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Will Today's Condos be Around 150 Years From Now?

management can let the building deteriorate and then have the building condemned.
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Condo management is paid for by the condo owners. It's doubtful they'd let their investments deteriorate.
 
doug said:
Condo management is paid for by the condo owners. It's doubtful they'd let their investments deteriorate.
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You are absolutely right. Although, it should be noted that there have been cases where a very short-sighted board of directors and owners who have no priorities beyond keeping monthly condo fees as low as possible, have let a building deteriorate to an alarming degree. The condo at the north east corner of Bay and Gerrard is an example of this. It is one of those buildings where the value of the units has actually decreased over time. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the buildings in Cityplace meet the same fate.

An interesting example here is St. James Town. When this development was new, it was considered to be the Cityplace of it's time (late 1960s.) Now look at it. On the other hand, it's still around. Just re-purposes as low budget rentals.
 
hawc said:
However, reading through the Toronto Then & Now thread on this forum, I started thinking, I wonder if the condos we love will stand the test of time - both from a purely physical standpoint (are they engineered to stand for 150 years) and from an aesthetic perspective (will they be considered important historical building worth preserving 150 years from now?)
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thanks for starting this thread, i've always begged to ask/ponder the question...

Today, and to me, i love the range of architecture in buildings AND condos that are still being built today. We have contemporary, glass (and more future-proof look wise) buildings such as RBC centre, as well as older-looking classic buildings such as Uptown Residences.
This is great, but as an architect (i'm not an architect, just putting myself in ones shoes) with the future in mind, i'd want my buildings to look good 100 years from now as well as maintain its quality and structural strength. I don't really understand why people still build old-looking brick condos that will look antique in years to come, heck, we already know what a future-looking skyscraper looks like (mostly glass facades with sharp edges).. and yes, i do understand that some buildings with older designs are timeless,
I really do find it scary looking ahead 100-150 years and knowing how these buildings hold up, especially the 100m+ ones. Will they structurally be intact/stay planted in the ground? the ground/geography/soil changes all the time, and everything deteriorates with age. and when these buildings are taken down, how would you demolish/take down a 150m+ skyscraper with re-enforced concrete, rebar, and all.... something that was designed not to be destroyed and to withstand forces...

scary stuff looking that far into the future......... i'm gonna get high now.
 
Mississauga Slim said:
Although, it should be noted that there have been cases where a very short-sighted board of directors and owners who have no priorities beyond keeping monthly condo fees as low as possible, have let a building deteriorate to an alarming degree. The condo at the north east corner of Bay and Gerrard is an example of this. It is one of those buildings where the value of the units has actually decreased over time.
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The Liberties? I'd say that's a case where the deterioration is clear only to those who live there. It isn't as if there's a clear, explisit demographic upheaval a la St James Town...at least, yet...
 
Location really is the main long-term factor determining the future of a building. However, I would not have the same degree of faith in many condo buildings as some here. I have been in 10 year old buildings that are already in a state of visible decline. And I know the financials on units in certain complexes around the city and I would suggest that there is little evidence that some buildings will maintain their inflation adjusted value over time.

It will be interesting to see how some buildings manage the nature cycles of success and decline that are intrinsic behaviours of all neighbourhoods over time. I'm sure there are contemporary comparisons in other cities in the world to draw on but relatively speaking the skyscraper and in particularly the condo skyscraper are very new additions to our human civilization and we have yet to see the fate of any 150 year old skyscraper of any kind with any ownership structure.
 
steveve said:
thanks for starting this thread, i've always begged to ask/ponder the question...

Today, and to me, i love the range of architecture in buildings AND condos that are still being built today. We have contemporary, glass (and more future-proof look wise) buildings such as RBC centre, as well as older-looking classic buildings such as Uptown Residences.
This is great, but as an architect (i'm not an architect, just putting myself in ones shoes) with the future in mind, i'd want my buildings to look good 100 years from now as well as maintain its quality and structural strength. I don't really understand why people still build old-looking brick condos that will look antique in years to come, heck, we already know what a future-looking skyscraper looks like (mostly glass facades with sharp edges).. and yes, i do understand that some buildings with older designs are timeless,
I really do find it scary looking ahead 100-150 years and knowing how these buildings hold up, especially the 100m+ ones. Will they structurally be intact/stay planted in the ground? the ground/geography/soil changes all the time, and everything deteriorates with age. and when these buildings are taken down, how would you demolish/take down a 150m+ skyscraper with re-enforced concrete, rebar, and all.... something that was designed not to be destroyed and to withstand forces...

scary stuff looking that far into the future......... i'm gonna get high now.
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I would disagree with you with much of what you said here. I think it's impossible to know what will be "looking good" to people in 100 years from now. Look at the vast range of styles we've seen in the last 100 years, or even 200, 300, etc. and all of those styles have been deemed ugly and beautiful by various generations. It wasn't so long ago that the city was tearing down much of it's stock of old buildings, while making great use of brutalism. Today, many people greatly dislike brutalism and love our heritage buildings. In 20 years from now, we could find people longing for the era when brutalism was king. We really don't know. At best, you should build for the present. If something is stylish today, go with it. It's not a bad thing to be dated and eventually that style will be beloved.
 
adma said:
The Liberties? I'd say that's a case where the deterioration is clear only to those who live there. It isn't as if there's a clear, explisit demographic upheaval a la St James Town...at least, yet...
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as someone who doesn't live at the Liberties, what's the situation there?


back OT, there was an article in either the G&M or Star about a ~ 30 y.o. condo in TO that was in rapid decline as owners wanted low maintenance fees so the BoD deferred alot of work.

hence, the building is crumbling, the reserve is completely inadequate so special assessments have been tacted onto owners, and of course, valuations are very low.
 
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Okay, so the overriding opinion in this thread is all the new condos we're in love with will be worthless and crumbling a few years now. Good stuff! :(
 
Mississauga Slim said:
An interesting example here is St. James Town. When this development was new, it was considered to be the Cityplace of it's time (late 1960s.) Now look at it. On the other hand, it's still around. Just re-purposes as low budget rentals.
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I always assumed St. James Town have been rental buildings from the get go. What was the ownership structure there to begin with?

I think modern condos are better designed that 60s apartment blocks (not a hard feat). Those towers in the 60s were a mess.

First of all, due to the whole 'tower in the park' idea, it's painful to try and walk to transit in winter, or to simply walk to a store. The lack of retail worsens the situation. Very few or no covered parking was offered, so walking out to your car in winter is a rather annoying experience.

A number of 'no man's land' spaces were left all over the complexes, usually with little use, these places attract crime. A great example is the sides of most of these buildings - there's usually no other humans anywhere near to see or prevent crime.

One of the biggest issues has to be the lack of washer/drier. I've lived in units without my own, and god is it an incentive to move out. Washers and driers were already mainstream by the late 60s, so the lack of inclusion of these in each unit was a big mistake - they took tenants for granted.

Finally, the windows and balconies are usually a mess, not friendly at all. And the hallways are dark and aesthetically poor. At some places I've been to you'd swear you are in a jail or mental asylum.
 
hawc said:
I'm curious how you would even demolish a 50+ story building?! I mean you probably couldn't use explosive demolition if it were in the city core? And it would take forever to chip away at all that reinforced concrete? Has a huge high-rise 50+ stories ever been torn down in a downtown core?
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The 47-storey Singer Building (1908) was demolished in NY in 1968:

singer2.jpg
407px-SingerBuilding3.jpg
 
cdr108 said:
as someone who doesn't live at the Liberties, what's the situation there?


back OT, there was an article in either the G&M or Star about a ~ 30 y.o. condo in TO that was in rapid decline as owners wanted low maintenance fees so the BoD deferred alot of work.

hence, the building is crumbling, the reserve is completely inadequate so special assessments have been tacted onto owners, and of course, valuations are very low.
Click to expand...

Though "crumbling" isn't the same as being "slummy"--then again, the Liberties neighbourhood isn't exactly slum-housing-friendly, so any maintenance of living-place value is by neighbourhood-milieu default.

Though it does make me wonder about other cases of "poorly built/designed condos" from the 80s--stuff like 1001 Bay just up the street, or the Huang & Danczkays on Queen's Quay...
 
RC8 said:
I always assumed St. James Town have been rental buildings from the get go. What was the ownership structure there to begin with?
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You're right, St. James Town was always rental. I wasn't thinking so much of the ownership structure as much as of the way it was marketed at the time as a hip new place for young urban professionals to live. A far cry from how it ended up. I was speculating that it seems pretty likely that CityPlace could go in the same direction.
 
doug said:
Condo management is paid for by the condo owners. It's doubtful they'd let their investments deteriorate.
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Not all condo owners live in the condo's they own. While it's questionable that they would allow things to deteriorate, they might not always see it or react as anticipated. After 50 years, you won't have any original owners left, so there is some room for general neglect to creep in.

For comparison, here's downtown Toronto a bit over 50 years ago:
aerial_Toronto.jpg
 
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