Outrageously colourful cluster of towers will be unlike anything else in Toronto

Ambitious plans surfaced in April for a proposal to redevelop a tract of City of Toronto-owned lands at a major transit hub with a multi-tower residential community that would look like nothing else in town.

The sprawling site at 2444 Eglinton Avenue East, a commuter parking lot just north of Kennedy GO and TTC station and adjacent auto body shop, is set to be redeveloped with three new residential towers.

But unlike the monotonous blue-grey glass Toronto residents are used to, these towers would feature wildly colourful designs from Vancouver-based Henriquez Partners Architects.

The City's real estate asset management agency, CreateTO, has long planned to leverage this and other sites adjacent to transit, launching the Housing Now initiative in 2019 to activate underutilized City lands and work with private developers to get affordable housing built.

CreateTO announced in January 2024 that Civic Developments, Windmill Developments, and the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto had been selected as partners in a bidding process to develop the site.

The plans filed with City planners in April represent a significant departure from the placeholder renderings shared over a year earlier, boasting a more detailed design that completely reimagines what a Toronto residential complex on a tight budget can achieve.

Proposed towers of 41, 31, and 18 storeys would bring over 900 units to the Midland and Eglinton area, featuring a mix of affordable and market-rate rental units, as well as condominiums.

Affordable housing developments are often dictated by budget, and while this is also true in the case of this proposal, Henriquez Partners clearly found creative ways to elevate the project's design well above the featureless slabs often associated with low-rent housing.

The massing of the towers is restrained, though punched windows with colourful frames set in textured precast concrete have come together to form what is being touted in plans as a cost-effective solution to getting housing built.

Even the outdoor realm surrounding the project boasts attention to detail, employing acclaimed landscape architects CCxA, the same minds behind Toronto's beloved Berczy Park redesign centred around an iconic dog fountain.

That doesn't mean you have to like it, though.

At the end of the day, architecture is subjective. One person's idea of beauty could be repulsive to others, and this design — while innovative — still has plenty of room to become polarizing.