Fun fact: The bike I used throughout most of undergrad at the University of Toronto was a jaunty-looking red thing that I purchased from Bikes on Wheels in Kensington Market. I used it every day. It was a workhorse.
And when I eventually moved to Philadelphia for grad school, I took it with me. Let me tell you, I probably stood out like a sore thumb riding that thing through the depths of West Philly. But then it got a flat tire and it sat in the corner of my apartment for the rest of the school year. I couldn’t tell you what happened to it after that.
This is a mostly irrelevant story except that a development application was recently filed for a site in Kensington that includes the former home of Bikes on Wheels. It’s a new six-storey boutique hotel designed by Joel Gerber Architect. The design looks great, and I like the yellow pitched-roof top hat that comes with it. It will look fun on the Kensington skyline.
But even more importantly, this is exactly the kind of infill development that Toronto needs, all over. We should be doing everything we can to reduce the barriers to building at this scale. It’s not easy, which is one of the reasons why we are not seeing a flurry of 6-storey buildings all along our avenues, even though they are technically now permissible.
So, whoever the team is behind this project, I wish them a speedy and straightforward approval.
Project rendering via blogTO
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