As much as the people who know it love it—and that's a considerable number of people—High Park is probably still under-appreciated as one the great city parks. Not located as centrally as Manhattan's Central Park, the mostly hilly and reasonably wild High Park is certainly popular, but maybe not as entrenched in Toronto's psyche as much as it would be were it ringed with condos and in a downtown location.
The park is getting one condo overlooking its vast expanse though, and you would think from the view to be had from Daniels HighPark Condominiums construction site that the 161-hectare large swath of green and autumn accents is all forest in fact, but at ground level you would find that playgrounds, tennis courts, baseball fields, soccer pitches, a swimming pool, an ice rink, a zoo, an outdoor amphitheatre, a restaurant, a huge pond, gardens galore, and running trails have been liberally sprinkled throughout. It's all a short walk from an eponymous subway station, and the park even has its own train weaving through the grounds on weekends.
It's views like the one above which residents of this building will soon enjoy that will ever so gradually increase High Park's mystique in this city. Ready lin a year or so to add new shops and a rustic Italian pizzeria and wine bar across from the park, the 14-storey development by The Daniels Corporation will pull the boundaries of nearby Bloor West Village's much-loved shopping strip a little further east, and give people a new destination to admire the park from.
The Diamond Schmitt Architects-designed building is U-shaped, with 9-storey tall southwest and southeast arms that shelter a courtyard. That outdoor space will both be an entryway to the condominium, and a place where people can sit and enjoy a coffee or a meal with no north wind blowing through.
Yesterday we checked out a lot of what's going on at or just above ground level at the building, but today we go up into the upper half of HighPark Condominiums to take advantage of a beautiful day and the great views.
Our first stop is on the ninth floor of the building's southwest arm. The roof here is stepped back from the new street wall created by the building, and the step back provides wide terraces for units here. (Click on any image to see a more detailed enlargement.)
One more floor up, and we are in the future 10th floor lounge and party room. To be outfitted by Tomas Pearce Interior Design, it will take best advantage of the roof over the southwest arm, opening onto a landscaped deck designed by Land Art Design and equipped for enjoying the outdoors.
Out on the future deck, The building climbs another four storeys above. In the right distance you can just make out the line of the roof of the southeast arm: that area will have a green roof. It will be nice to look at, but won't be for touching: the green roof will be closed to residents and allowed to grow without being stepped on.
There's another green roof on the building in the northwest corner too, seen in the image below.
It's on the ninth floor where the building bumps out a bit on the Pacific Avenue side.
Looking up to the west from the same vantage point, the apartment towers of the High Park neighbourhood dominate, while you can just make out the low-slung entrance to High Park subway station nestled in among the trees at the very centre of the image.
Below, we've come back around to the south side of the building, overlooking the southwest arm, giving us another view of the coming amenity deck, plus the wide terraces for the 9th floor suites.
Looking up from that vantage point, we get the Humber Bay Shores skyline view.
A couple of floors higher and looking to the east, this is the view we get:
If we zoom in a bit…
here's Bloor-Yorkville…
the College Park area…
and the Financial Core:
While all of those buildings were just standing idly on the horizon, work was going on to finish HighPark Condos' 14th floor. Here the park's trees are replaced with a forest of rebar and conduits, all waiting for the concrete to be placed, bucket by bucket, until it covers the fly form below, and submerges the reinforcing steel and the service lines into its new whole.
Turning around, we get a look at the first of the fly forms to be positioned for the building's mechanical penthouse floor. After that there will just be one more concrete slab to create for the roof, and Daniels HighPark Condominiums will be topped off.
Tour over, we are back down at ground level, and taking a final look through the trees on Pacific Avenue up at the building.
Over the next weeks and months, HighPark Condominiums will gradually be sealed off from the coming winter weather so that interior work can go ahead full-force. As the trees lose their colour for another year, the building itself will take on warm buff and red-brown hues as bricks are laid over much of the white area you can see above. We will be back to check on progress when there are new things to see.
Want to know more about the building now? UrbanToronto's dataBase file for HighPark Condominiums, linked below, has more information, official links, and lots of renderings of what the completed project will look like. Want to talk about it? You can get in on the conversation in the associated Forum threads, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
Related Companies: | Diamond Schmitt Architects, Isotherm Engineering Ltd., Land Art Design Landscape Architects Inc |