Site Renewal
In 2014, Knox Church embarked on a significant initiative to renew its site and facilities. Decades of deferred maintenance needed to be addressed and could no longer be put off.
Knox Church is planning to add residential space on their property as part of their overall site renewal. The site renewal has two primary goals:
- Goal 1: Eliminate Knox Church's maintenance deficit
- Goal 2: Prepare Knox Church site and facilities for the next 100 years
In addition to the $7 million that Knox Church and its members invested to restore and renew the Main Church building, the Church has determined that the best way to fund the ongoing restoration and renovation work is to lease portions of the land to the South and North of the Main Church building for 99 years to Greenwin Corp. The 99 year leases will provide the funds to restore and maintain the Main Church building, while also providing much needed affordable rental and market rental housing in the community. As part of the development proposal, there will also be new dedicated church space provided.
The Proposal
We are putting forward a proposal for an:
- 8-storey mixed-use, residential building on the northern portion of the site fronting onto Harbord Street, and
- 18-storey residential building on the southern portion of the site.
Toronto has a critical need for more housing, and specifically affordable housing and purpose-built rental housing. This proposal is aiming to provide over 230 new purpose-built rental units in an area very well served by public transit and other neighbourhood amenities and, importantly, to also provide 20% of the units in the south building as dedicated affordable units.
Other exciting features of the proposed development include:
- A new fitness/gym facility in the south building.
- New indoor and outdoor amenity space for future residents.
- Additional dedicated church space in the north building.
- Small-scale, street-level retail space fronting onto Harbord Street.
- New open space at the corner of Spadina Avenue and Harbord Street.
We are proposing 20% of the residential units (about 42 units) in Building A as affordable units.
We are still too early in the process to have selected a retail tenant for this space, but the intention is for it to be occupied by a small-scale, local retailer. We are open to your thoughts and ideas for what type of retail the community could use in the future.
As part of the overall development application process, we will be required to submit a series of studies and reports, including a Transportation Impact Study (TIS) to the City of Toronto for their review.
The TIS will provide an analysis of the traffic impacts of the proposed development, including on Sussex Mews. We are currently working towards an application submission in the coming months and, as such, our transportation consultant is still in the process of conducting this analysis. Once prepared, transportation experts at the City will review the TIS and will provide comments to our team as part of the application process. We will also upload the TIS on the Materials page of this website.
We are proposing a 317 m2 open space at the corner of Spadina and Harbord.
We are still in the early stages of the design process and have not yet prepared detailed designs or programming for this space. We are open to hearing your thoughts today on what could be most useful to the community as part of this space.
The Process
We are currently working on a planning application to submit to the City.
We are taking the feedback we've been hearing at our various engagement events (Open House, Online Community Meeting, Working Group meetings, stakeholder meetings, and via our project website/email) back to our project team to consider and incorporate, where possible, into a revised set of plans which will ultimately form our formal planning application to the City.
Once the application is submitted, the application will be reviewed by City Staff and they will also host a Community Consultation Meeting (CCM). Following their review and the CCM, City Staff will write a decision report on the application which will go forward to Community Council, and then on to City Council for a decision.
We encourage you to keep in touch with us via our project email (hello@630spadina.ca) and follow along via our project website at www.630spadina.ca.
Once we have filed our planning application, we will provide the proposed timelines for construction.