomatic said:
How could you like the King Street scale? They only show it from the first 6 stories. Guess your missing the 50 story shadow being cast on the neighbourhood.
Click to expand...

Point taken. I was just referring to the podium and almost by suggestion, stating that the taller building's scale was inappropriate.

I think midrise neighbourhoods and buildings work best. Front Street and the surrounds around the St. Lawrence market will alway feel better, on a pedestrian scale, than canyons and skycrapers. I think the entertainment district would be served better by intensification that was midrise rather than tall towers, point and otherwise. As well, I am totally against point towers being inappropriately thrown into established contexts that should be protected from out of scale development (Distillary District and lord knows what else when you start using arguments about 'beacons' and 'new contexts').

That being said, times and reality change and this neighbourhood is obviously changing. There are a host of parking lots that should be filled and this is certainly no historic district or residential neighbourhood. As such, and because the city is clearly not aiming for decent midrise neighbourhoods in this area of the core, we are going to get tall towers.

As such, the best we can hope for (and aim for) are towers with pedestrian scale podiums that work well at street level. This is not something I am celebrating but it may be the new reality in this area.
 
More than any other proposal for the area. this one screams "dredge up the W Hotel speculation again", and the term 'Manhattanization'.

With the recylced Westinghouse facade and the vibe in this area, W would get what they always look for in a location: a certain funky retro-modern with a landmark quality to it.

In regards to Manhattanizing the core - with all the proposals for 40-odd floor buildings within a couple surrounding blocks of the film festival centre, this area will take on quite a New York feel if these go through. There wouldn't be much point in turning this one down if the other handful of proposals make it through. With approvals, the context for this area would change overnight, and one would have to look at the shorter existing buildings as those that were suddenly inappropriate for the area.

None of these proposals would be under consideration at the moment had the OMB turned down the height requests of Boutique II and M5V. Both buildings have been allowed to go much higher than the City wanted for this mid-rise King-Spadina area, and it seems the developers want to run with the OMB's ball.

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I guess the postive is that these condos are better than the run-of-the-mill condos. I just hope they really try to get the ground level uses right.
 
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