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Yesterday was an exciting day for Toronto city building announcements.
Firstly, Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail published an exclusive preview of architect Bjarke Ingel’s plan for King Street West. Here’s a photo of the architectural model (it’s by Landon Speers):
My favorite quote from the article is this one from Bjarke:
“It would be sad if the most diverse city in the world had the most homogenous real estate.”
It’s true.
For those of you who emailed me about the details of his talk next week (there were a lot of you!), I believe I emailed you all back. But in case I missed some of you, you can click here for the event details. I should have included it in my original post about BIG, but I thought the event was already oversubscribed.
Secondly, a private company called Bullwheel International Cable Car Corp. has just proposed to build a $20 to $25 million gondola running from Danforth Avenue (near Broadview subway station) to the Evergreen Brickworks. The total length would be almost 1 km and it, allegedly, wouldn’t require any public money. Here is their website.
The timing of this proposal feels a bit serendipitous to me. When I was in Park City, Utah a few weeks ago, snowboarding right into the town and then taking their “town lifts” back up to traverse the mountain, I remember thinking to myself: what a wonderful form of transportation this is.
Of course, Park City has giant mountains and Toronto, unfortunately, does not. But we do have spectacular ravines and a spectacular institution known as the Evergreen Brickworks.
But one of the challenges with our ravines is that they can be a bit hidden – particularly for visitors to the city. Part of this is because we are trying to figure out the right balance between natural preservation and active use. But that’s one of the things that makes this proposal so intriguing. It’s a way to celebrate our ravines and natural landscape, without physically encroaching it.
Here’s a map of the proposed gondola path:
What do you think about these announcements?
I try not to focus on local Toronto issues this much, but this morning an important initiative was announced and it’s blowing up my Twitter feed.
By spring 2017, the city hopes to have a pilot project in place that will transform King Street – running from Liberty Village in the west to the Distillery District in the east – into a priority-transit and pedestrian corridor.
This isn’t to say the street will be closed to cars. I would imagine that at least 1 lane would remain for cars going each way. Instead it will be redesigned to prioritize transit, pedestrians, and cyclists.
So why is this exciting?
The King streetcar is currently broken. If you’ve ever taken it across downtown during rush hour, you know exactly what I mean. It’s infuriating. You might as well be crawling on your hands and knees. One of the goals of this initiative will be to get it working again. Good.
The shoulders of downtown – along King West and King East – are seeing some of the greatest intensification in the region. So much that it’s common for people in this city to complain that Toronto misplanned it all by allowing this development before the transit was there. Well, this is a quick and inexpensive way to get the transit there. Remember that when the inevitable “war on car” rhetoric ratchets up over the next year.
The project will be deployed, first, as a pilot project. That will allow the project team to test and iterate. It has also become the way you get things approved in cities. You first make them temporary.
But I am certain that we will quickly discover how necessary these changes were.
Earlier this week a press release went out announcing that Allied Properties REIT (TSX:AP.UN) had established a joint venture with Westbank to redevelop 489 - 539 King Street West here in Toronto.
“What is so exciting here is that Allied has over time assembled 620 feet of frontage on what is fast becoming one of the most interesting streets in Toronto,” said Ian Gillespie of Westbank. “With this scale, we have a unique opportunity for world-class city building.”
Westbank is relatively new to the Toronto market. Their first project was the Shangri-La Toronto in 2012. But since then they’ve entered the city in a big way with high profile projects like the redevelopment of Honest Ed’s at Bloor and Bathurst.
But what excites me the most about this King Street project is that they’ve selected Bjarke Ingels Group as the design architect. I’ve written about BIG a few times before and I’m a huge fan of their/his work. So I’m pumped to see what gets proposed here. It will not be typical.
There are a few heritage buildings on the site. And it looks like some (but not all?) will be preserved.
Based on this post and discussion on UrbanToronto.ca, it’s not clear whether 489 King Street West will be preserved and incorporated into the new build (as was the case with a previous design). I sure hope it is though.
Yesterday was an exciting day for Toronto city building announcements.
Firstly, Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail published an exclusive preview of architect Bjarke Ingel’s plan for King Street West. Here’s a photo of the architectural model (it’s by Landon Speers):
My favorite quote from the article is this one from Bjarke:
“It would be sad if the most diverse city in the world had the most homogenous real estate.”
It’s true.
For those of you who emailed me about the details of his talk next week (there were a lot of you!), I believe I emailed you all back. But in case I missed some of you, you can click here for the event details. I should have included it in my original post about BIG, but I thought the event was already oversubscribed.
Secondly, a private company called Bullwheel International Cable Car Corp. has just proposed to build a $20 to $25 million gondola running from Danforth Avenue (near Broadview subway station) to the Evergreen Brickworks. The total length would be almost 1 km and it, allegedly, wouldn’t require any public money. Here is their website.
The timing of this proposal feels a bit serendipitous to me. When I was in Park City, Utah a few weeks ago, snowboarding right into the town and then taking their “town lifts” back up to traverse the mountain, I remember thinking to myself: what a wonderful form of transportation this is.
Of course, Park City has giant mountains and Toronto, unfortunately, does not. But we do have spectacular ravines and a spectacular institution known as the Evergreen Brickworks.
But one of the challenges with our ravines is that they can be a bit hidden – particularly for visitors to the city. Part of this is because we are trying to figure out the right balance between natural preservation and active use. But that’s one of the things that makes this proposal so intriguing. It’s a way to celebrate our ravines and natural landscape, without physically encroaching it.
Here’s a map of the proposed gondola path:
What do you think about these announcements?
I try not to focus on local Toronto issues this much, but this morning an important initiative was announced and it’s blowing up my Twitter feed.
By spring 2017, the city hopes to have a pilot project in place that will transform King Street – running from Liberty Village in the west to the Distillery District in the east – into a priority-transit and pedestrian corridor.
This isn’t to say the street will be closed to cars. I would imagine that at least 1 lane would remain for cars going each way. Instead it will be redesigned to prioritize transit, pedestrians, and cyclists.
So why is this exciting?
The King streetcar is currently broken. If you’ve ever taken it across downtown during rush hour, you know exactly what I mean. It’s infuriating. You might as well be crawling on your hands and knees. One of the goals of this initiative will be to get it working again. Good.
The shoulders of downtown – along King West and King East – are seeing some of the greatest intensification in the region. So much that it’s common for people in this city to complain that Toronto misplanned it all by allowing this development before the transit was there. Well, this is a quick and inexpensive way to get the transit there. Remember that when the inevitable “war on car” rhetoric ratchets up over the next year.
The project will be deployed, first, as a pilot project. That will allow the project team to test and iterate. It has also become the way you get things approved in cities. You first make them temporary.
But I am certain that we will quickly discover how necessary these changes were.
Earlier this week a press release went out announcing that Allied Properties REIT (TSX:AP.UN) had established a joint venture with Westbank to redevelop 489 - 539 King Street West here in Toronto.
“What is so exciting here is that Allied has over time assembled 620 feet of frontage on what is fast becoming one of the most interesting streets in Toronto,” said Ian Gillespie of Westbank. “With this scale, we have a unique opportunity for world-class city building.”
Westbank is relatively new to the Toronto market. Their first project was the Shangri-La Toronto in 2012. But since then they’ve entered the city in a big way with high profile projects like the redevelopment of Honest Ed’s at Bloor and Bathurst.
But what excites me the most about this King Street project is that they’ve selected Bjarke Ingels Group as the design architect. I’ve written about BIG a few times before and I’m a huge fan of their/his work. So I’m pumped to see what gets proposed here. It will not be typical.
There are a few heritage buildings on the site. And it looks like some (but not all?) will be preserved.
Based on this post and discussion on UrbanToronto.ca, it’s not clear whether 489 King Street West will be preserved and incorporated into the new build (as was the case with a previous design). I sure hope it is though.
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