Condo Critic: Maple Leaf Square isn't just for fans
March 27, 2010
Christopher Hume
Even before it’s done, Maple Leaf Square has changed the landscape of Toronto. It represents one of those rare, perhaps unique, situations in which a corporate agenda forms the basis of an exercise in city-building. The new neighbourhood, tucked in behind the Air Canada Centre, the Gardiner Expressway and York St., is organized around a large public space defined by various buildings. The ACC forms the backdrop to the space; already, the obligatory giant screen has been installed, the better to see Leaf and Raptor games. Given the nature of corporate sports and the fact that it involves large numbers of people (and money), it’s no surprise the new precinct is designed with all this in mind. In other words, sport moves in and out of private and public realms with absolute ease. For example, many fans would rather watch a game in a sports bar than by themselves at home. If the psychology of the crowd lies at the heart of fandom, here’s a place that gives these forces full play.
It helps that the Maple Leaf Square neighbourhood has been nicely planned and that the new buildings are of such high architectural quality. This is especially important as the surroundings tend to be made up of the infrastructural leftovers of an earlier age, a time when the city was twisted into weird contortions to accommodate the automobile. Even though the footprint of the new district feels relatively small, it is a vertical village, tall, dense and very urban. But by paying attention to the public realm, these mixed-use densities will become the driving force that animates things.
Maple Leaf Square, York St. and Bremner Blvd.
True, this twin-towered development remains a bit of a construction site, but there’s no doubt that it is and will be a vast improvement over what was there before – a parking lot.
Designed in a neo-modernist manner, this is architecture of big sweeping gestures and convincing details. From a city-building perspective, the hard work is done by the podium that extends along all four sides of the property. It stands about nine storeys high and helps create the public spaces at street level.
Because the project has been broken down into a series of apparently discrete elements, it avoids the monolithic quality that deadens so many large-scale schemes. Complexity, after all, is a pre-condition to urbanity, as is congestion. Maple Leaf Square embraces both.
As a result, when you come here you don’t feel you have left the city behind. Neither do you feel it occupies land that rightly belongs to the car. This is pedestrian-friendly territory, the kind of area that will attract non-sports fans as well as diehards, which in Toronto, are all that remains. But were the Leafs to win the Stanley Cup one season, the square would be Ground Zero, Celebration Central.
Grade: A
What do you think? Email condocritic@thestar.ca
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