Vast Toronto parking lot to be transformed with 6 towers as tall as 60 storeys

Ontario's housing market may be in the midst of a crash, but that hasn't stopped the provincial government from pressing forward with its plans to inject density into sites surrounding transit stations.

A new Transit-Oriented Community (TOC)  — provincially-led projects that aim to promote transit use by leveraging underutilized land — has been tabled for a vast tract of surface parking lot at 4105 Kingston Rd., next to Guildwood GO station in Scarborough.

The proposal would replace the commuter lot serving the regional rail station with a complex of six towers up to 60 storeys tall, introducing 2,534 new residential units to the currently underbuilt site.

In line with the TOC model of integrating density with transit, the proposed complex would place its tallest towers closest to the GO station, with the tallest measuring in just shy of 193 metres. 

The heights are still quite significant in the local context, with the surrounding neighbourhood exclusively built out with low-rise residential. 

While significantly taller than anything in the surrounding area, the plan would rank as just the 37th-tallest building in Toronto if completed today.

Offsetting the concrete jungle of density, the plan aims to incorporate a network of parkland and open spaces, including both public and privately-owned public spaces, combining for almost 5,600 square metres.

While the large surface parking lot would be lost, the TOC plans to incorporate new commuter parking, as well as pick-up/drop-off areas serving the station's significant share of riders relying on cars to get to and from Guildwood GO.

The complex's underground parking garage would contain 709 replacement parking spaces for Metrolinx, along with an additional 760 commuter spaces at-grade.

The Province has been churning out plans for TOCs in recent days, and this latest plan for the Guildwood site comes soon after Infrastructure Ontario dropped plans for an even larger seven-tower complex set to replace surface parking over at Clarkson GO station.

And, if these plans look a bit familiar to you, both of these new TOC proposals would replace commuter lots and feature strikingly similar designs from Zeidler Architecture.