548 Toronto

Right Homes in the Right Places

Imagine a city without enough housing choice to help people make the leap from one life stage to the next. That’s exactly what’s happening as cities grow more expensive and available housing stock continues to decline. The housing continuum explains it best, which highlights the range of housing types that should be available in a community—an assortment of housing types, each critically important for different people at different times in their lives. A healthy city needs to have many options available at all points on the spectrum to ensure every citizen’s needs are being met.

Pedestrian Priority

The subject site is located on an active urban corner that holds ample potential to enhance the pedestrian experience for James Bay residents and the broader community. This has been emphasized throughout the proposal, as both Toronto and Parry Street are important connectors in the City for pedestrians, but have challenges with utility poles, tight sidewalks and limited landscaped areas. Our goal is to propose a design that supports multi-modal transportation to promote a car-lite lifestyle, while also enriching the pedestrian experience at grade.

Thoughtful/Responsive Design

When considering the aspiration of a street-focused development, it was important to ensure the building was appropriately scaled to maintain a comfortable relationship with people and their surroundings. The proposal has front doors along Toronto that animate the street, while pocket yards provide quality outdoor amenity space to residences and the 50:50 ratio of inset to projecting balconies. These balconies face onto the street—and also recess behind the façade—to balance both animation for the public realm and privacy for residents.

Traffic & Access

Our proposal is located at the intersection of numerous transportation modes, with excellent access to transit and cycling infrastructure. In support of the proposed rezoning and associated development vision, Bunt & Associates completed a Transportation Impact Assessment (TIA). This investigation included an analysis of the expected impact that proposal will have on local area traffic, along with its parking demand, mobility context, proposed site access and circulation, and potential Transportation Demand Management (TDM) strategies for lowering traffic and parking demands. The outcomes of this study are outlined in more detail in the transportation section of this Application Brief, but the conclusions reinforce the very walkable and pedestrian forward nature of the site.

Building Height and Density

The City of Victoria’s Housing Needs Assessment projects a total of 2,900 homes will be needed in the City by 2025 to respond to the growing population in our region. Our proposal includes 68 homes, with 36% being family-friendly housing. When considering height and density it is also important to widen our view to the broader context of the neighbourhood. The policy context is unusually imbalanced in this particular area, as the OCP’s Urban Residential designation can be found directly across both Toronto and Parry Street, which allows for up to 6-storeys. Rezoning this site would not only better align with the neighbouring properties, but it would allow this site to participate in a solution to our City’s exacerbated housing crisis.

Landscaping and Tree Loss

We heard concerns around tree loss as a result of the proposed development and questions about how our landscape plan will provide both private and public benefit. The landscape design proposed seeks to design a public streetscape that enhances the pedestrian experience while providing an enjoyable green space in the private residential spaces. The planting selection has a focus on native, edible and drought tolerant plants that also act as pollinators. Any existing plantings that fall within the building footprint will need to be removed, however, we have been given feedback that fruit trees are of importance and have been incorporated into the Landscape Plan, which you’ll find further along in this Application Brief. Opportunities for saving and moving the existing trees can be explored if interested parties would like to retain them on their own property.

Hydro Lines and Poles

Early on in the development process, we received inquiries about the hydro lines and poles, and whether they could be moved underground to provide a better pedestrian experience at the corner. We explored this concept with BC Hydro and The City, which, unfortunately, was determined to be unfeasible. To do this, all of Parry Street would need to be undergrounded, and multiple ground transformers would be required on public and private land.