Market Wharf | Proposed | 46 st | 145? m | Downtown

[Filip]

From The Star's Notice of Applications (Thank God I read the papers at lunch)...

Application to Amend the Zoning By-law to permit construction of a mixed-use building containing 451 residential units, 2,700 square metres of retail space, and 124 commercial parking spaces. 18 Lower Jarvis Street.

I'm not sure but this may be the East Bayfronts starting up... Lets keep our fingers crossed, this is a lot of units and retail space!

[elliot]

Isn't this the parking lot immediately north of the rail berm (south of the market)???

Crosses fingers.

[elliot]

^^ actually it is that parking lot and the tower may be quite tall and interesting if any of the original charette ideas are incorporated:



The second site, 18 Jarvis Street, is known as the Gross
Machinery site and is separated from the South St. Lawrence Market
by a city-owned parking lot that will become a future park space.

This team paid particular attention to the study area’s open spaces.
The abundance of courtyard and lanes in the area creates opportunities
for a range of public, semi-public and private open spaces.

The current zoning for the 18 Jarvis Street site is proposed to be a U-
shaped residential building with a 3-sided courtyard facing west. The
team recommended that the southern portion of the site could have more
height as it abuts the rail corridor and would not negatively impact any
surrounding developments. The team proposed the closure of Wilton
Street, which is directly north of this site, to create a unifiedparkspace
that could be used to handle activities of the St. Lawrence Market and the
proposed building. This park space would offer both summer and winter
activities by providing a water feature in the summer and an ice skating
rink in the winter. Both the Market and Crombie Park would be linked to
this new park space.

The group also explored the possibility of creating an underground parking
structure to serve this building and the south Market. Parking would be
accessed from Market Street and the structure would be below the new
park space. A series of ramps provide service and delivery routes to the
lower level of the Market allowing the south end of the Market building to
be free of its current use as a loading area.

The creation of a new intersection on Jarvis Street south of the 18 Jarvis
Street building would help to slow down traffic along this stretch creating
safer pedestrian circulation around this and the Market site.

Can't wait to see this one... wonderful news for the market area (and the market itself).

[valantino]

interesting - I remeber it being posted not to long ago that the developer was going to proceed with the retail (shoppers) but leave the residential for a later date

holy shit!! its fucking tall!!!

[elliot]

How do you know it's "fucking tall"? No height has been mentioned in this thread. ;-)


It's 46 storeys so you are correct... but you know that.

[InTheBeach]

holy shit!! its fucking tall!!!

Very tall for this neighbourhood. I'm wondering what the local reaction will be.

The park does sound like a nice arrangement.

Might be some pressure on the area in terms of parking.

[valantino]

[quote]Very tall for this neighbourhood. I'm wondering what the local reaction will be/quote]

bad?

[phunky]

This area is going to get taller just like how Cityplace is.

[valantino]

^don't quite follow ... nothing existed where Cityplace is being built and if you're suggesting this area will one day rival Cityplace in height, there aren't anymore parking lots (and that doesn't include the height nazis)

[The 'Sauga]

http://www.context.ca/pages/corporate/enews_aug2007.htm

http://www.context.ca/pages/corporate/enews_aug2007_images/enews_aug2007_r4_c5.jpg

A very vague rendering of the tower can be seen in Context's Aug/Sept e-newsletter. Looks like it has potential, I can't tell if it's just blurry or if the balconies were planned to be wavy.

[w.ll.am]

I wonder if this will get approved. The london was forced to cut a few stories off of it's 16 story east tower because of the impact it has on the area. The idea was supposedly that it created a benchmark on the maximum height for anything east of it and made a slope upwards and towards the west.

This proposal flies in the face of that. I have a feeling the proposal is just to put forth a max number of floors knowing that it will get reduced but hoping for above what might normally be acceptable.

[CrazyCanuck]

I'm sure this will go ahead as it is right next to the tracks. It's not smack in the middle of St. Lawrence.

[thryve]

We can change the thread title from "18 Lower Jarvis" to "Market Wharf" it seems.

[bar1967]

Some info here:

http://www.toronto.ca./stlawrence_market/faq.htm

[Metroland]

The balconies are definately wavy, also the tower will be white and glassy which I love.
Residents and the city planning dept. are having issues with the height of the tower and the massing of the base. You will understand why once the full renderings are released.
I wish I could show everyone. :(

[elliot]

Over 145 metres tall according to the report... and for this area, as Rudy suggested earlier, "fucking tall".

[w.ll.am]

Moving beyond the cereal box
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
From Friday's Globe and Mail
May 30, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT

And now, for his next trick, Toronto architect Peter Clewes will make a new condominium stack in the city's St. Lawrence neighbourhood materialize out of thin air, then instantly sell out to savvy buyers in the audience. Presto!

This scenario is not as wacky as it sounds. Throughout Toronto's current condo boom, developers have been putting up, at a bewildering clip, tall and very popular buildings designed by Mr. Clewes. As for the prolific architect himself, he seems to pull new mid-priced condo schemes out of his hat, like a magician producing live bunnies from nowhere, with remarkable ease and speed and to widespread critical applause. The results, so far, have been pleasing, svelte boxes with gleaming faces of glass, and with much evidence of the architect's modernist affection for right-angle corners and flat-topped, broad-shouldered profiles.

In the Context Developments project proposed to rise in the St. Lawrence Market area, the podium, which contains the parking, and the high-rise block of this composition, named Market Wharf, are straight-up boxes, to be sure. The layouts of the apartments inside are also entirely conventional.

But in this building, immediately south of St. Lawrence Market on Lower Jarvis Street, Mr. Clewes has made his most interesting deviations to date from the strict modern aesthetics of exterior effect, and perhaps his most striking artistic contribution to our skyline.

All is not perfect, however, with Mr. Clewes's handiwork. The hard street-wall of the podium is made mostly of two-storey glass sheets, behind which will spread the harshly lit aisles of a mammoth Shoppers Drug Mart. While I can't imagine that residents will like having a super-sized store at the foot of their building, or that pedestrians will be fond of that cascade of glazed curtain wall, putting an 18,000-square-foot retail establishment at grade makes a certain rough sense: The famous old market next door has long made this spot a place of trade, so adding a drugstore to the mix doesn't strike me as particularly odd.

Be that as it may, the best architectural feature of the brick-faced podium is its window system, if anything so lively and eccentric can be called a system at all. Rectangular openings of different sizes skip and dance across the façade, creating a kind of abstract surface with cinematic swing and syncopation. The podium treatment is one of Mr. Clewes's departures from his usual dressy modernism.

The slab is another. While it's hardly strange to see a piece of cereal-box residential architecture in Toronto, you'd have to look far and wide to find one this romantic. The balcony guards that extend in long horizontal sweeps across the west and east facades of the building undulate gently, sensuously. Once this structure is up, these waving bands, executed in fritted glass, could resemble silky ribbons fluttering in the breeze. Tinted by the light of dusk, the slab's western surface could look like an animated screen of glowing colour. In any case, such dramatic optical effects in a tall building, rare downtown, are good things this condominium block will likely produce.

I love the name of this project. It dispenses with the blah placelessness of so many condo-tower titles and succinctly invokes the history of its site. In Toronto's first half-century, before the Lake Ontario shoreline was pushed south by landfill and the eastern city was cut off from the water by the railway corridor, on this place stood one of the principal wharves that brought the world's goods to Toronto. Market Wharf is a welcome reminder of the city's past glory as a premier Great Lakes port.

[w.ll.am]

From what I read in this document the building is being resubmitted at 33 storeys...

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-12491.pdf

authorize the City Solicitor and necessary City staff to attend at the Ontario
Municipal Board pre-hearing in support of the revised 33-storey proposal, in
principle, subject to recommendations below;

[vancouverite/to'er]

Over 145 metres tall according to the report... and for this area, as Rudy suggested earlier, "fucking tall".

OMG! They just pull these off the assembly line:banana: So this is like a clone of Pure Spirit's signature tower?

[urban 2.0]

I'm sure this will go ahead as it is right next to the tracks. It's not smack in the middle of St. Lawrence.

Ya but a 45 story building would cast a might big shadow on the park right across the street.

[Number 6]

Ya but a 45 story building would cast a might big shadow on the park right across the street.

Oh My GOD YES!!
That would be 25 to 45 minutes of absolute terror that we would have to deal with each day.
Who the hell do they think the are to have to make us put up with that!!
( Actually I'm sorry. I exagerate. I believe studies show that with most of these point towers, it could be closer to an hour in some situations)

[w.ll.am]

As posted in my previous email... it's being resubmitted with 12 stories chopped off.

They're also retesting the soil to see if the parking can be put underground. If a large enough point of contention this could see the project cancelled.

[Parkdalian]

Oh My GOD YES!!
That would be 25 to 45 minutes of absolute terror that we would have to deal with each day.
Who the hell do they think the are to have to make us put up with that!!
( Actually I'm sorry. I exagerate. I believe studies show that with most of these point towers, it could be closer to an hour in some situations)

An hour In winter,but i believe in summer it would be more like 20 minutes

[Taller, Better]

I was struck once by a falling shadow, and it was a harrowing experience.

[valantino]

I'm glad the city is taking a hard stance on above ground parking.

This one could be interesting to watch. Will the developer proceed with the appeal of the 44 storey tower considering the luke warm reception of the revised proposal?