Approved by Toronto Community Council
Hidden in this generally negative article on the market, last night's approval of the L Tower....
SONY CENTRE CONDO TOWER
Why das boot will never get off the ground
JOHN BARBER
jbarber@globeandmail.com
E-mail John Barber | Read Bio | Latest Columns
May 7, 2008
I once predicted my pet poodle would turn down the Order of Canada before the struggling Sony Centre managed to build the bizarre boot-shaped apartment tower architect Daniel Libeskind designed as part of its latest gambit for survival. Little Pierre remains ready and willing to do his duty, but the call from Ottawa has yet to come. In the meantime, buyers have appeared for 460 of the 490 apartments in the improbable boot.
Yesterday, the project received the blessing of Toronto community council. Sony Centre CEO Daniel Brambilla said construction will begin in July. When completed in 2010, the condo-theatre complex will also include a $75-million Arts and Heritage Awareness Centre, described by its promoters as "not just an extension to a museum or another opera house, but a towering beacon designed to celebrate Canadian values."
With the exception of Councillor Adam Vaughan, the son of one of the architects who helped design the 1960s monument, the politicians loved it. Not only does the new plan ensure an ample supply of free tickets to second-tier shows, it promises a happy end to the city-owned theatre's long quest for adequate subsidy, which began before it fell into municipal hands 40 years ago and became desperate when it lost the last of its anchor tenants to the new Four Seasons Centre.
Taking all that into account, I stand by my prediction. Das boot will never be built. Nobody who has ever seen a real estate boom go bust can fail to recognize the signs.
How else to interpret grandiose cultural policy floating on a combination of air rights in a speculative market and the anticipated goodwill of the Harper government? The surrealism of the architecture is appropriate.
But hey, I could still be wrong. And that would be great: If the towering beacon emerges as promised, undiminished by economic reality, it will mark a turning point in the history of the city. If Toronto can pull off a folly like this, there will be no stopping it.
Shortly after celebrating the prospect of Mr. Libeskind's transformation of yet another homely Toronto landmark,
the committee approved a similar-sized development for the old Gross Machinery site in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood. But its developer, unlike his nearby competitors, was bearish.
"We've never faced a slowdown in the States like we have now," Howard Cohen of Context Development said. "We've had an unprecedented boom and I think the city is taking it for granted."
Mr. Cohen should know: As the original executive director of Harbourfront, he learned the hard way what happens to lofty policy goals kept aloft by evanescent air rights and federal promises. As a city planner in the 1970s, he was also one of a group of influential policy-makers who struggled to "contain" the apparently irresistible growth of the financial district. "Things change," he said.
House prices are sagging in formerly fashionable neighbourhoods. Transit ridership is slipping. Ontario is struggling. The condo vultures have chewed through Florida and there's still plenty of dead meat available in that and many other U.S. markets. Meanwhile, in the most ominous sign of all, politicians in Toronto are reaching for the moon.
Are we really so exceptional that we can get away with such gambits? This tower will tell the tale.
edit: looks like Market Wharf was approved as well.....
