Toronto MEC Queen Street (Mountain Equipment Coop) | 21.03m | 3s | Parallax | Sweeny &Co

It really is a shame that it's such an ugly building because the store inside is quite nice. If only as much effort had been put into the outside of the building as the inside.
 
It's nice enough inside, but nothing about it really says "MEC" to me. The old store had some exposed timber, which gave it a bit of character. The new one is crisp and bright, but it feels like it could be any chain apparel/department store. I think the interior is a missed opportunity too.
 
The inside is great, well organized store. Helpful, knowledgeable staff. While I was there, they were hosting a community group meeting.

I think that people are missing the mark with their criticism of this building. From a utilitarian standpoint, it works well, and visually sure it is not winning awards but it isn't so offensive as is made out to be in person. I highly doubt the average person walking by the store will be filled with the same outrage experienced by posters on here. It is much nicer to walk by compared to the parking lot that preceded it.

My main complaint is how it turns its back to the side street that it also fronts. That is remedied quite a bit by the bike share station there, that receives lots of activity at all times of the day.
 
WislaHD said:
The inside is great, well organized store. Helpful, knowledgeable staff. While I was there, they were hosting a community group meeting.

I think that people are missing the mark with their criticism of this building. From a utilitarian standpoint, it works well, and visually sure it is not winning awards but it isn't so offensive as is made out to be in person. I highly doubt the average person walking by the store will be filled with the same outrage experienced by posters on here. It is much nicer to walk by compared to the parking lot that preceded it.

My main complaint is how it turns its back to the side street that it also fronts. That is remedied quite a bit by the bike share station there, that receives lots of activity at all times of the day.
Click to expand...

It's not only ugly, it's completely unaware of its surroundings. It's a big box store in the middle of Queen West for chrissakes! This street is known for its low rise human scale storefronts.

The most frustrating and frankly enraging part of this is that this was completely avoidable. They spent money designing a building that pretends to be multiple smaller storefronts but failed spectacularly. This isn't a budget problem, it's one of incompetence. Had they had a designer with awareness of the neighbourhood, they could've easily made 3 distinct frontages with slightly differing materials and shapes to accomplish what they set out to do.

Then you have the east facing blank wall. It's like the architect just sat in a studio completely unaware of where this was going. This is a street corner building and that blank wall isn't just some side alleyway, it's facing directly at Queen West. This is what patrons at the Black Bull have to stare at:

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At the very least, if they needed that to be a blank wall, they could've animated it like they did on the King Street facade. Wooden awnings with a bike repair station and bike racks would've been far better than a blank wall. Add some ivy at least. What this shows is that MEC doesn't care about the neighbourhood. They've long ago lost their soul and they're going to disappear because of it.
 
The execution is appalling and I'm in no way defending this turd, but the 'blank wall' / 'not-activated' treatment was something that was actively pushed for by the City. Not even kidding...
 
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