A few blocks northwest of City Hall in downtown Toronto, Crown Realty Partners has submitted applications to the city for the official plan, building code amendment, and site plan approval for two 72-story towers, supported by a four-story base building of mostly residential buildings associated use at 123 Edward Street.
Looking south east of the proposed development, image from city filing
The site occupies most of a city block, which currently contains two office buildings and a parking garage. The multi-storey car park in the southwest corner and the office building on the north side would be demolished and replaced by the planned development. The 25-story/105-meter tall commercial office building, located on the south-east corner of the site overlooking Dundas Street and Chestnut Street, would be retained and surrounded by the proposed buildings.
Location of proposed site, image from city filing
Office building to be demolished, image retrieved from Google Street View
Parking garage to be demolished, image retrieved from Google Street View
Designed by Turner Fleischer Architects, the proposed buildings would have a total gross floor area (GFA) of 124,852 sqm and a Floor Space Index (FSI) of 40.6 on the site. The proposed tower floor slabs, at approximately 830 m² and 1,040 m², are larger than the 750 m² floor slabs that the city normally desires in residential towers. The city recommends the smaller base plate to reduce the shadow cast on the surroundings.
Site plan of proposed development showing proximity of proposed towers, image from city filing
The towers would be spaced just 6 meters apart at their narrow corners – a close spacing by city standards, which require a minimum of 25 meters between buildings. Also, the separation distances between the new towers and the existing office tower are far less than the city’s goal, as the west tower would be only 11.7 meters away while the north tower would be positioned even closer at around 8 meters. The city considers distance to be important so that both enough light gets into the suites and a certain privacy is offered to the residents. Based on the difference in elevation between office floors and residential floors, residents on the east side of the west tower and south side of the north tower would be up to the height of 33 buildings. Residents of the 34th floor and above would clear the height of the existing adjacent office tower.
Looking northwest at the proposed development, image from filing with the city
A total of 1,889 residential units are planned between the two buildings, divided into 89 studios (5%), 1116 one-room apartments (59%), 486 two-room apartments (26%) and 198 three-room apartments (10%). .
The first tower would contain 779 of these units, while the second tower would contain 1,110. Both towers would have three elevators providing a one elevator to 260 unit ratio for the first tower and one elevator to 370 units ratio for the second tower.
While Ontario does not have standards mandating a specific number of elevators per unit, a commonly accepted target for the elevator-to-unit ratio is one elevator for every 100 units in a high-rise building (although this article recommends one elevator for every 90 residential units). While other recent proposals have increased the number of units per elevator, such as at 145 Wellington West, which we recently wrote about proposing 4 elevators for its 512 suites or one elevator for 128 units, we’ve never had anything in the Seen near one elevator per 260 units, let alone one per 370.
The planned development offers 1,938 m² of interior space and 1,181 m² of exterior space. Within the common base building, two to four interiors are proposed on part of the floors. The fourth floor exterior would extend both around the two towers and inside, encompassing the entire space of the base building, creating a continuous connection between the interior and exterior spaces.
At the height, a 307 m² park designed by The Planning Partnership is proposed at the north-west corner of the site to meet the city’s parking requirements of 10% of the country. It is proposed that seating and tree canopy be provided along the east side of the park, adjacent to the north tower at Edward Street.
Looking south-east from Edward and Center streets, picture of the surrender to the city
The primary pedestrian entrance for the proposed development would be internally from Center Avenue for the West Building and from Edward Street for the North Building, with both entrances facing the public park. A retail space of 223 sqm is proposed on the level which would have entrances from Center Avenue and Dundas Street West for retail on the ground floor of the first building. The north building, which currently houses retail stores facing the sidewalk, would have a street-facing residential lobby on only the west half of the facade, while the east half would be a solid wall with garbage disposal facilities hidden behind.
Proposed retail units at base of first building, image from city filing
Just a one to two minute walk from St Patrick tube station and served by the 504 Dundas trams, a total of just 48 visitor and commercial parking spaces are proposed in the development in a one level underground car park where 10 spaces would be for charging provided by electric vehicles. Resident parking spaces are not provided.
The proposed development would also provide a total of 1,891 resident bicycle parking spaces on the mezzanine and second floors of the base building, including 1,701 long-term spaces and 190 short-term spaces. E-bikes are to be charged at 285 parking spaces.
UrbanToronto will continue to track updates to this proposal, but in the meantime you can learn more from our database file for the project, linked below. If you’d like, you can join the conversation in the related project forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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