Toronto King Portland Centre and Kingly Condos | 57.6m | 15s | Allied | Hariri Pontarini

Simple answer: Yes. Much better.

Yeah maybe, but ill take the added office component anytime over all residential

The major difference was with incorporation of the 602 King West site, the new building is wider, and moves a bit more to the east on the site. The office component has been incorporated into the southern part of the new building, while the northern part is residential.
 
The office component is a bonus and good for the area. It will add some life to the area during the day (and go a bit of a way in replacing some of the lost commercial space in the area).
 
The office component is a bonus and good for the area. It will add some life to the area during the day (and go a bit of a way in replacing some of the lost commercial space in the area).

What the area needs to restore is some of the studio spaces that have been lost due to redevelopment. Affordable, flexible, office/workspaces where small businesses can afford to exist, not just corporate tenants in spaces that can only accommodate people sitting behind computers. The warehouses that were torn down were home to furniture makers, graphic design firms, architects, - these industries which used to define this area, and made it interesting and lively, can now neither find nor afford suitable spaces to lease.
 
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That is very true. This turnover happens in so many areas enlivened by those who use and lease cheap warehouse and retail space.
 
A new dataBase entry is up now, linked above. The old Context King West entry will stay up too, it's just no longer linked to this thread.

A front page story on this project is here.
 
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they really have a lot on the go, I wonder if they honestly believe that they will find tenants for all these projects especially considering it took them so long to find a tenant for the Queen Richmond centre..
 
Well, they are managing 10,000,000 square feet of office space now, so they must have some idea of what they are doing!

I suppose the key when offering buildings smaller buildings is to have a "right space" to suit any particular client. I imagine that their will be some tenants who would also be fine in a number of these buildings, and would happily move into whichever one makes the best sense for them timing-wise. If a smaller tenant were to indicate interest in 489-499 King West but suddenly a lead tenant were to get 620 King West green-lighted, then Allied would be able to move the potential tenant from the other building into the one that was going ahead sooner.

Anyway, Allied's varied portfolio represents a lot of flexibility for their tenants, and many opportunities to get the branding just right.

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Design modified to raise the red brick to the top on portion facing Adelaide.

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Personally i think the built form of the St Lawrence area is great, the retail frontages could use a little work but nothing much different. Aside from that its lovely, dense and liveable. While the brick my be a little over bearing at time, the white clad portion of this allied project will help to alleviate that i truly believe. Brick and texture is just better at most levels low/midrise levels in my opinion.
 
The brick in and of itself is fine but the white makes me see Berczy 2.0. Meanwhile the original Context proposal was so much better. (yes, yes, i know, we get office)
 

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