This fall Slate acquired a retail center in Hamilton called Corktown Plaza. It is the block bounded by John Street South, Young Street, Catharine Street South, and Forest Avenue. It is just south of the Hamilton GO Centre in downtown.
It is currently a much used single storey retail plaza with a large surface parking lot facing John Street South. It’s still early days, but the long-term plan is to redevelop it into a mixed-use retail and residential complex.
Before putting pen to paper, the team is hosting a “pre-design community meeting” this Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7pm at the Church of Ascension down the street. Address is 64 Forest Avenue (accessible entrance at 258 John Street South).
This fall Slate acquired a retail center in Hamilton called Corktown Plaza. It is the block bounded by John Street South, Young Street, Catharine Street South, and Forest Avenue. It is just south of the Hamilton GO Centre in downtown.
It is currently a much used single storey retail plaza with a large surface parking lot facing John Street South. It’s still early days, but the long-term plan is to redevelop it into a mixed-use retail and residential complex.
Before putting pen to paper, the team is hosting a “pre-design community meeting” this Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7pm at the Church of Ascension down the street. Address is 64 Forest Avenue (accessible entrance at 258 John Street South).
The purpose of the meeting is to gather feedback from the community before beginning design. We want to know what’s working today, what’s not working today, and what would be ideal for the future.
CORE Architects and GSP Group (planning) will be in attendance along with the Slate team. The format will be brief presentations followed by interactive breakout sessions. There will be trace paper on hand so that we can all put pen to paper.
If you live and/or work in the area or are simply interested in the future of Hamilton, please feel free to join us on Tuesday evening. If you can, send a quick email to rsvp@kga-inc.com letting us know you’ll be coming. But just showing up is also perfectly fine.
There are, of course, many examples of multi-level apartments in the city. There’s 75 Portland by CORE Architects. There’s District Lofts and Mozo by architectsAlliance. And there’s Village by the Grange (pointed out during the discussion), which has a number of 2 and even 3 storey suites.
Another example that was raised by Gil Meslin is 14 Blevins Place. Now demolished, Blevins Place was designed in 1955 and completed in 1957 as part of the Regent Park South urban renewal project. It was designed by the British-born Toronto architect Peter Dickinson and by Page + Steele.
In 2005, prior to its demolition, the building was identified as a listed heritage building, but it was never elevated to a designated heritage building.
Perhaps most notable about the building are its “skip-stop corridors” and its 2 storey suites. See below images taken from this Heritage Impact Assessment by ERA Architects.
It’s a 2-storey unit with a den and double height living room on the main floor and 1 bedroom and 1 media lounge (that could act like a 2nd bedroom, but doesn’t have a window so it can’t be called that) on the second floor.
The purpose of the meeting is to gather feedback from the community before beginning design. We want to know what’s working today, what’s not working today, and what would be ideal for the future.
CORE Architects and GSP Group (planning) will be in attendance along with the Slate team. The format will be brief presentations followed by interactive breakout sessions. There will be trace paper on hand so that we can all put pen to paper.
If you live and/or work in the area or are simply interested in the future of Hamilton, please feel free to join us on Tuesday evening. If you can, send a quick email to rsvp@kga-inc.com letting us know you’ll be coming. But just showing up is also perfectly fine.
There are, of course, many examples of multi-level apartments in the city. There’s 75 Portland by CORE Architects. There’s District Lofts and Mozo by architectsAlliance. And there’s Village by the Grange (pointed out during the discussion), which has a number of 2 and even 3 storey suites.
Another example that was raised by Gil Meslin is 14 Blevins Place. Now demolished, Blevins Place was designed in 1955 and completed in 1957 as part of the Regent Park South urban renewal project. It was designed by the British-born Toronto architect Peter Dickinson and by Page + Steele.
In 2005, prior to its demolition, the building was identified as a listed heritage building, but it was never elevated to a designated heritage building.
Perhaps most notable about the building are its “skip-stop corridors” and its 2 storey suites. See below images taken from this Heritage Impact Assessment by ERA Architects.
It’s a 2-storey unit with a den and double height living room on the main floor and 1 bedroom and 1 media lounge (that could act like a 2nd bedroom, but doesn’t have a window so it can’t be called that) on the second floor.
The reality is that modern architecture has had a long history of employing multi-level units and skip-stop corridors. Le Corbusier and Oscar Neimeyer were said to be experimenting with them as far back as the 1930s.
But I think most would agree that Toronto is a very different city today compared to what it was in the 1950s. Some still believe that no child should grow up in an apartment, but I disagree with that belief system. I lived in an apartment as a kid and somehow I survived.
Rough rough, the overall dimensions look to be about 4.3m wide x 12m deep. It’s a fairly deep plan, which means you have to be careful how much “frontage” you give it. If the apartment gets too wide, then it could quickly become too big and potentially unaffordable.
With the above dimensions, and if you didn’t go 2 storeys, you’d be forced to do an inset/recessed bedroom. The living room would get all of the windows. And if you made the apartment wider to accommodate that main floor bedroom, then you’d likely end up doing an inset/recessed 2nd bedroom, anyways, because of how big the unit had become. So there are trade-offs to consider.
I’ve seen this layout first hand and I like it a lot. I think it’s an elegant solution to the challenge of deep floor plates.
But what do you think? It may not suit everyone’s needs, so I would be really curious to hear your thoughts in the comment section below or on Twitter.
The reality is that modern architecture has had a long history of employing multi-level units and skip-stop corridors. Le Corbusier and Oscar Neimeyer were said to be experimenting with them as far back as the 1930s.
But I think most would agree that Toronto is a very different city today compared to what it was in the 1950s. Some still believe that no child should grow up in an apartment, but I disagree with that belief system. I lived in an apartment as a kid and somehow I survived.
Rough rough, the overall dimensions look to be about 4.3m wide x 12m deep. It’s a fairly deep plan, which means you have to be careful how much “frontage” you give it. If the apartment gets too wide, then it could quickly become too big and potentially unaffordable.
With the above dimensions, and if you didn’t go 2 storeys, you’d be forced to do an inset/recessed bedroom. The living room would get all of the windows. And if you made the apartment wider to accommodate that main floor bedroom, then you’d likely end up doing an inset/recessed 2nd bedroom, anyways, because of how big the unit had become. So there are trade-offs to consider.
I’ve seen this layout first hand and I like it a lot. I think it’s an elegant solution to the challenge of deep floor plates.
But what do you think? It may not suit everyone’s needs, so I would be really curious to hear your thoughts in the comment section below or on Twitter.
