My folks gave up on the whole Catholic school idea. But I can say that was the only time I’ve ever quasi-lived — or squatted — inside a poured-concrete sculpture. These days, I reside in a third-floor walk-up loft, in a downtown building that was previously an optical factory and somehow escaped the wrecker’s ball. And I’ve watched in dismay as this lowrise relic has been girded over the past decade by ugly-as-spit condo monstrosities, cheaply constructed, shoehorned into razed, narrow lots.
The futuristic condo edifices David Mirvish has proposed for King St. W. won’t be cheap, in a city where condo sales were down nearly 30 per cent in September from the same month last year. But of course these tallboy towers designed by Frank Gehry won’t be merely condos. They’re architectural artwork, as — ta-da! — unveiled at a news conference last week, while redevelopment schematics were simultaneously filed with city planning authorities. “I am building three sculptures for people to live in,’’ Mirvish announced, in what immediately became a boldface quote for the boldface project.
Art is subjective. I look at Gehry’s drawings and think: Ugh. Disproportionately humongous, ungracefully asymmetric, vertically overbearing — a trio of 80-storey-plus bully pulpits for two men’s transformation of the Entertainment District, a vanity project of gobsmacking arrogance. Because he can — already owning many of the buildings targeted for demolishment — Mirvish will. I expect little pushback from city hall, as long as local councillor Adam Vaughan is guaranteed his pet pursuits of some family-sized units included and the rest of the municipal mob extracts their own big-picture and little-detail concessions, plus a cash-for-height swap.
The commentariat is falling all over itself praising the plan, rationalizing destruction of the Princess of Wales Theatre, just 20 years old, discounting the heritage value of old properties, glorifying the artistic and cultural merits of what will rise from the rebar ashes. My favourite justification for trashing the PoW is the claim that Toronto has too many theatres, half full, because jumbo musicals are falling out of favour. These are the same musicals for which Mirvish specifically built the Princess of Wales. If their era has indeed passed — and I have my doubts — then surely it was Mirvish’s miscalculation, although those decades have been profitable. But 2,709 condo units will be a helluva lot more profitable for the Mirvish treasury. This isn’t altruism; it’s hard-nosed entrepreneurialism.
I’ve lost count of how many stories the Star alone has devoted in the past week to burnishing the Mirvish profile. And I don’t begrudge the man these fan-boy accolades. He and his lovely late father, Ed Mirvish, have contributed immensely to the ethos of the city, from the kitsch of Honest Ed’s that started it all to the elegance of the salvaged Royal Alex, from the charm of Mirvish Village on Markham Street to the liveliness of the whole Entertainment District. But that still doesn’t mean we owe Mirvish the Younger all of the future downtown Toronto, nor that two men, however revered Gehry may be as an architect, should decide the architectural template of what this city becomes.
I am weary of individuals, a handful of them, whether visionary or completely out of self-interest, telling us what’s good for Toronto. I am frustrated by acolytes who carry their standards into community battle and politicians who roll over to developers. I don’t deny the economic boon of construction and the tax revenues that accrue to the city from commercial companies that populate those gleaming towers. But if Toronto still works as a place to live and work, it’s due to the durability of neighbourhoods that have retained their street-level grid and their retail high streets and their small businesses.
The stretch of King St. that Mirvish covets to revolutionize — transmogrify — has already been largely mutilated by rampant redevelopment, with their glassy-eyed facades and space-muscling dimensions, so at odds with what had been a high-funk essence of one-up, one-down restaurants and clubs and stores. The Hyatt Regency is a posh carpetbagger, the TIFF Bell Lightbox an undistinguished block hog, and Metro Hall a useless white elephant with no redeeming architectural quality. Only the south side of King, between University Ave. and John St., still feels vibrant and eclectic. Once Mirvish’s colossi rise overbearingly on the north side, how long before the south side withers? Keep in mind that Yonge St. south of Dundas St. never recovered from construction of the Eaton Centre.
Like David Mirvish and Frank Gehry, I was born here. It’s still my sandlot, however barnacled by unsightly condo developments. This one is powerfully ambitious but no beauty, profoundly unnecessary and a really bad fit for the Entertainment District, sideways, up and down, in and out.
It’s all gloss and greed, masquerading as art. Resist.
Don’t mistake it for a gift from the gods of urban metamorphosis.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Rosie DiManno
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