By David Topping

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we’ve either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset.

There are good condos and there are bad condos. Toronto is being overrun by bad ones––”terrible cold chasms of brick and concrete and steel and glass,” as Brad Lamb put it to us at the beginning of the year; buildings that simply don’t fit and are unremarkable except for how overwhelming they are. (To say nothing of the ugly, ugly marketing that’s going with them.)
Take One Bloor, the 80-storey condo popping up in four years on the corner of Yonge and Bloor. It’s not that it’s big; it’s that it’s too big, dwarfing every building in the area––now pegged at 275 metres tall, it’s just a little less than half the height of the CN Tower––and killing Roy’s Square in the process. It’s spectacular, to be sure, but not for Yonge and Bloor. This image alone should be all it takes to wean fans off of any kind of love affair with the development, but the city is eating it up. Councillor Kyle Rae––the man whose signature is increasingly responsible for turning Toronto ugly––called the existing intersection an “armpit.” And Rae has decided that the easiest way to stop an armpit from smelling isn’t to clean it, but to mask the problem with a huge-ass Old Spice container. At least the views will be nice, though.
Toronto can’t only grow out, yes; it must grow up. It just needs some better parents.
Photo by Miles Storey.