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Over the last decade, Toronto’s population in the downtown core has witnessed an incredible surge. According to the latest census data, Toronto’s waterfront population has increased 66 per cent in five years, more than any other neighbourhood in Toronto. The City’s skyline is a work in progress that is going through such a dramatic transformation it may seem unrecognizable in a decade, but one thing is clear: as the City grows and evolves, we will need to accommodate the people and the jobs that are being drawn to the core. What does this mean for our city and the future of our ever-changing skyline? On May 1st this very topic was explored by ULI Toronto with a panel of experts at The Board of Trade.

Speaking from a decidedly public perspective, Councillor Peter Milczyn acknowledged an often-tenuous relationship between government and developers as Toronto continues to “grow up,” and also relayed the frustration that many Torontonians’ continue to experience as their city goes vertical. To Milczyn, the City’s challenge lies in balancing density while creating and maintaining sustainable and vibrant communities. While not perfect, Milczyn recognized that there has been tremendous progress made on the part of the City to better guide quality developments, citing the design review panel and tall buildings guidelines. However, while these initiatives focus on better built-form, the question remains as to the longevity of these communities.

Any discussion about skylines needs to include the most prominent additions to it, and for that Ben Rogowski, executive vice-president of Canderel spoke about Aura, currently the tallest residential building under construction in Toronto. Located at Yonge and Gerrard Streets, this project was one of the first very tall residential buildings proposed in City. Rogowski spoke to the long life cycle tall buildings have, and the challenges that accompany this, noting that “when the City received the re-zoning application in 2006 they had never experienced something of this scale.” Further, the financial crisis of 2008 resulted in the project being on hold for a year, but was one of the first large projects to receive funding post downtown. As the project moved to construction, new challenges arose due to the sheer height of the project. Once completed, the 78-storey mixed-use development is set to be unique landmark in the City’s growing skyline.

While the current skyline is certainly impressive, all eyes are looking to the future, and Anson Kwok, vice president of sales and marketing for Pinnacle International, was able to illuminate his firm’s recent proposal that promises to bring an unprecedented amount of height and density to 1 Yonge Street. This mixed-use project includes six towers ranging from 40 to 88 storeys on just over six acres of downtown land, an example, Kwok believes, of a paradigm shift in height standards for Toronto, where 54-storeys isn’t necessarily considered tall any more. In building such a dense and tall community, Kwok spoke to the importance of creating a vibrant and beautiful public realm, and as commutes become longer he believes that it will be even more important for people to live close to work so that they can spend more time with family, which will inherently lead to people raising families in the downtown as a result of this.

Another major player on the future skyline will be the redeveloped plans for the Globe and Mail lands located at King and Spadina. Being led by Allied Properties, this development will draw upon the retail expertise of Rio Can, the land development expertise of DiamondCorp and Allied’s expertise on office development.

In thinking about the future, Michael R. Emory, president and CEO at Allied Properties REIT discussed the past, recognizing that much of the development we see in the downtown is a direct result of the King/Spadina King/Parliament plan developed by former Mayor Barbara Hall’s administration in 1996. By allowing former industrial buildings to become mixed-use it opened the door for new life to be injected into the City. The success of these neighbourhoods has brought future growth, at higher densities. While this development is still in the very early stages, Emory noted that plans are to break down the big blocks into human scale streets that draw upon the success of the surrounding King St. West neighbourhood.

Evan M. Weinberg, M. PL
Communications Committee
Policy and Advocacy Manager, Toronto Financial District BIA