The new $128-million North Market, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour Partnership and Adamson Associates, on May 2.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
On a recent Saturday, business was good at the St. Lawrence Market North Building: merchants showed an array of jade plants, spring blooms, arugula and luscious orange peppers. A time traveller from 1803, when the first market opened on this site, would have understood exactly what was happening.
But the building would have surprised them. Sunlight poured down through a central skylight, cutting through an atrium between two wings of provincial courtrooms, their steel beams painted a sunny orange. Tall windows showed the Georgian masonry of St. Lawrence Hall to the north, and to the south, the great Victorian shed of the South Market building. With the new $128-million North Market, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour Partnership (RSHP) and Adamson Associates, a Toronto landmark has come back to life.
People shop at the St. Lawrence Market North building as sunlight pours down through a central skylight.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
This weekend’s grand opening is a time for celebration – but also for questions. Why is this building over budget and 11 years late? How was its thoughtful, nuanced architecture badly compromised? Why can’t the City of Toronto seem to build anything great?
This time, the city aimed high. The previous building on the site was a concrete 1960s shed; in the oughts, the city decided to rebuild it and combine it with provincial courts. In 2010, under mayor David Miller, the city held a design competition. (I wrote about it on my personal blog.)
This process wasn’t perfect, but the right design was chosen. Rogers, along with Toronto-based multinational Adamson Associates, put the courthouses upstairs and imagined a public market hall with retractable glass doors. On a nice day, the market could open up west to Market Lane Park; Torontonians could wander from their streets to their market and back out. On the facades, a network of columns and vertical fins provided shade and physical support; above the bulk of the building, the roof hovered like the open wings of a bird.
All this built on a tradition at RSHP, among the world’s best-known architecture firms. Founder Richard Rogers was a big thinker whose colourful shirts and garrulous manner signalled his Italian roots. He and his friend Renzo Piano launched their careers by winning the 1971 design competition for the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
On the facades, a network of columns and vertical fins provide shade and physical support; above the bulk of the building, the roof hovers like the open wings of a bird.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
“It is a much visited building, either loved or hated,” Mr. Harbour told me.
At St. Lawrence Market, the design is “a very straightforward idea,” about daylight and sight lines, Mr. Harbour said. The building speaks to its two neighbours. Across the street, the St. Lawrence Market South building rises as a giant 1901 steel shed, wrapping a brick building that was once City Hall. To the north is St. Lawrence Hall (1850), a fine Neoclassical public building, now city-owned, that once held shops and a performance hall.
These sites have held public buildings almost since the British first settled the place. The 1803 town plan of York set out this space for a market. The Rogers design builds upon this deep structure of British imperial town planning.
The front door is an aluminum number that belongs on a Costco.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
But the architecture – and equally the way the building works – have been diluted. It became a floor shorter; the roof was simplified to three half-cylinders; the exterior lattice of columns and fins was reduced to some panels of orange aluminum stuck onto glass walls. The materials are mostly cheap. Concrete columns are ringed with raw steel barriers. The front door is an aluminum number that belongs on a Costco.
Yet this cost a mint. From a budget of $59-million in 2010, it wound up at $128-million. The contractors, Atlas and Buttcon, are now suing the city for an additional $83-million. The culprits appear to be the usual ones in Canadian public administration. There is cheapness; the city neglected to do a thorough archeological study, and the discovery during construction of a historic drain created delays. (The drain is lovingly displayed under glass.) There is indecision. During the years of Rob Ford’s assault of city hall, the building faced budget cuts and resulting changes. During the eight years of John Tory’s dithering mayoralty, delays and cost overruns were met with a shrug.
Someone should answer for this. The city’s Corporate Real Estate Management office ran this project, and badly. Who’s responsible? Mayor Olivia Chow’s office, through spokesperson Zeus Eden, declined to comment because the issue is before the courts.
You can guess where a lot of the money went: Underground. This building features a four-level, 250-space underground garage which, based on industry standards, cost at least $30-million and likely much more. Yet when I visited last Sunday around noon, 223 of its 250 spots were empty. In Toronto, the financial and carbon costs of parking are non-negotiable. Good public space can always be sacrificed.
Toronto needs a market building and streets that are lively all day, every day, open to people more than vehicles.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Harbour, all the same, is proud of the result. “The building has changed, but its spirit hasn’t changed,” he said. “It functions as a public assembly place.”
Does it, though? The ground floor is closed except on Saturdays. Eventually the Sunday vintage and antique market will return from their temporary site. That leaves five days a week when the building is an impenetrable box, its public hall locked off.
Likewise, the zone around the building is in rough shape. Market Lane Park has cracking pavement and a broken fountain; planning for a renovation began in 2020 and construction hasn’t started. Most troubling is the link to the South Market across the fast-moving traffic and car-choked expanse of Front Street.
The problem here is not architecture. What’s lacking is a civic culture of design. Public space is what defines a city. Toronto needs a market building and streets that are lively all day, every day, open to people more than vehicles.
Ask the late Richard Rogers. “It is no accident that the cities voted most liveable and the most enjoyable to visit are those where the car is controlled and the public can dominate the street,” he wrote in his book A Place for All People. He was right. If a market is going to bring people together – which is the point, after all – the work must go beyond the walls.