Toronto TeaHouse 501 Yonge Condominiums | 170.98m | 52s | Lanterra | a—A

At tonight's working group meeting, the architect presented a revised proposal with a 52-storey south towner sporting an enlarged footprint, growing closer to the lane way on the east, and a much reduced 22-storey (I think) north tower. The images were just massing studies with no details. This will go back to the design panel in January or February.
 
Hmm, is the DRP stalking me? ;)

Looks basically like Shops at Uptown Square (Waterloo) --King Street frontage-- with two '60s-style towers above. Now that is one idea: push the '60s apartment aesthetic harder and make the podium more like NimbyTect's last version. I like these challenges....:D
 
From that rendering the scale of the podium is so much less threatening than what they started with, good work there to the developers and community residents of the working group. As suggested, I'd prefer a taller, one tower, mid-block solution (55-60s) and reduced parking, with great attention to design, detail and materials on the podium and residential tower. Of course I'd still it rather stay as is but that's not going to happen.
 
Terrible. Looks like a really good P+S with the precast first floor and brick above. Another reason why the democratization of design isn't the panacea it's made out to be.
 
Xray_Crystal_Junkie said:
I like the look of the Yonge street frontage in the render provided in the report:

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At the end of the day though I think they're just trying to jam to much onto this site. Reducing the number of units, and thus parking, is how you make everything workable.
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something about the podium reminds me of ROCP. plenty of retail, trees and tables along the street, but the entrances to the retail is under that dark walkway thing that is suppose to protect pedestrians from rain or whatever. i can't explain it well
but ya, a huge step up from the previous. It actually sorta fits in with the low-rises directly north. looks cheap, but a nice approach they're going for.

now show me renders for them towers
 
steveve, this project's ground level is not set back on an arcade like Residences of College Park.
 
The MET condos just down the street are build on a parcel about the length of 501 Yonge, and although the towers come fairly close to each other, the site doesn't feel crowded IMO - just downtown urban. I wasn't on the forum when MET was proposed - was there significant opposition?
 
all i can think of when I see this rendering is how much this towers look like all the towers lining Bay street - Yonge St is slowly going to turn into Bay
 
ProjectEnd said:
Terrible. Looks like a really good P+S with the precast first floor and brick above. Another reason why the democratization of design isn't the panacea it's made out to be.
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A good architect can, except in the most extenuating circumstances, take democratic feedback and turn it into a quality design.

They chose the precast, the brick, and the style to this podium; the public merely asked for certain features, setbacks, etc. Something like Market Wharf but divided into different "storefronts"/somehow varied or fragmented frontages would have been just fine here.

aA wasn't forced to use horizontal bands of stone and brick with precast, etc.

I do, however, very much like the canvas canopies above the ground-floor retail; they're likely just a feature of the rendering but at the Shops of Uptown Waterloo (First Gulf / Joseph Bogdan & Associates Architects), they carried these types of canvas canopies through to the constructed buildings and they are a very pleasing addition to the streetscape as well as differentiating businesses quite nicely.
 
College Park said:
The MET condos just down the street are build on a parcel about the length of 501 Yonge, and although the towers come fairly close to each other, the site doesn't feel crowded IMO - just downtown urban. I wasn't on the forum when MET was proposed - was there significant opposition?
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This is what I don't understand either. The area in this context is more than large enough to support two towers imo
 
DtTO said:
This is what I don't understand either. The area in this context is more than large enough to support two towers imo
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There's a big difference between the Met and 501. There was no front setback with the Met but there must be with 501. There were no setbacks on the left and right sides with the Met due to no neighbouring buildings but the only way to squeeze two towers into 501 is to build them right up to the edge of the podium. So you're going to build huge towers on Metcalfe and Alexander, two small neighbourhood streets, and build up 150 metres or so? Now the north tower on Metcalfe has been shortened, but the south one on Alexander is going to be huge. The other buildings on the street have setbacks, except for the relatively short (11 stories) Alexus at #70 over at Church. There will be no more view down the street for the other buildings.

Now let's take that south tower which is built right up to Alexander and fatten it up to make up for the shorter north tower. To fatten it up, they'll move the east edge right up to the laneway property line. The architect explained how this would protect Buddies from future development because of this tall building. Yeah, like that was the reason they were doing it.

The south tower is now fatter than the tall buildings rule allows. It's not set back from Yonge enough for the angle required by the design review panel. It's not set back Alexander at all. It's not set back from the laneway at all.

This property is crying out for redevelopment (I think I'd almost welcome anything to get rid of the stupid store with the annoying "20-50% of brand-name clothing and footwear" 15-minute loop on exterior speakers), but this property has no potential for underground parking so it has a ugly podium with solid walls. It can't fit two towers of this size properly. The developer bought it assuming they could build whatever they wanted on it. They compromised on the north tower to fit into the guidelines, but they made the south tower worse.

And as somebody at the meeting this week so eloquently put it, it's amazing that the developer thinks that it's a good idea to have lobby of the north tower face the garbage bins of 25 Maitland.
 
Metcalfe? You mean Maitland Street?
 
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