Number 145 St. George St., the first in the street’s modernist row, is a 12-storey rental building built in 1959 with 130 units. It has big balconies and lovely green brick details, but there are plans afoot for it that would render my advice bad.
Tenblock, a development company, has proposed replacing this building with a 29-storey tower. Under Toronto’s rental-replacement rules, any building redeveloped with more than six rental units must have those units replaced, so they will be part of the new building, along with 211 condo units.
The absurdity of Toronto’s housing market is on full display here as it makes financial sense for a developer to tear down a perfectly good building housing hundreds of people to build bigger. And this isn’t the only one.