Fairview Mall remains a popular regional mall in Northeast Toronto at Sheppard Avenue East and Don Mills Road. One proposal would result in two new towers on the property immediately adjacent to the mall’s northwest corner at 5 Fairview Mall Drive. Bousfields has filed motions to amend the official plan and bylaws on behalf of the owner and developer of the site, NorthWest Healthcare Properties. WZMH Architects’ design for the southeast corner of Fairview Mall Drive and Don Mills Road would mark a noticeable change in the area’s skyline with two buildings overlooking the mall.
Looking southeast towards 5 Fairview Mall Drive, designed by WZMH Architects for Northwest Healthcare Properties
There is currently a four-storey medical practice building on the site with a gross floor area of approx. 8,000 m². There are also parking spaces on the north and east side of the site. It is adjacent to the Fairview Mall at 1800 Sheppard Avenue East, a building with approximately 80,000 square meters of retail space.
Looking southeast from Fairview Mall Drive to the current location, including parking lots and the doctor’s office building, image retrieved from Google Street View
The proposal would leave the medical office building as is to sit alongside two new residential towers. The North Tower would be 36 stories or 134.4 meters tall and the South Tower would be slightly shorter at 31 stories or 111.9 meters. They would be connected by a five-storey podium, which would have 549 m² of retail space on the ground floor. In addition, the new building would add 10,883 m² of office space on the second to fifth floors, in addition to the square meters that are already part of the existing medical practice building.
There would be a main residential and office entrance for the buildings on Fairview Mall Drive. A south entrance for the towers would be accessed via a new public road proposed as part of the redevelopment of the mall site. Floors two through five of the podium would have a step back of ten feet. Both towers would recede further on the sixth floor, which would be used as a recreation room. The towers would share an outdoor terrace on the fifth floor roof.
An aerial view of the existing site at the southeast corner of Fairview Mall Drive and Don Mills Road, image from the City of Toronto filing
With the loss of the above-ground parking spaces currently on the site, the medical office building would share a four-story garage that would be built beneath the two residential towers and would contain 229 residential parking spaces and 315 office and retail spaces. In addition, the proposal provides for 449 residential bicycle parking spaces and 28 office bicycle parking spaces.
Looking east from afar at 5 Fairview Mall Drive designed by WZMH Architects for Northwest Healthcare Properties
By preserving the doctor’s office building, the project would create additional doctor’s offices in its podium. The proposal is the latest of many that would bring intensification to an area that has seen both recent construction and planned significant incremental development activity in the area around Don Mills tube station.
UrbanToronto will continue to monitor the progress of this development, but in the meantime you can learn more from our database file linked below. If you wish, you can join the discussion in the dedicated project forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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