A 66-year-old building anchoring a busy downtown Toronto intersection is primed to be demolished to make way for an enormous condo tower stretching high into the city skyline.
Evolving plans to redevelop the northeast corner of Yonge and Carlton with a towering skyscraper turned a new chapter this summer, when property owner Northam Realty advanced the latest pitch for its site at 2 Carlton Street.
The redevelopment was first tabled in 2016, when Northam applied for zoning to allow a pair of 72-storey condo towers for the site. However, that proposal would mark just the first in a series of designs that would emerge for the site in the years to come.
Plans were revised the following year to a single even-taller tower, a vision that has evolved (or devolved, depending on your point of view) with several revisions over the years.
Almost nine years after the initial application was filed, Northam has returned seeking approval to construct the latest iteration of its plan, now proposed to reach a height of 80 storeys.
The current plan is the result of a drawn-out battle between the developer and the City waged at the then-named Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT), currently known as Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT), since 2018.
A settlement offer was agreed upon in 2021, and, after years of radio silence, a new plan based on this settlement is now before city planners.
As with previous versions of the scheme, the tower would come at the expense of the existing 18-storey building on site, which was completed in 1959 as an apartment tower before being converted into office use later in life.
The Arcadis-designed tower planned to rise on the current structure’s footprint would ascend to a height of just over 251 metres – which would rank as the seventh-tallest building in Toronto if completed today.
If approved as currently proposed, the tower would result in a huge influx of residents at the Yonge and Carlton intersection. A total of 1,014 condominium units are proposed, which would inject even more life into this already-bustling corner.
At street level, the tower would introduce 1,366 square metres of new retail space, though there is no indication that current retailers Shoppers Drug Mart and Bulk Barn would return to the site following redevelopment.
A minimal parking component of just 162 spaces would be supplemented by a generous 1,191 bicycle parking spaces, along with access to College subway station on the TTC’s Line 1 Yonge-University.
The application lands just days after redevelopment details emerged for the nearby College Park complex, which, if approved, would bring some of the city’s tallest buildings to the intersection of Yonge and College/Carlton.
