Hume: New life at Dundas and Parliament

February 13, 2010 Christopher Hume

Hyman: Adult-only provision... Hume: St. Lawrence... BILD: What's coming down... Sewell: Art Nouveau suite... Sewell: Oil painting by a...

Colin and Justin’s whiter...
Glamourous style on a...
Colin and Justin: All the...
Bryan Baeumler’s house(s...
Climate change is real for...

The corner of Dundas and Parliament has long been one of the most alarming in Toronto. For ages, it has been one of those places that must be avoided at all costs. Mere mention of the intersection conjures up images of teenage drug dealers, crack houses and homelessness. Anyone caught waiting for a streetcar after dark knows this isn't the sort of place you'd spend one second longer than necessary.

The presence of Regent Park didn't help. Cut off from the surrounding city, it became an inner city enclave whose inhabitants were disenfranchised and generally ignored. Being largely poor and/or recently-arrived, they, like Regent Park itself, can be forgiven if they felt isolated.

That's all changed now; a bold and visionary plan to remake the 60-year-old public housing complex is well underway and has started to have results. For the first time in a long time, the northeast corner of Dundas and Parliament offers more than an image of urban blight. Though the rebuilding has a long way to go, the transformation has already had an enormous impact. Though it might not strike passersby as particularly dramatic, the changes wrought here are as profound as any seen in Toronto.

These are still early days and much remains to be done, but it's clear the intersection will never be the same. For example, the arrival of a bank, supermarket, as well as the inevitable Tim Hortons, will help set the stage for renewal and make the area feel and function more like a conventional neighbourhood.

The last time anything so positive happened here was in 1999 when the unexpectedly elegant Regent Park Community Health Centre opened.

chume@thestar.ca

Condo Critic

ONE COLE ST.: This midrise condo slab, built of glass and brick, is the best thing to happen to Dundas and Parliament in ages. Unlike the housing that sat here for decades, this new project is fully a part of the city. It reaches to the sidewalk, which creates a new space, almost a square, at the corner. Big enough for a row of planters and benches, which have yet to arrive, this could be the public realm the neighbourhood never had – or wanted.

The building itself is handsome, if not spectacular. It rises from the street, a masonry box sitting atop a glazed lobby. To the south (and east), a three-storey glass atrium will be the home of a Sobeys. Rows of balconies overlook Parliament, which means, in Jane Jacob's phrase, that there will be eyes on the street. This is not just a matter of safety; the fact is that one of the reasons the corner has always felt so desolate and scary lies in the sense of disconnection it imparts.

To the north, a new street (Cole St.) extends east from Parliament. Lined with townhouses, it will feel somewhat familiar to anyone who has wandered the narrow roads of nearby Cabbagetown. Nicely finished, appropriately scaled, One Cole speaks convincingly of the new Regent Park. It will have none of the utopian idealism of the original development, but this one feels closer and more reflective of the way people really live.

GRADE: A

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Email: condocritic@thestar.ca.

Read more on One Cole.

Read more Condo Critic:

- 5 Condos that tower above the rest