I was driving down St Clair West yesterday and I noticed that Urbancorp had erected a marketing sign on their site at 836 St Clair Ave West (former Hungarian House) and was in the midst of constructing a sales office.
The project is called The Homes of St. Clair West and it looks like it’ll be a promising set of semi detached houses. However, if you look at the City of Toronto’s Development Application website, the site shows a mixed use project with almost 100,000 square feet of residential space and roughly 12,000 square feet of retail space.
I’m not sure how to reconcile what’s planned for site, but I have two things to say:
First, I think it’s a damn shame that the Hungarian House was even torn down in the first place. I’m not exactly sure when it was built, but I thought it was an interesting building with lots of potential to be incorporated into a new mixed use project. We really need to get better at preserving the history that we do have in this city.
Second, if they’re planning townhouses along St Clair Avenue then I think it’s absolutely the wrong type of development for that street. St Clair deserves midrise. Let’s hope that’s what they have planned.
