A surface parking lot at Dundas Street West and Ossington Avenue is officially a construction site.
The City of Toronto, CreateTO and the federal government marked the start of construction at 1113–1125 Dundas Street West on Monday; the rent-controlled rental building rising at the intersection will bring 74 new homes to Trinity-Bellwoods.
At least 17 of those units will be designated affordable, and more than 40% of the building will be made up of two- and three-bedroom units — a notable share for a project aimed at families, rather than singles and couples.
The building is going up in mass timber, with geothermal energy systems built in to cut the project's carbon footprint. The design and construction team is entirely Canadian: Moriyama Teshima Architects and Montgomery Sisam Architects are handling design, with Pomerleau Construction as builder.
The project is also a milestone for how the City does business. CreateTO is billing 1113–1125 Dundas as the first project delivered under Toronto's public developer model, where the City takes a more hands-on role in deciding how it uses its own land — setting housing targets directly and speeding up its own approvals process, rather than leaving that work entirely to private developers. A non-profit housing provider has yet to be selected to operate the building once it's complete.
Funding is a joint effort between the City, which is contributing the land along with capital funding and incentives, and the federal government's Build Canada Homes program.
"Today, we're turning City-owned land into new rental housing, including affordable and family-sized homes," Mayor Olivia Chow said in a release. "By working with Build Canada Homes, we're building the housing Toronto needs so people who work here can afford to live here."
Danielle Martin, the Member of Parliament for University–Rosedale, called it the first project to reach construction under the Build Canada Homes initiative in her riding. "What was once a parking lot is now being reimagined and transformed into a place that hundreds of people will soon call home," she said.
Ana Bailão, President and CEO of Build Canada Homes, pointed to the project as an example of what different levels of government can accomplish together on underused public land, while CreateTO CEO Vic Gupta noted the agency now has more than 5,000 homes under construction on City-owned sites, with this project marking its first under the public developer model specifically.
The Dundas Street project counts toward the City's HousingTO plan, which targets 65,000 new rent-controlled homes by 2030 — including 41,000 affordable rental units, 6,500 rent-geared-to-income units, and 17,500 additional rent-controlled homes.
