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Premium Properties have submitted plans to the City of Toronto seeking to replace a mid-century, six-storey office building at 59–65 Adelaide Street East with a 63-storey primarily residential tower. The plan introduces a pencil-thin floor-plate of about 472m² in Toronto’s St Lawrence area that is positioned within the Protected Major Transit Station Areas of King and Queen stations on Yonge Line 1, the latter of which will also soon be an Ontario Line 3 interchange station.
The site spans 59 through 65 Adelaide Street East, on the south side of the street just west of Church Street. It is currently built out with a six-storey commercial office structure from the early 1950s, sitting among a mix of heritage buildings, mid-rise commercial uses, and an expanding cluster of tall towers.
The property lies within the St Lawrence Neighbourhood Heritage Conservation District, though the existing mid-century building is identified as non-contributing. Its most significant neighbour is the former York County Courthouse at 57 Adelaide Street East, a Classical Revival landmark from the 1850s, now familiar to many as a Terroni restaurant. Courthouse Square Park, a compact City greenspace, is opposite the site to the south.
WeirFoulds LLP has submitted Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment applications to the City of Toronto on behalf of the developer. The proposal calls for a 63-storey mixed-use building designed by BDP Quadrangle, composed of a four-storey podium and a slender tower rising to 227.55m. The structure would be built to its lot lines, with commercial space occupying the second and third floors, and a residential lobby fronting Adelaide.
Gross Floor Area would be 25,824m², comprised of 25,121m² of residential space and 703m² of non-residential space, resulting in a Floor Space Index of 52.3 times coverage of the 493m² lot. The residential tower above would have a floor plate of roughly 472m², creating the building’s pencil-thin profile. Amenity spaces would be concentrated on the 11th to 14th floors, providing 1,220m² of indoor area supported by 217m² of outdoor terraces.
A total of 357 units are planned, for which three elevators are proposed, giving the building a ratio of one elevator per 119 units, indicating that high-speed motors would be necessary to ensure adequate response times. A fourth would be dedicated to the commercial levels.
Below grade, a single underground level is planned, housing long-term bicycle parking and service rooms. No vehicle parking is proposed. The bicycle program totals 208 spaces, including 167 long-term and 36 short-term stalls for residents, plus five spaces allocated to the commercial component. Adelaide Street East carries an eastbound cycling lane that ties into the wider Downtown network. Two blocks north, Richmond Street carries the paired westbound cycling lane.
The nearest entrance to King station is about 250m to the southwest. Queen station lies approximately 500m to the northwest. East-west streetcar routes are found one King and Queen streets, one block south and three blocks north respectively. The future Ontario Line 3 station at Yonge and Queen, about a seven-minute walk, will add another rapid-transit link.
The proposal lands amid a rapidly intensifying pocket of the St Lawrence area. 59-65 Adelaide’s Block Context Plan identifies a tower separation of approximately 21.2m between the proposed building and the 88-storey tower proposed at 23 Toronto Street to the west. This distance is short of the City’s 25m minimum in the Tall Building Design Guidelines, though the Planning Rationale report maintains that the distance is acceptable given the site context and conditions. It further states that the adjoining parcels to the east are too small to support a tower form, and a future high-rise on those lots is unlikely.
Other proposals nearby include 110 Adelaide East to the east, planned at 65 storeys, while 100 Lombard is seeking 72 storeys. North of the site, Alias at 48 storeys is wrapping up construction while QueenChurch at 57 storeys is early in construction, while 119–127 Church Street planned at 59 storeys. To the west, other nearby proposals are found at 15 Toronto Street at 56 storeys, and 34–50 King East at 33 storeys.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, linked below. If you’d like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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