After a few weeks of investigating development trends across the GTA, we are returning to the City of Toronto in this week’s instalment of the UTPro Instant Report, taking a closer look at development trends in an area situated just outside the Downtown Core. Powered by UrbanToronto’s exclusive data service, UTPro, this week’s data set was generated through an MLS Zone Report, instantly compiling a list of all projects located within Zone C09, encompassing Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood and its surroundings.
C09 is one of the city’s more compact zones, scaled to accommodate the density of listings associated with its central location. The zone is bordered by Bloor Street East to the south, Yonge Street to the west, and the Moore Park Ravine to the east, while the north border is defined by Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The zone is predominantly low-rise residential but features prominent stretches of mixed-use area lands on the north side of Bloor Street East, the east side of Yonge Street, and along St Clair Avenue East between Yonge and David Balfour Park. Working within this zoning framework, development has seen success in delivering high-density residential and mixed-use projects along the major corridors and their immediate side streets.
Turning over to the findings of our MLS Zone Report, we identified a total of 25 projects in Zone C09, with the following distribution: 3 projects were listed as complete, 7 were listed as currently under construction, and the remaining 15 projects all fell into the pre-construction group.
Investigating what some of these projects look like, The W Hotel represents the most current form of development in the zone, after opening officially in the spring of last year. The revitalization project transformed the stiff condition of part of the Hudson’s Bay Centre’s south elevation, adding some life to the concrete street-wall (including an exterior elevator that glows orange at night) while renovating 225 hotel suites and adding new restaurants and bars to accommodate visitors and locals in the affluent Yorkville neighbourhood, demonstrating that reinvestment can improve the built context.
Under construction currently is one of the few projects that has been approved in the C09 Zone that doesn’t have an address within 200 metres of Yonge Street; No7 Rosedale. The Hariri-Pontarini-designed project is on the luxurious end of the development spectrum, offering only 26 boutique suites within two four-storey mid-century inspired buildings that back onto the Rosedale Valley ravine. In such a low density area, the project is unlikely to catalyze further redevelopment in the surrounding Rosedale neighbourhood, one of Canada’s wealthiest enclaves.
Finally, early in the throes of planning, 839 Yonge offers a glimpse at the largest scale of development being proposed in the zone, in terms of height. Proposing towers of 41 and 49 storeys, the project on the Canadian Tire site would replace the existing store with a new one while putting parking underground and adding new uses. The developer is hoping to leverage the proposal’s proximity to one of the city’s preeminent height peaks, located less than a kilometre to the south at Yonge and Bloor, to gain approval for the mixed-use development that would bring 950 new homes to the site.
Adding on some of the additional statistics from our MLS Zone Report, we can see that the main objective for the various projects in Zone C09 is to deliver new housing. Residential uses make up a staggering 84.9% of the total Gross Floor Area (GFA) in the zone, with only two out of 25 projects offering no residential programming at all.
These findings suggest that Yonge Street will continue to see further intensification at the high-rise scale, with the 20 – 30 storey range being a reliable typology that has extensive precedents in terms of approval, and can deliver improved density with close proximity to transit. The surrounding neighbourhood areas however, are still heavily protected by zoning policy.
* * *
As UrbanToronto continues to refine its role in the GTA development industry, our data services have evolved to become one of our defining elements and we want to share those capabilities with our community. The UrbanToronto Pro Instant Reports is just one of the ways our data can be applied to provide quick and convenient insights on the development trends of any area in the GTA, with filters for Wards MLS Zones, and Custom Areas.