What’s happening with the Honest Ed’s site, which was acquired by Vancouver-based Westbank Corp last fall? The 500-plus crammed into the Hyatt Regency ballroom for a public open house Tuesday night heard preliminary plans presented by design team principals from Henriquez Partners Architects and Janet Rosenberg + Studio. The entire development doesn’t include any condos (gasp!), rather three apartment towers (21, 22 and 29 storeys) and an array of shorter buildings, for a total of 1,000 rental units—some as large as four bedrooms (double gasp!). The project will also have 200k SF of retail.
Westbank's plan calls for Honest Ed's to be torn down and replaced with a wall of new buildings lining Bloor and Bathurst (as well as Lennox Street at the site's south end) with a mix of designs meant to mimic the eclectic look of existing area storefronts. There’ll also be a glass-roofed Mirvish Village Market and laneways cutting through the block lined with retail and live-work units. Most houses and buildings on Markham Street are to be retained, and the road itself transformed into a pedestrian-friendly woonerf. One woonders what ol' Ed would've thought of that...
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