Tag: st clair

• Morning ravine walk

  

  Yesterday morning I went on a ravine walk from Summerhill up to St. Clair Avenue East. Toronto’s ravine system is easily the most unique feature of our city’s geography. Architect Larry Wayne Richards once described the topography of Toronto as San Francisco inverted. They have hills and we have valleys.

  Toronto’s ravines serve, among other things, as a recreational treasure, a magnet for nice homes, and as an important component of this city’s water infrastructure. But as you walk through many of our ravines, you can’t help but think that we could and should value them a lot more.

  I appreciate that there needs to be a balance between environmental conservation and recreational use, but that doesn’t seem to be the primary issue. It is neglect. And it is probably because they are out of sight and out of mind for many people. Toronto’s ravines are an undervalued asset.

  2018.12.01

• IBI launches Smart City Sandbox

  This morning I was at 55 St. Clair Avenue West for IBI Group’s annual general meeting. And at this meeting their CEO, Scott Stewart, officially launched a new accelerator called the Smart City Sandbox. 

  Here is a description of what that is taken from a press release that was also published this morning:

  The Sandbox is a smart city-themed accelerator, focused on bringing innovative new products and systems to urban environments that improve the quality of life for residents. A technology hub that supports small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as entrepreneurs and start-ups, the Smart City Sandbox will operate out of a designated space at IBI Group’s Toronto headquarters, be open to global applications, and officially open doors with its first smart city-themed cohort in September 2018.

  And here is a photo from this morning:

  

  Slate Asset Management is proud to be a founding partner of the Smart City Sandbox and we’re thrilled that it will live at Yonge + St. Clair in midtown Toronto. 

  Our role is to provide our domain expertise as asset managers and developers, and to offer participants in the program access to real-world building systems and data from our holdings in the area.

  For more info, go here.

  And if you were at (or listening to) the meeting this morning, I’m sure you noticed something that we talk a lot about on this blog. To thrive today, virtually every company now has to think and act like a technology company. IBI Group is doing precisely that.

  2018.05.11

• New Buca concept coming to midtown Toronto

  Earlier today Slate announced that King Street Food Company will be bringing a new Buca restaurant concept to the north west corner of Yonge + St. Clair in 2018. 

  (BlogTO calls Buca one of the best Italian restaurants in the city.)

  Below is a rendering of the new podium design at 2 St. Clair West, which is where they’ll be going. The design/rendering is by Gensler (the same talented group that did Ravine Bench).

  

  The corner is going to be transformed into a double-height space and the architecture is meant to express that feeling of grandeur at the intersection. There will also be an outdoor patio at grade.

  We are all super excited about this.

  If you would like to read the full press release, you can do that here.

  2017.11.01

• Celebrate the sidewalk (at Yonge + St. Clair)

  I have two quick announcements to make regarding Yonge + St. Clair in midtown Toronto.

  The first is that Slate has just unveiled a new “ravine bench” at the northeast corner of the intersection. 

  Here’s a photo:

  

  And here’s another photo with people sitting in it. #SitTO

  Designed by Gensler (the same firm behind the renovation of 2 St. Clair Ave East), the design is all about celebrating both the sidewalk/public realm and the extraordinary ravines that cut through the area. Some people may not even be aware of these natural features, so perhaps this bench will help with that.

  The second announcement is the launch of our Yonge + St. Clair Pop-up Store at 1470 Yonge Street. I know this is short notice, but the launch party is on Thursday, September 21 from 6 – 10pm (drop in whenever). That’s tonight if you’re reading this post via email subscription.

  At the party we’ll be introducing 8 exclusive t-shirt designs from Toronto artist, Lucas Young. All of the tees will be screen-printed for you right on the spot and 50% of all proceeds from the opening night will be going to The Canadian Cancer Society. 

  Wine, beer, and snacks will be available. If you come find me at the party, I’ll give you some drink tickets. So if you’re around on Thursday night, come by for some drinks, a Toronto tee, and to check out the new ravine bench on Yonge Street.

  2017.09.20

• Global street artist paints 8-storey mural in midtown Toronto

  This morning

  (Friday, July 8th)

  at 11AM eastern time, the global street artist Phlegm will start work on a giant 8-storey mural at the corner of Yonge + St. Clair in midtown Toronto. It’s going up on the west elevation of 1 St. Clair West.

  Here’s what it will look like when it’s complete:

  

  The piece is intended to be experienced at two different scales. From afar, you read it as a human figure embracing itself. (See it?) Once you get closer, you are then drawn into an intricate interpretation of the Toronto landscape – both built and natural.

  Embedded within are depictions of the Royal Ontario Museum (including Daniel Libeskind’s Crystal), the SkyDome (yes, the SkyDome), the St. Lawrence Market (my hood), the CN Tower (obligatory), as well as other landmarks in the city. It’s going to be awesome.

  The project is a STEPS Initiative and it is being supported by the City of Toronto, Slate Asset Management, CBRE, CIBC, and a few others. They have also setup a great website with a live webcam, so that you can follow along as the artist works.

  At the time of writing this post, nothing yet has happened. But by the time it reaches you (email subscribers) it should be well underway. The hashtag for all of this is #PHLEGMPAINTS. 

  Big things are starting to happen at Yonge + St. Clair.

  2016.07.08

• Toronto’s Bloor-Danforth subway corridor is a land use crime scene

  

  Yesterday after my post on leveraging LRT, I stumbled upon an interesting and timely article written by Richard Joy, who is the Executive Director of the Urban Land Institute (Toronto).

  The article talks about some of the transit-oriented development that we’ve seen at various nodes along Toronto’s Yonge subway corridor (St. Clair, Eglinton, Sheppard, and so on). But it goes on to argue that these are exceptions to the rule. For the most part, we’ve missed the boat:

  The tragic history of our massive capital investments into transit infrastructure is massive under-development.

  Indeed, the Bloor-Danforth subway corridor is a land use crime scene.

  His main argument is that until we expand the supply of transit-oriented land (through increased intensification), we will continue to undersupply the kinds of walkable and transit-oriented neighborhoods that many, if not most, people actually prefer. And that, out of necessity, will force people into their cars. Because affordability trumps location preference.

  As one example, he talks about the intersection of Bloor Street and Dundas Street in the west end of the city. Next to Union Station, this is probably the best connected mobility hub in the region. You have the Bloor-Danforth subway line, a streetcar line, and a GO regional rail line which all feed into it. Next year it’ll also become a stop for the new express train to Pearson airport.

  And yet the city has a history of opposing intensification in this location, including the old Giraffe Condominiums proposed by TAS. Does that make sense to you?

  Image: Flickr

  2014.11.05

• Turning St Clair and Spadina into LRT

  I’ve talked before about how Toronto doesn’t currently have any true light rail transit lines. LRT does not equal what we have on St Clair Avenue. The stops are spaced far too close together. It’s just a streetcar on its on right of way.

  This is better than a streetcar that doesn’t have its own right of way, but it could be better. So here’s an idea for better optimizing some of the transit infrastructure we already have: let’s convert the St Clair and Spadina streetcar lines into true LRT.

  Here are 3 things we could do.

  1.

  First, we need to get rid of some stops. Let’s take the stop spacing being proposed for Eglinton Avenue and apply it to St Clair Avenue and Spadina Avenue. By stopping less, it means performance goes up. Think about how much time is wasted every time the streetcar has to stop for people to get on and off. This is why New York has express trains.

  Alternatively—and instead of actually getting rid of some stops—we could also just operate two types of stops: rush hour stops and off-peak stops. In the case of off-peak stops, the streetcar would simply skip them during rush hour. The cost of implementing this would be signage and consumer education.

  2.

  Second, we finally roll out a better payment system. While tokens do give me a kind of 1960s nostalgia, I hate change and I hate fumbling with microscopic tokens in my pocket. Why isn’t there an app for this?

  But more importantly, if we had a better payment system we could transfer the point of payment from the actual streetcars to the stops themselves. This would mean that you’d need to pay in order to gain access to the stop itself. The benefit of this though is that it streamlines onboarding. Customers can now just walk onto the streetcar, like they do on the subway.

  And if you’re thinking about those times where you give up waiting for a streetcar and just hail a cab, well we could simply make the fare refundable if you leave at the same stop. This type of system would also open up the possibility of distance based fares (see London, Tokyo, etc.)

  3.

  Third, put the LRT lines on the subway map and operate them with the same rigour. Right now the customer experience gap between subways and streetcars is huge. Subways run on time and streetcars are completely hit or miss. There’s an excuse for streetcars that run mixed in with traffic, but I don’t see why we can’t make light rail (using its own right of way) just as predictable as subways. I used to take the LUAS in Dublin everyday and it was a fantastic experience.

  We really need to start taking transit more seriously in Toronto. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be known around the world for having the best transit system than for having a debaucherous mayor.

  2013.11.21