Can a building wreck a neighbourhood?
It can try.
In 2005, one year after the Drake opened and everyone started tumescing over West Queen West, Baywood Homes bought up most of the block between Northcote and Sudbury. There were some financial troubles, the land was transferred to the Pemberton Group, and now, the Bohemian Embassy is almost finished.
Designed by Page and Steele/IBI Group, this utterly charmless building is already acting like a clotting agent to stem the flow of blood along Toronto’s liveliest artery.
In order for commercial strips to work, they need variety. At the moment, a good deal of West Queen West’s cachet comes from its narrow store fronts, each with plenty to look at, You don’t have to be interested in anything in particular, it’s the continual background stimulation that makes places like this fun. And it’s one of the reasons art galleries are such good neighbourhood seedbeds, and why every smart developer, from Cityscape (who did the Distillery District) to MOD (who’s doing Five St. Joseph) wants to attract at least a couple.
But on Queen Street, they migrated naturally, attracted by the relatively low rent. In other words, Baywood/Pemberton had a head start. One of the head startiest starts in the city, in fact. But when they approved the stinking pile of zit that became the Bohemian Embassy, they chucked almost every advantage they had.
And they’ve probably ruined it for a lot of other people too, because they stuck their nonsense at the western edge of West Queen West, just before it dips under Dufferin and becomes Parkdale. If I were anyone new to the area walking along this most delightful of streets, and came upon this nose-holder, and looked past it to the parking lot that surrounds the doughnut place (or whatever it is) across from the Gladstone, and beyond that to the underpass — no matter how charming its new newness is — I’d turn back, figuring that I’d come to the end of the interesting bit.
Neighbourhoods have momentum, and they have inertia, both tenuous things. You can sometimes tell when a neighbourhood’s got it, even though the timing can be difficult. People knew about the Junction a decade ago, and it’s only really started happening there in the past two or three years. People have been talking up Dundas West for a dozen years, and it was only when the Communist Daughter opened that things started moving there. Both places are still hopping. It’s been 15 years or more since various lone voices have been hollering about Long Branch, the part of town most people still only know from the streetcar route name. We’re still waiting for that one.
For those who were listening, West Queen West had started humming years before it started to sing. Jeff Stober just happened to be someone who was both listening and rich, which enabled him to stake his claim as Queen-maker when he rebuilt the Drake.
Pemberton is the anti-Stober. The Page and Steele/IBI funhouse mirror images what architect Paul Syme and 3RD Uncle did to the Drake, or what Eb Zeidler did with his daughter’s Gladstone.
This building is everything a building in its position shouldn’t be. It’s neither blank enough nor detailed enough to draw the eye. You see one vertical segment of it, with the dull brick and the duller battleship-gray framing, and you’ve seen them all. There’s no need to look up or over again. This repetition is of course not always a bad thing, something you’ll have noticed just a few blocks east with the Candy Factory. But that’s the great thing about properly mortared (and unglazed) faades. Every slightly imperfect brick is distinct, a situation that disappears when the mortar is too close in colour to the bricks, and the bricks themselves are smoothed out with glaze. In fact, the whole front of this Bohemian Embarrassment looks like it has a murky scrim over it, dampening both colour and particularity.
It’s not that new is bad, or that nothing but a beguiling old warehouse with exposed timber would have worked in that spot. Just look at the southwest corner of Queen and Portland. I was not the only one who was terribly worried about that building landing with a thump on such a well-loved part of Queen West. And though it’s no stop-and-stare beauty, it basically works. From what you can see on either sidewalk, it’s roughly the same height as the rest of the buildings, and it’s got stuff going on. Its retail entrances aren’t tucked away, and its nowhere near monotonous. It’s an ok addition to the street life. It’s not adding much, other than density, but it’s not taking anything away either.
Ugly’s not an objective term, but take a look at the clumsily convex windows on the upper floors of the Bohemian Embassy and if you think they’re anything but, please leave a comment, and take responsibility with your full name. I’d love to hear about it.
If you don’t, the man responsible for the Bohemian Embassy is Brian Sickle. He’s an executive VP with Page and Steele/IBI. His email address is brian.sickle@ibigroup.com. I’m sure he’d love to hear about that, too.
The city needs more downtown density, so big buildings can be a boon, but they have to be done properly. You can set them back from the street and put some pretty or entertaining stuff in front, like CAMH has done just a couple of blocks east with its massive new apartment building. Or you can build a tower with a small footprint, like folks are doing downtown. Or you can do what Pemberton’s done, but better, like Turner-Fleischer have done at Queen and Portland.
It’s not like Page and Steele aren’t able. They’ve done a fine job with the small-footed Museum House across from the ROM, and a really marvelous job with the block-long Prince Arthur on Avenue, a building that, in theory is a lot like the Bohemian Embassy, but that in practice, with its playful shapes, light colours, variable faade and, most importantly, well-defined storefronts, could not be more different.
Why couldn’t they have done this on Queen? I’m sure they have their reasons, but I’m equally sure they’re bad ones.
There will be one advantage to living there, though. It’s the only part of that now beknighted strip of Queen Street from which you don’t have to look at it.
