Bloor and Dundas is undergoing a big change, which developers say could bring thousands of affordable housing units, jobs, park space, and a new modernized school.Choice Properties REIT revealed new renderings for its massive, 10-acre development at 2280 Dundas Street W. on Thursday. The company’s plan calls for multiple highrise towers that offer at least 50 per cent rental housing, retail, office space and plenty of parks. In total, there will be 2,500 residential units and enough office space to employ more than 3,000 people, said Joe Svec, Choice Properties’ director of development.“We’re not a condo developer, we’re a long-term, community builder,” Svec said. The land for the development includes a Loblaws, a parking lot, a medical building, a high school, and a doughnut shop. Both the Loblaws and the school will remain, but will be moved when the project is completed in 10 to 15 years.“We think this is how to actually build a community,” Svec said. “So it’s live, work, play and shop.”Svec said the consultation, which began in 2017, has been a “smooth process.”“We’re starting with a parking lot, we’re not starting with a beloved heritage community asset, so change was inevitable and people really embraced it.”The development will be served by streetcars, the Dundas West subway station, the Bloor GO station and the Union Pearson Express.“We’ve got all these transit connections coming together here, and the streetcar, all that allows for the kind of density that we’re talking about” said David Pontarini, the co-founder of Hariri Pontarini Architects, who will design the area.The high school — Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary School — had over 800 students last year, and will be moved south in the new development. Svec said the new school will have 1:1 capacity, will use the roof for activities, and could be ...
|
