Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
How does a company celebrate a century in business? If you're George Weston Limited, you hire a photographer to shoot corporate headquarters at sunrise, just as neighbours in Deer Park get ready to start their day with fine Weston's or Loblaws products.
The 20-storey octagonal Wittington Tower opened in the mid-1970s. Architect Leslie Rebanks won an honourable mention citation from the American Institute of Business Designers in 1976 for the artistic touches that were utilized in the lobby. A relative of the Weston family, Rebanks would work on the Loblaws store design rolled out in the late 1990s (see the Queen's Quay or St. Clair-Bathurst stores for early examples) and serve on the committee that chose Daniel Libeskind's crystal design for the Royal Ontario Museum.
New for '82 was Sails, sculpted by Gordon Smith from stainless steel. We wonder if plans were ever developed to produce a collectible version for the public as President's Choice Memories of Deer Park Mini Sails.
George Weston Limited has occupied the upper floors throughout the building's existence, though the Loblaws division moved its head office to Brampton in 2005.
Source: Bravo, November-December 1982
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That Bathurst store is one of the nicer grocery stores. Loblaws has some lovely stores in Toronto. Too bad it's tough to save money at Loblaws.
(Also, to naysayers of Torontoist: Look! It's non-downtown content!)
I remember visiting my dad at work as a child.
The 20th floor (i.e. executive offices) has this amazing central reception desk where the surface lifts up like its a ufo.
I've shopped at the St. Clair and Bathurst Loblaws since it opened. The Canadian Architect article you linked speaks of the location on top of the St. Clair West subway station as a "significant innovation" but it could not be more poorly handled. The north side subway entrance is a mean little set of double doors buried in the façade. To get to the Loblaws from the subway station you have to walk out onto the sidewalk and back in through a nearly invisible supermarket entrance. What a wasted opportunity for a really good combined front entrance to
both the subway and the supermarket!
The alleged lack of a high volume of pedestrian traffic on that part of St. Clair is no excuse for creating such a pedestrian-hostile streetscape. Meanwhile, the main entrance to the supermarket is to the rear from the grotty parking garage—the better for loading up Forest Hill SUVs with cartloads of groceries, I guess.
Just north of St. Clair on Yonge isn't exactly non-downtown.
Everyone's definition of "downtown" differs: does it include King W & Liberty Village? Yorkville? Rosedale? The answer depends if you live at Yonge & King, King W, Little Italy, Riverdale, the Kingsway or Milton.
Most of the people complaining won't be mollified by covering Deer Park, since they want coverage of horrible low-end neighbourhoods like Leslieville and Scarberia. An office building for the second richest family in the country a 10 minute walk from UCC is not exactly the kind of content they had in mind :D Hopefully it gives a few hippies aneurysms!
I am shocked that AR thinks it's tough to save money at Loblaws. The firm has gone heavily promotional to try to make up for their horrible execution the last few years. It's not quite No-Frills, but they are very cheap. Not as cheap as a rat or listeriosis infested stall in Kensington, but fairly good pricing.
It is though, when you compare it to No Frills, Food Basics, or some Asian fruit stand. The quality isn't much better either, though I do like the pleasure of shopping there. There's still a noticeable difference, though they have brought their prices down recently. When you pay more for the same product,or one of minimally better quality, you're not saving money. It's naive to think otherwise. You compare Loblaws with a stall in Kensington, but the food at most stalls is just as safe, and I and my family has never gotten ill from that food. Ironically, there was an incident where people where exposed to Hepatitis at a Loblaws a few years ago.
Also, it doesn't matter how people define downtown. It's clear from the built form and history. The area bordered by the lake to the south, Bloor to the north, Bathurst to the west and Parliament to the east is downtown. I don't know why you insult Leslieville, or call Scarborough, a large suburban area, a single neighbourhood. Unless you're implying that downtown residents feel outside of downtown to be inherently inferior, which is false. You have to face the reality that the suburbs are periphery and will not get much coverage, for they're mostly new communities which aren't as established as the centuries-old downtown, the heart of the city. They're geographically spread out, too, which is a hindrance.