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Almadev — formerly known as Elad Canada — has made some significant changes to its plans for the upcoming master-planned community, Lansing Square. Located on the southwest corner of Sheppard Avenue East and Victoria Park Avenue, on the eastern edge of North York, the project would see the redevelopment of the existing Lansing Square office complex with the construction of eight proposed buildings, thereby increasing commercial and residential density. into an area that continues to focus more on high-rise development.
The core of the proposal, designed by VZMH Architects, largely remains the same. Two existing Brutalist-era low-rise buildings at the northern end of the site will be demolished, two mid-rise office buildings will be retained, and a total of eight buildings are proposed to be built. As in the original plan, the four buildings are residential towers, ranging in height from 25 to 40 stories, while the most recent changes have reconfigured the proposal to include two low-rise residential buildings and two commercial office buildings.
The updated site plan makes no changes to the proposed public park — which will provide 4,897m² of programmed green space near the community center — and remains committed to a finer road network that will facilitate north-south and east-west travel throughout the development. The proposal also intends to continue with a phased approach that would split the development into five blocks, with the first round of construction overseeing the creation of blocks one to four.
Taking a closer look at the changes the Lansing Square development has undergone over the past year, one of them has nothing to do with the site plan; on the marketing front, the developer’s brand change from Elad to Almadev marks the transition to a new era for the company that will begin this project. Both excitement and expectations are high as Almadev begins the long game of another master-planned project. (Galleria on the Park is Almadev’s current multi-phase development underway at Dufferin and Dupont in Toronto’s West End.)
Furthermore, probably the most significant changes to the original redevelopment plan were made in the area referred to in the site plan as Block 1, in the north-east corner. Here, a design overhaul has dramatically changed the look of the development’s tallest towers, A and B. The earlier sculptural design, which was consistent across all four towers, was defined by a curved form reminiscent of an audio wavelength that runs down the center of each elevation. It has been replaced with dark gray cladding and glazing that contrasts with white L-shaped accents that repeat in a diagonal pattern that sweeps upwards, making Towers A and B visually different from the other towers that maintain the original design.
Kitty-corner of Towers A and B, in block 4 in the south-west corner of the site, more changes have been made to the project where an 18-storey office building is proposed connected to an above-ground garage. A new drawing has been proposed that suggests changes to the exterior finish, suggesting the latest design is more brick and beam inspired, with floor-to-ceiling windows clad in a grid pattern of possibly metal cladding.
Finally, the development team reassessed how the proposed townhouses would fit into the vertical community. In the end, it was concluded that the townhouses were not fully aligned with the identity of the project, and the two blocks of townhouses were replaced by two low-rise buildings of four and six floors. No renderings of these redesigns have been made yet, as the focus is on the earlier stages of development.
Building on its success in Emerald City, another master-planned community located just a few kilometers to the west, Almadev hopes to continue advancing the model of master-planned development as a sustainable and necessary urban process that welcomes the future of more peripheral communities. For Lansing Square, part of the project’s rationale revolves around the promise of a transit expansion of the TTC pipeline, the Sheppard East Extension, which would bring light rail transit to an area currently served only by buses. As demand-generating density increases, infrastructure and development become more deeply linked on a co-evolutionary path.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow updates on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more from our database file for the project, linked below. If you wish, you can join the conversation in the related Project Forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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