Toronto The Bread Company | 67.8m | 20s | Lamb Dev Corp | a—A

Those side walls remind me of CampusOne on College and that's not a good thing.
 
Anyone want to (please) read through the planning rationale and then try to summarize the reasoning for why this should get to ignore the Tall Buildings Guidelines and have a floor plate of 1,092 sq m instead of 750?

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I think it's reasonable to remind commenters and critics to keep in mind that this is a very early scheme with a lot of change to come, but there's nothing irresponsible or misleading about sharing, looking at the images and drawings and discussing them.

I think sometimes people here underestimate the pressure a design team might be under to quickly get the plans put together for an application long before the architecture is resolved. But I think with the caveat that the applications we see are very much a "design in flux", it's entirely reasonable to have a discussion about the merits and drawbacks of an application.
 
interchange42 said:
Anyone want to (please) read through the planning rationale and then try to summarize the reasoning for why this should get to ignore the Tall Buildings Guidelines and have a floor plate of 1,092 sq m instead of 750?

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The guy next door? Beyond that, nothing.
 
A point-tower floorplate makes no sense on a street like McCaul, for one. A midrise built form right to the property line at each end, in my opinion, is preferable here.
 
A 19-storey mid-rise form building which is about 3 times in height the width of the road? With an outdoor amenity space 5.2 metres wide pressed up against the parking garage it abuts? A couple of limits are being pushed here.

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modernizt said:
A point-tower floorplate makes no sense on a street like McCaul, for one. A midrise built form right to the property line at each end, in my opinion, is preferable here.
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Sure. Then not 18 floors.

As for pushing the boundaries, Lamb always does it. Every one of his projects pushes them in some way.
 
I'm on board with boundary pushing when the boundaries seem arbitrary or now-discredited. So sure, the architecture is still in flux here, but the massing isn't where it should be yet either, and something more reasonable should have been worked out in that regard in time for the filing.

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To the above point, Bradley closed on the property in early July and had the rezoning application in on August 5. While I'm sympathetic to the idea that things are in constant flux until the bills are passed at Council, from the aggressive timeline and the proposal that pushes nearly every conceivable planning boundary, one gets the sense here that he's only starting the 120 day timer to the inevitable appeal.
 
For the record, this city is lucky to have Brad Lamb developing in it. You can count on his buildings to be at least good, and usually they are better than that. I am glad that he's won certain battles with the City that others have not, an example being not having to keep to the King Street streetwall with Theatre Park: someday the right restauranteur will move in there, and the little plaza there will feel like it should. Brad's always pushing for more than he's allowed, every building starting out as a bigger ask than how they end up, and yes, like @ProjectEnd said, the proposals seem calculated lately to be beyond where the City will even want to start negotiating, and off it'll go to the OMB (sometimes just to get the negotiating kickstarted).

All that said, when he acts petulantly, like he has on a couple of occasions as of late—over this on twitter today, and over rent control recently—I question if he's losing perspective. Battling is Brad's modus operandi, but now that he's seeming to take his behavioural cues from outta control bad boy du jour DJ Trump, he needs to rethink his choice of role models to emulate.

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I remember hearing not that long ago that Brad Lamb is taking a hiatus from developing in Toronto and focusing on other cities instead (Edmonton, Ottawa, Hamilton, etc.).

Lamb does quality well-designed developments, though the last few developments in Toronto had some really odd unit layouts, however the overall building design is very nice so I have confidence that what will go here will be a decent development.
The apartment buildings in the area are typically slab buildings, so I could see the rationale of proposing a slab building here, though at 19 storeys it may be a bit too high for the area.
 
neuhaus said:
I remember hearing not that long ago that Brad Lamb is taking a hiatus from developing in Toronto and focusing on other cities instead (Edmonton, Ottawa, Hamilton, etc.)
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Was that part of his post-rent control rant? Whatever it was related to, you can't take those statements of his seriously, not anymore. East Fifty Five, James, Wellington House, Bauhaus, and now The Bread Company. That's some hiatus.

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