This evening Slate Asset Management hosted the community meeting that I’ve been writing about on the blog over the last little while. 

And at this open house Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang introduced a new block plan and mixed-use building at the southwest corner of Yonge Street and Delisle Avenue in midtown Toronto.

I think it went really well. We had over 200 people RSVP, but based on my imprecise head count, over 300 people actually showed up. 

I would tell you more right now, but it’s very late. So I’m going to instead leave you with this article by Alex Bozikovic, titled, Studio Gang’s new Toronto tower follows the right recipe: tall, innovative and excellent.

One of the most interesting projects being proposed in Toronto right now is 363 Yonge Street, which is located downtown at the southeast corner of Yonge Street and Gerrard Street. See above hero rendering.

The project is a two tower mixed-use development with the following stats (as per their rezoning application dated April 24, 2015):

• 73 storey tower to the north (inclusive of podium)
  

• 62 storey to the south (inclusive of podium)
  

• 9 storey podium containing office and retail 
  

• 887,752 square feet of residential
  

• 101,062 square feet of retail
  

• 186,977 square feet of office
  

• Site area is 42,248 square feet (proposed density on the site works out to be about 27x)
  

• 1,106 residential units – 107 bachelor (9.7%), 648 one-bedroom (58.6%), 241 two-bedroom (21.8%), and 110 three-bedroom (9.9%)
  

• 289 parking spaces – 221 spaces for residents, 23 spaces for visitors, 23 spaces for retail, and 22 for office
  

• 9,790 square feet of outdoor amenity space and 23,809 square feet of indoor amenity space for the residences (the “skybridge” that connects the two towers at the 51st and 52nd floors is amenity space)

• 9,809 square feet of outdoor amenity space for the commercial spaces

The site also contains 2 listed heritage buildings. The Gerrard Building and The Richard S. Williams Block. The project proposes to incorporate 3 of their facades (not the entire buildings) into the base of the new development.

Here are a few images of what that might look like at street level (going from north to south along Yonge Street):

I am also delighted to see that they are planning on adding retail to the rear laneway (O’Keefe Lane) that runs behind the site, east of Yonge Street. If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I think Toronto’s laneways are a huge missed opportunity. So it’s great to see developers in this city starting to recognize that.

Here’s a photo of what O’Keefe Lane looks like today (courtesy of Google street view):

Since I’ve only done one other “project profile” on this blog, I’d love to get your feedback in the comments on whether or not you find these useful.

For those of us in the industry, it’s always valuable to look at other projects and dissect the square footages, unit mix, density, parking ratios, and so on. But I recognize that this is a particular lens.

I’m also trying not to be so Toronto-centric, so it would be great to hear how this project compares to what you’re seeing in your city.

All project images: Quadrangle Architects

Retail is one of the hardest – if not the hardest – real estate category to get right. If you don’t have the right setup, the right location, and the right tenant mix, you can fail pretty easily. It’s a bit of an art. And that obviously applies to both landlords and tenants. I mean, we all know what recently happened with Target Canada.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit the Aura Condos in Toronto, which is supposedly the tallest and largest residential condominium in Canada. There’s about 1.1 million square feet of residential space across 79 floors and somewhere around 150,000 to 180,000 square feet of retail space (the estimates I found online varied). The main anchors include Bed Bath & Beyond, Marshalls, and Hard Candy Fitness (which also serves as the gym for the residences above).

But what’s probably most unique about the retail component of this building is the P1 level (the first underground level). It’s made up of small retail condos, some of which looked to be about 90 square feet. That means that each retail unit is individually owned, just like a residential condominium, and there’s no singular landlord focused on curating the tenant mix and ensuring the entire retail center does well.

Now, I’m told that this approach works perfectly well in other parts of the world and I know that we’re trying it in other parts of the Greater Toronto Area, but I worry about the long term viability of this (P1) space in particular. When I was there on Saturday there was almost no foot traffic and probably half of the retail units were vacant.

Maybe it’s because there isn’t enough employment density in the area. Maybe it’s because it’s not well connected to other P1 level retail. Or maybe it’s because the anchors all sit above this space, as opposed to around it (as they do in traditional malls). Whatever it is, I wasn’t feeling product/market fit.

I hope I’m wrong.

Images: P1 Retail at Aura Condos