On King Street West, a big hole and a brighter future

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In my over two decades with The Globe’s Real Estate section, I have looked down into a lot of construction pits. Big ones, little ones, and ones where a heritage building sits on a temporary platform until the new building is built around it.

But this hole, at 1071 King St. W. at Sudbury Street, is different.

First of all, unlike in Manhattan, where Broadway runs at a diagonal and slices the angular street grid into all sorts of triangles during its meandering journey – which makes for interesting ‘flat iron’ buildings – Toronto has precious few. Front Street and the famous Gooderham Building, of course, and a few tiny triangular moments, such as the one at Church and Collier streets, where Capitol Developments is building “The Yorkville Flatiron,” a mostly glass, 27-storey wedge by DiamondSchmitt.

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At 1071 King St. W., the lot acquired by Hullmark (with First Capital Realty and Woodbourne Capital) was cut into a muscular deltoid by the massive rail corridor that once served the smoke-belching factories of Liberty Village, where everything from tractors and heavy machinery to toys, billiard tables and bedding were once manufactured in sturdy brick-and-beam buildings. And, understanding this history, the architects at BDP Quadrangle delivered a classic, red-brick, rounded-corner, 17-storey looker that will rise over the next few years and provide 298 housing units.

“This is an exciting, multiresidential building of which there aren’t a lot starting in the city,” says Eli Miller, vice-president project management at Hullmark.

But there’s another reason this hole is different, and that’s why Sustainable Buildings Canada’s new executive director, Brynn Nheiley, is also risking vertigo on this frigid January day for a peek at the new columns, formwork, piles of rubble and tiny hard hatted workers. Working with Hullmark from the outset, SBC’s “Savings by Design” program conducted numerous charettes – intense design and planning brainstorm sessions – that have has “unlocked about a million dollars” of development charge rebates, says Mr. Miller.

“In the life of the program we’ve done over 800 of these charettes,” says Ms. Nheiley. “There are builders like Hullmark who come in already at an advanced level of awareness, and through the charette we can help them kick it up a notch … and then we also get the sustainable-curious … and we give them the whole suite of options to consider.”

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Kick what up a notch? What options? Well, in a world where many developers fail to think about buildings holistically – a window or heating pump or insulation is only as good as its weakest link – or about how they might perform in 25 or 50 years, SBC works with them to incorporate sustainable products and thinking well before the hole is dug. And, in some cases, as with Hullmark, they show developers that, with a few modifications to a design, they can move up a Toronto Green Standard (TGS) tier to unlock substantial savings.

To wit, since 2010 and as part of its net zero strategy, the City of Toronto has made TGS Tier 1 mandatory for all developments; it includes air quality improvement, reduced energy use and/or renewable energy features, reduced storm water runoff, more sensitivity to wildlife (applying dots on windows to reduce bird casualties), and the diversion of waste going to landfill. Naturally, Tiers 2, 3 and 4, which are voluntary, add more and more to that list.

“So, we’re in our charette and one of our energy modelling consultants, Adam Barker, says ‘you know, I think you guys are really close to Tier 2 TGS … I think you’re there with some nominal tweaks,’” remembers Mr. Miller, who adds that Hullmark had committed to going with geothermal heating right at the start. “The main tweak that we had to make was we had to enhance the green roof specification because we couldn’t make our water balance work.”

And, as one might suspect, a little more money might be required up front to save money in the long term, but when one plays the long game, that’s of little consequence, says Mr. Miller. “Even if it’s 50 per cent [for geothermal], you don’t have that monthly electricity charge for air conditioning, you don’t have that monthly gas charge, to the same extent, for your domestic hot water … and then there’s a whole host of knock down effects, which is reduced preventative maintenance, there’s just less equipment in the building.”

Whether it’s help with regulations, HVAC, window systems, wall assemblies, inclusion and accessibility, or with landscape architecture, SBC likely has an expert or a team of experts that can find ways to improve a design, and “they’re not just doing it for the sake of doing it,” says Mr. Miller.

“They’re incredibly passionate, top of their respective areas,” he continues. “So you get that excitement coming out of this and a renewed invigoration; when we did Savings by Design we had already been three years into the design development of the project, so there was an element of project fatigue that set in.”

“We’re certainly keen to participate in any avenue to uplift the industry,” Ms. Nheiley says with a smile. “You need to have builders excited to uptake new provisions, and you need to have regulators of the process also excited to see the great opportunities that will come out of this.”

And while it may be difficult for the average layperson to get excited about tiers and numbers and targets and charettes – even this architecture-obsessed writer found the online TGS documents quite sleep-inducing – a cleaner world, faster construction times, and more energy-efficient, longer-lasting buildings are enough for all of us to see a brighter future in that construction pit.

Editor’s note: In a previous version of this article, a quote from Brynn Nheiley of Sustainable Buildings Canada incorrectly referred to development charge credits from the City of Toronto. The article has been updated to refer to development charge rebates.