St. Lawrence Neighbourhood development news

By Ken Smith –

Autumn brought a few more business openings, closings and more construction advances in Old Town Toronto.

Immediately west of St. Lawrence Market across Market Lane, a formerly empty building that had been home of the old Fish Market restaurant has been revitalized in a way very respectful of the site’s history, now adding considerably to the ever-increasing tourist-drawing attractiveness of the St. Lawrence Market precinct.

Top marks to Woodcliffe Landmark Properties, developers of the site for this achievement and their related vision for Market Lane. Bring on the cobblestones like they have been doing in Kingston, Ontario. For the moment at least, the lower level of this Market Lane premises will act as an LCBO outlet but, in due course, the LCBO will be relocated to the floor immediately above to be linked up with the existing LCBO outlet up at the corner of Front and Church.

Woodcliffe has been responsible for a number of other Old Town projects plus the restoration of the CPR North Toronto station at Summerhill which also serves in part as an LCBO store. The firm is also building a new commercial structure at the northwest corner of Market Lane and The Esplanade, in keeping with the scale of the rest of the block, while restoring the office building immediately to the north along the lane. This is great news for the neighbourhood.

Over on Lower Church Street, Vancouver-based developer, Concert, has taken away the old structures that housed The Keg and Le Papillon and the Christmas Store and V. Tony Hauser all around the  Church and Front corner. Concert is now laying the ground work for a heritage-sensitive relatively-low-rise (12 storeys or so) red-brick and glass block of residences at the Church and Front “Five Corners” known as The Berczy. Concert is promising to make use of existing materials from the old buildings at the elongated historic site, and set very high standards for indoor air quality, and energy efficiency – all with the objective of diligently striving to achieve the LEED Gold standard for Green Building. This is especially welcome given the ongoing media controversy swirling around condo building standards in Toronto these days, especially as those standards relate to energy efficiency.

Meanwhile work proceeds on the new and distinctive 33-storey Market Wharf condos at 18 Jarvis designed by the esteemed Toronto firm, architectsAlliance. A new Shoppers Drug Mart has opened on the ground floor of the building which is across the parking lot immediately south of St. Lawrence Market. The sidewalks around this overall complex are partially covered with a glass awning structure to provide weather protection but the sheets of glass for this sprawling glass awning have been installed horizontally so they tend just to trap dirt and debris rather than being installed at an angle, allowing it all to run off. London Lofts along at 40 The Esplanade had led the way in the neighbourhood with this type of weather protection device, doing so in a beautifully decorative but no-less-dirt and trash-trapping fashion. At least, these new weather-protection contraptions should keep cleaning staff busy just trying to keep all these dirt-prone weather-protection structures spic, span and presentable.

And Daniel Libeskind’s distinctively-angular glass-wall 57-storey L Tower condo project continues to rise at the northeast corner of Yonge and The Esplanade, almost reaching the 20th floor mark as the pre-Christmas shopping season moved into high gear, while across the street site preparations are well advanced for its strikingly convex neighbour called Backstage. Let’s hope their builders give some diligent thought to how they build their weather protection structures along Yonge and The Esplanade.

The backhoes and shovels have also been busy lately along both The Esplanade and Scott Street lately putting in new sanitary sewers and related pumping systems. Sadly, this has not been the best for re-Christmas business for restaurants and publicans along The Esplanade who have also lost all the trees on their now ripped-up sidewalk terraces — just when they were beginning to look so good. Trees were also lost all around The Berczy. Let’s hope all the mature trees  get replaced in kind rather than with saplings and that the sidewalks of Old Town are upgraded so they are better than ever once all these public works are installed. The London Lofts, for one, had actually paid to have an irrigation system and mature trees installed in form of their building as a contribution to the streetscape. It’s all been ripped out to make way for bigger and better sewers.

While our St. James’ Park was a focal point of attention as the site of the Occupy Toronto encampment, considerable attention is also being focused on little Berczy Park. The City has been conducting a consultation about its future and the potential for upgrading. There is considerable community interest in making some provision for a fenced dog run somewhere within Berczy Park, possibly a playground too. Fortunately, the mini-block of land immediately south of St. Lawrence Market (the one that now houses the little parking lot) is designated to become a park. But first it is slated to provide a temporary home for the North Market, the Saturday farmers market/Sunday antique market, whose building is slated to be replaced.

More consultations are underway about the future of the St. Lawrence Centre and the Sony Centre. The Sony Centre has been declared an historic site and the proper and painstaking restoration of its exterior is slated to be coordinated with the overall development of the site which also now includes the L Tower. Both facilities have a considerable multiplier effect, generating visits to Old Town Toronto, giving a welcome boost to neighbourhood restaurants and other food and beverage outlets.