Out with the old, in with the condos

The printing establishment currently located at the corner of Hickory Street and Champagne Avenue is the only remaining industrial use in this section of the Bayview-Champagne corridor. It once was an industrial heartland of the city, with convenient rail access (the tracks were relocated into the cut in 1963, before that they ran at street level). The old Sunoco fuel depot site has been cleaned up and is currently zoned for a 40,000 sq ft building. The former Campbell Iron and Steel plant at the corner of Carling/Champagne (now a satellite parking lot for the Civic Hospital) is in process to become several office towers (see earlier blogs on 853 Carling Ave) once the Bayview-Carling CDP is completed.

I hear the printing plant site pictured will soon be reincarnated as six townhouses facing Hickory and a eight storey condo facing Champagne. I imagine the neighbors will object, as some are already upset at the Merion Square townhouses and one condo tower (soon the second tower will be built). In my opinion, they are lucky, since the vacant and underutilized lands on the edge of their neighborhood are perfect for intensification (close to transit, have separate street access to the busy arterial Carling Avenue, and on the edge of the existing low rise neighborhoods but not in the middle). By building along the perimeter of this established area there will be less disruption to the existing areas and less pressure for intensification within the existing areas.

And recall too that the area immediately south of Carling, currently a green field running up to the Sir John Carling building, is zoned for mixed use high rises, but we wont see that for another three decades.