Toronto The Well | 174.03m | 46s | RioCan | Hariri Pontarini

400WellingtonGuy said:
Completely biased here living on Wellington, but most of the construction will be originating from the Front Street side, starting with the office tower. It will probably be 3 years before anything else gets touched, and of course, the market will determine how fast it goes. Unless they decide to do this all at once, I don't think property values in the short term will be affected so much. In this neighbourhood, we are used to lots of construction going on and part of living here for nearly a decade now.
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At the public meeting, Diamond Corp indicated that their preference is to go ahead with all of this at once (because of the integrated underground components mostly). They did not indicate that the office building would happen first. They also don't plan to move ahead with construction until after the Globe has moved east.

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Best. Project. Ever. The new E-W street appears to be covered in its' entirety by that canopy.

junctionist said:
Hopefully, the terraced white facades will have attractive and high-quality cladding, unlike upper part of The Berczy in St. Lawrence.
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Something along the lines of 60 Richmond St. E would do. Or precast like that used at 1 St. Thomas.

AoD
 
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I love the atmosphere at street level, but I'm not wild about the silhouette those residential buildings strike lined up at approximately the same height a la Liberty Village. "The Wall" seems a more apt name.
 
Street level appears to be excellent.

I'm having trouble reconciling how everything is the same height. It feels heavy handed.

I love all the different facade treatments though. I was having trouble with the materials being the same on all of them, but then I looked at each building like they were siblings and the buildings were a family. They all share some DNA, but they are all slightly different.
 
forever29 said:
I love the atmosphere at street level, but I'm not wild about the silhouette those residential buildings strike lined up at approximately the same height a la Liberty Village. "The Wall" seems a more apt name.
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Love the Wellington Frontage as well but did you notice the semi-transparent towers along the Front Street edge? Looks like there will be some height along there. This could end up being kinda mall-ish.
 
I actually like the fact that the everything is at the same/similar heights - it creates a very strong identity to the development at a neighbourhood scale - it is not an area Toronto does well (beyond the 2-3s arterial strips).

AoD
 
I'm loving the 70s-Yorkville-Hazelton-Lanes-meets-2014 revival style Hariri Pontarini is pushing on a few of the King West projects they've been involved with. ;)

I do mean that. It's crisp and contemporary yet warm and humane. Looking forward to this project; I just hope the better aspects don't get watered down. Anytime I see "RioCan" on a development, I get very worried.
 
You should be worried. The site plan and elevations are a lot more useful than the current renderings to show the sheer scope and heights proposed here. The renderings almost exclusively focus on the Wellington St buildings or the office building, but not the residential ones along Front. They seem like monsters and will dominate the well-designed condos on Wellington. We have mixed-feelings about this project.

Seems that they are just carrying on bringing the same monster buildings at City Place a little further north. City Place should have been a mid-rise neighbourhood. We had high hopes for The Well, but only half of the proposal seems good. That's the half that the developer's are emphasizing right now. In reality...
 
NGBtect:

To be honest though, I think it's actually not a bad thing that there is a significant high density component to this project given the westward extension of the core. Perhaps the mid-rise component can be shifted north for better transition?

AoD
 
My point being that, not once has the developers emphasized the huge buildings (numbers 5 and 6) in their renderings. Why de-emphasize them? It's marketing to have us think this is going to be a quaint neighbourhood of mid-rises. It isn't at all. And that bothers me. One has to go looking for the 40 and 34 storey buildings because they aren't obvious at all. Anyone living on the south side of the buildings located on Wellington St (buildings 1 and 2, at least) will feel very dominated.

This will look like a nicer, more thoughtful King West Life when all is said and done (based on the current site plan ).

I think the 40 storey and 34 storey buildings should be 22 storeys and 21 storeys respectively. The office tower isn't the problem, that should be tall.

Half of the proposal is great. The other half is not so much.
 
NBGtect said:
My point being that, not once has the developers emphasized the huge buildings (numbers 5 and 6) in their renderings. Why de-emphasize them? It's marketing to have us think this is going to be a quaint neighbourhood of mid-rises. It isn't at all. And that bothers me. One has to go looking for the 40 and 34 storey buildings because they aren't obvious at all. Anyone living on the south side of the buildings located on Wellington St (buildings 1 and 2, at least) will feel very dominated.

This will look like a nicer, more thoughtful King West Life when all is said and done (based on the current site plan ).

I think the 40 storey and 34 storey buildings should be 22 storeys and 21 storeys respectively. The office tower isn't the problem, that should be tall.

Half of the proposal is great. The other half is not so much.
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They are de-emphasized because they are not part of the project right now. The only portion currently being marketed is the midrise portion, hence why that part is being shown now.

I don't mind the height along Front Street, especially since it could help sell Spadina/Front as a potential stop along the DRL. With GO also considering a second station here, it makes sense to have higher density concentrated along Spadina/Front. The North side buildings can always be built in a way that they focus the windows and views towards the North and East/West instead of South.
 
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