Yorkville's last grubby block gets a makeover
Cumberland Terrace is ugly, yet dreams of razing it have always failed. Now there's a plan to turn it into the next Mink Mile. The scheme's so bold it just might work, reports Kelly Grant
For a store tucked behind the Holt Renfrew Centre, discount clothier Fashion Biz couldn't be further from the haute shops of Bloor.
Ladies' slacks in lime and coral are on sale for $3.99 or three for $10 on a rack out front. Tank tops decorated with tiny guitars go for the same price. Across the way, Fashion Biz for men is displaying Hawaiian shirts and polyester jerseys.
Both Fashion Biz outlets are located in the basement of Cumberland Terrace, a low-slung indoor mall built before Yorkville's boom and left to linger like dirt beneath the neighbourhood's newly manicured fingernails.
"It's pretty sad," says Briar de Lange, general manager of the Yorkville-Bloor Business Improvement Area and a former retail manager at Cumberland Terrace. "[In parts of the Terrace] they've really only been able to keep the lights on."
Finally, there's a plan to bulldoze the mall: The property's owners want to transform the south side of Cumberland between Yonge and Bay into a sparkling retail promenade topped with luxury townhouses and a pair of condo towers, all designed by architect-on-the-rise Patrick Fejér of Toronto firm Bregman + Hamann.
If approved, the project would be an extreme makeover for Toronto's fashion epicentre, clearing the way for the eastward expansion of Yorkville and the northward expansion of the Holt Renfrew Centre on Bloor, a project that has not been confirmed.
"[It] has a lot of potential," says John Filipetti, vice-president of Oxford Properties Group, the site owner.
"One is the further transformation of Yorkville over time. So many of the streets in the neighbourhood now are very vibrant ... when you look at Cumberland Terrace, the design of the building does not really contribute to life on the street."
Holts won't comment on expanding its Bloor Street flagship, but Mr. Fejér's design features an underground tunnel and above-ground bridge connecting the back of the proposed development to the back of the Holt Renfrew Centre, across the Mayfair Mews laneway.
No matter what Holts decides, the new development could slake U.S. retailers' thirst for generous storefronts near Bloor, says John Crombie, senior managing director and national retail director for Cushman & Wakefield LePage.
"Apple's been on the street looking for a large chunk, Crate & Barrel's been on the street looking for a large chunk," he said. "You just can't get it."
All this doesn't mean it will be easy for Oxford - the real-estate arm of OMERS, Ontario's municipal employee pension fund - to make Mr. Fejér's vision a reality.
Cumberland Terrace has always proved immune to redevelopment. Rumours of the mall's demise have bubbled for years; proposals to raze it have been floated, then sunk.
Part of the challenge is one of the traits that makes the site attractive in the first place: the nexus of the Bloor and Yonge subway lines. Both run beneath the Terrace, making it impossible to dig underground parking garages to accommodate condo-dwellers' cars.
As well, Oxford could face resistance from those who consider the Terrace the area's last haven for independent shops. According to Mr. Crombie, Mink Mile landlords charge upwards of $300 per square foot, whereas Cumberland Street space goes for between $30 and $50 per square foot.
"The flavour of Yorkville has been disappearing," says Socrates Reppas, 58, owner of Marquis Jewellers, located in the Cumberland Terrace since 1975. "It's all condos now. The mom-and-pop stores are gone." Mr. Reppas says it will be "hard to swallow" a move after 33 years.
It won't be much easier for Bob Sagman, 60, the owner of Song & Script, a family business that specializes in Broadway recordings.
"I don't see why they need it. They don't need more condos, they don't need more office towers," says Mr. Sagman, who moved, six months ago, into the main floor of Cumberland Terrace, after rising rents forced him off Bay Street. From 1963 to 1978 his store was located on Bloor, where Williams-Sonoma's flagship is now.
"We figured [the redevelopment] was eventually going to happen," he sighed. "But we didn't think it would be right away."
As another hurdle, Oxford has to win over the city's planning mandarins.
Oxford's proposal, submitted to the city June 27 in a rezoning application, envisions a mix of large and boutique storefronts. The plan calls for an 18-storey residential tower at the corner of Yonge and Cumberland, a 45-storey tower in roughly the middle of the block, and nine luxury town homes located above the shops. (A rezoning application is necessary because both proposed towers exceed the height and density allowed in the area.) The proposal also includes an above-ground parking garage integrated into the design, masked by a façade of glass and living-plant walls.
"What we're trying to do is animate the streetscape and make it more of a vibrant pedestrian experience," said Mr. Fejér. One of his latest Toronto projects is Phase II of the MaRs Centre at College and University, now under construction.
The city won't publish its first report on the Terrace proposal until the fall. It typically takes a year to slog through rezoning, meaning work couldn't start until fall of 2009.
That's an optimistic timeline. But there's good reason to believe the city will embrace the plan. "We're thrilled that someone has come in with an application [to redevelop Cumberland Terrace]," said Paul Bain, acting manager for midtown, in Toronto's planning department. "It's been needed for a long, long time."
When Cumberland Terrace was built in the early 1970s, indoor strip malls were all the rage. Planners believed they would better attract shoppers in Canada's bitter winters.
The Terrace still boasts the fusty maroon floor tiles of that age. Its first floor is a mix of discount shops, jewellery stores and nail salons, none of which can be accessed directly from the street.
The second floor is largely empty, save for a campus of the Canadian Business College. (Mr. Filipetti says the Terrace's current vacancy rate is 10 per cent.) The basement is best known for its windowless food court and subway entrances.
While the Terrace seems frozen in time, Yorkville has gone from a hippie enclave to a luxury one.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 new condo-dwellers have flooded Yorkville in the past decade, according to Ms. de Lange. More are on the way, fat wallets in tow.
The new Four Seasons hotel-condo, the 80-storey Bazis Tower at 1 Bloor St. E. and the fledgling plan to erect more condos on the site of the Four Seasons at 21 Avenue Rd. will further boost the neighbourhood's cachet.
And that will attract more residents who shop at Holts, not Fashion Biz.
"[Redeveloping the Terrace] is only going to add to the change that we've seen in the last two decades," says Ms. de Lange. "It's been phenomenal."
Yorkville's changing face
Four Seasons Private Residences: The official groundbreaking was last month for two luxury towers - a 52-storey hotel-condo and a 26-storey tower - at the corner of Bay and Yorkville.
1 Bloor St. E.: Construction is under way at the site of the 80-storey Bazis International hotel-condo, which sparked a near-riot in the sales line last year.
21 Avenue Rd.: The current Four Seasons Hotel, this site will likely be demolished. An application is pending to build two condos: A 44-storey north tower and a 48-storey south tower.
192A Bloor St. W.: The site of a McDonald's, which just bought the land it had been leasing from the city. The move paved the way for Bazis to redevelop the northwest corner of Avenue and Bloor, but no development application has been submitted.
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