[PHOTO] Facades across Yonge Street in the condo era

[rfmcdonald]

These two buildings, currently housing most of an Aroma coffee shop are part of the Five St. Joseph condo project at Yonge and St. Joseph. I remember when these two buildings, and more further down the street to left, were functional standalone buildings. (The one on the corner housed, among other businesses, a Second Cup coffee shop.) They ended up being bought out by the Five project, added to the complex but with their facades preserved.

Richard Longley in NOW Toronto worries that this strategy towards preserving an appearance of Yonge Street's past will do little to preserve its actuality.

Mark Garner, executive director of the Downtown Yonge BIA, is worried about “the usual Toronto facadism.” Quoted in the blog YongeStreet, he says: “The HCD is good to preserve the built heritage component, but it may not have enough teeth to protect the lived experience.”

What about the cultural experience of life on Yonge Street, the loan, vape and condom shops, fortune tellers and massage parlours that contribute so much to the strip’s anarchy? Are they doomed to succumb to gentrification?

[. . .]

FIVE condos at 5 St. Joseph gives a glimpse of Yonge’s future. It’s a huge project – a 48-storey condo tower by Hariri Pontarini Architects above nearly half a block of heritage buildings that, between 1905 and the late 60s, were occupied by Rawlinson Cartage.

Fifty years later, this site has emerged from “the largest facade retention ever undertaken in Toronto.” Supervised by ERA Heritage Architects, it involved suspension of the facade over the excavation pit until the condo tower was built to its four-storey height. Thanks to the gap required for access to underground parking (and Eldon Garnett’s sculpture Artifacts Of Memory), the setback between the FIVE condo tower and the Yonge streetwall is 30 metres, three times more than the 10 metres recommended for other parts of the Yonge Street HCD.

East of FIVE, in the shadow of its looming condo tower, the restored buildings at 606-618 Yonge accommodate a Victorianized Royal Bank and an Aroma Espresso (but so far, no pet spa) steps north of more traditional businesses: a tattoo parlour, nail salon, perfume outlet and Glad Day Bookshop.

Is it a defense to say that something is better than nothing?