Nothing takes up land quite like a golf course. In Toronto’s Don Mills area, Flemingdon Park Golf Club is a 9-hole course southeast of Eglinton Avenue East and the Don Valley Parkway, running south along the valley floor beside the expressway, and occupying about 169,361m² of the city’s space. Now, Cityzen Development Group, Greybrook Realty Partners, and Tercot Communities have partnered to submit applications for Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendments, along with a Site Plan Approval, to redevelop a portion of the property at 155 St Dennis Drive.
In a uniquely generous proposal, approximately 95% of the privately-owned Flemingdon Park Golf Club would be donated as open space for public use. This would be one of Toronto’s largest private land contributions ever. The site accounts for the entire golf club, while the area for residential development is on the northern end of the subject site along St Dennis Drive.
The proposal calls for four mixed-use condominium buildings. Hariri Pontarini Architects with Two Row Architect have created designs influenced by the surrounding landscape. The four towers would stand at 42 (Tower 1), 49 (Tower 2), 56 (Tower 3), and 52 (Tower 4) storeys, with heights of 140.6m, 163.8m, 184.8m, and 172.2m respectively.
The proposed buildings feature similar designs that vary in height and facades for a “family” of buildings. They would be connected by a base building with a shape inspired by the flowing water nearby. There would be 405 vehicle parking spots, 110 being for visitors, across four levels of underground parking. In addition, the design calls for 2,397 bicycle parking spaces, including 1,953 for long-term, 434 for short-term, and 10 for public use.
Drivers currently have the Don Valley Parkway and Eglinton Avenue East to reach the subject site. There are several bicycle lanes around the area, and the site is within 250m of multiple TTC bus routes. The proposal includes improvements to transportation connections for pedestrians and cyclists. The site is also about 300m from the coming Wynford stop along the Eglinton Line 5 LRT, opening soon, and is also about 1.4km away from the future Flemingdon Park Station along the Ontario Line, targeted to open around the end of the decade.
The proposal includes approximately 4,460m² of indoor amenity space on storeys two and three of the base buildings. There would also be about 4,167m² of outdoor amenity space mostly found on the base building’s rooftop terrace. For dog-owners, an off-leash dog area is incorporated in the design on the west side of the ground level.
Towers 1, 2, 3, and 4 would have 466, 538, 594, and 572 new units respectively. With architectural plans showing four elevators per building, that would mean for each elevator there would be 116.5 units in Tower 1, 134.5 in Tower 2, 148.5 in Tower 3, and 143 in Tower 4.
One of the more controversial parts of this proposal is the floodplain located south of the site, in which any development is restricted. Although the development site is located outside of this area, the proposal calls for some minor altercations to improve grading and sculpting within the floodplain.
Beacon Environmental has completed a Natural Heritage Impact Study as part of the proposal. The study concludes that the development is not expected to have any negative impact on ecological function of the valley, and does not pose any risk to public safety or health.
The proposed repurposing of the golf club for public and residential use comes with a variety of benefits. Along with the development and intensification of the development site, there is also the ecological restoration of the golf course lands, and partnerships with several Indigenous groups that the developers held discussions with as part of the proposal.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file where you will find many more renderings, 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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