Architects and builders redeveloping the Cambridge Suites Hotel, on the outskirts of Toronto’s financial district, say their plan will take building techniques in the city to a whole new level. Looks like they’re not exaggerating.
The development proposal for the 21-story property on Richmond Street East, near the city’s soaring bank towers, begins with the removal of the peaked roof of the postmodern 1990 building.
In its place will be an additional 50 stories, taking the new project to a height of 757 feet (230.85 meters), head-to-head with neighbors such as the Toronto-Dominion Center (731 feet).
It is a complicated project that will require the construction of a 10 meter high bridge structure over the existing hotel where the roof is removed. The bridge will help support the weight of the new tower, says Len Abelman, principal at Toronto’s WZMH Architects, the firm that designed the redevelopment for property owner Centennial Hotels Ltd.
“It’s not a common technique, it’s a challenge. We worked with a company called RJC Engineers to do simulations of the mass and loading weight and lateral forces the building will face, to make sure it will work,” says Abelman.
“Other projects in Toronto have already added floors, but this is usually done with a large exoskeleton that covers the entire building. This uses technology that transfers some of the weight to the columns and floors of the existing structure below,” he says.
The site hotel, which currently offers 231 suites for business travellers, will be transformed into 565 residential units with shops and retail on the ground floor; 42 percent of units will be two- or three-bedroom units to meet the city’s requirement for more family housing downtown.
In September, developers asked Bousfields Inc. to prepare a planning rationale document as they sought zoning and Official Plan amendments from the City of Toronto.
Bousfields explains that the current hotel is in an area of downtown Toronto that the city has designated as a “strategic growth area…to accommodate intensification and higher-density mixed-use in a more form of construction.” compact”.
Back to the office
The long-term idea is to redevelop city center properties such as Cambridge Suites to reflect the changing ways people live and work. As the pandemic comes and goes, people are slowly returning to the office, but it’s not quite a rush.
As of mid-August, the percentage of people visiting offices in Toronto was still 30% of pre-pandemic levels, according to the Strategic Regional Research Alliance (SRRA), an independent research group that monitors the evolution working models.
“Putting more housing in the financial heart is a real act of city building. It will make a difference to the people who live and work there,” says Alan Vihant, president of Elan DEV Group and spokesperson for the developer consortium.
“And we think there is a way to do that by repurposing the existing building and expanding it.”
The city’s growth plan calls for more urban neighborhoods that would allow people to live close to work and get around without a car. The Cambridge Suites property is less than half a mile from six Toronto Transit subway stations, including Yonge/Queen and Union Station, which will eventually become hubs for new lines.
“People are starting to come back to the office at least three or four days a week. But they don’t want long journeys to get there,” says Mr. Vihant.
Like virtually all new commercial construction these days, the new project aspires to meet better environmental and sustainability standards than older buildings. According to Natural Resources Canada, 13% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada come from the building sector, the third largest source of emissions.
Environmental benefits
The new tower will be more thermally efficient than the existing building and will feature bird-friendly glass and 41 square meters of green roof, said Michael McClelland, founding director of ERA Architects, who is also working on the project. The project will only have 21 places for cars, compared to more than 570 places for parking bicycles.
However, Mr McClelland warns that the building will not officially be a fully state-of-the-art green building, as it incorporates the existing hotel structure into the design.
However, this construction technique brings other environmental advantages; using the existing building as a supporting base rather than demolishing it helps fight climate change by retaining the carbon embedded in the building material.
This reduces the emissions that would result from demolishing the existing structure and replacing it with a new building.
“There’s nothing in the city’s current guidelines on built-in carbon conservation yet, but Toronto and other cities are catching up with that idea as they develop new sustainability rules,” McClelland said. .
His firm was also asked to consider any heritage considerations that might arise from the reimagining of the site, he adds. But the building is only 42 years old, so it’s not particularly iconic or iconic, he says.
It will likely take about 18 months to complete the zoning process with the city and up to six years to complete the project, Vihant says. But WZMH’s Mr. Abelman says the redevelopment is already embracing the future.
“This charging technology that we’re using is 2020s technology – I’m not sure it would have been possible even a few years ago,” he says.
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