Proposal for Canadian Tire site on Danforth Avenue east of Main Street calls for buildings of 44 and 33 storeys

As part of the continuing intensification of the Main Street and Danforth Avenue area, a proposal has now been submitted to the City of Toronto to redevelop the land on which the Canadian Tire store in the area is located.

The proposal, submitted by property owner Canadian Tire Real Estate Limited, calls for a 44-storey and a 33-storey residential buildings at the 2681 Danforth Ave. site which is just east of Main Street on the south side. The proposed ground floor retail at the site will be a new Canadian Tire store to replace the existing one.

While the proposal has now been made official, it has long been in the works with drawings of changes to the area as part of the Main Street Planning Study in existence going back more than three years.

The proposed development for the Canadian Tire site will include 905 residential units making up 68,788 square metres of residential Gross Floor Area (GFA) and 11,066 square metres of non-residential GFA dedicated for Canadian Tire’s retail operations.

There will also be a private driveway off Danforth Avenue into the development and dedicated park space estimated to be 10 per cent of the site’s total area. The park area is expected to be at the southern end of the site.

There will be 162 vehicle parking spaces for residents of the new building, 38 spaces for residential visitors, and 140 for retail, all of which will be contained within two levels of an underground parking garage. The underground garage will be accessed from a residential ramp and a retail ramp. The second floor of the underground parking garage will include a 1,246 square metre Canadian Tire auto service centre.

Also, the proposal includes a total of 907 bicycle parking spaces for the residential component, of which 815 will be long-term and 92 will be short term. In addition, there will be 24 long term and 38 short term bike parking spaces to service the retail component of the development.

The proposal for the Canadian Tire is just one of a number of developments slated for the area in the coming years.

The Main Street Planning Study was approved by Toronto Council in December of 2019 after years of consultation, and it approved numerous tall buildings and high densities in the area of Main Street and Danforth Avenue, mostly to the southeast of the intersection to take advantage of its close proximity to both a GO Train station (Danforth) and a TTC subway station (Main Street).

A number of big buildings are proposed for the area south of Danforth Avenue to the railway tracks, and east of Main Street and west of Dawes Road.

However, the Main Street Planning Study area included locations to the west of Main Street as well and also south and west to Gerrard Street East. Construction is already well underway on the 27-storey residential building on the west side of Main Street just south of Danforth Avenue and north of Stephenson Avenue.

Other proposals cited (but not necessarily approved yet) in the Main Street Planning Study include:

• Five buildings ranging in heights of 15 and 55 storeys apiece at 2575 Danforth Ave. (on portions of the existing Main Square property). This proposal was submitted to the city in August of 2022, and will bring in 1,543 new residential units to the site.
• A mixed-use building containing 26 and 33-storey towers at located at 10-30 Dawes Rd. (just south of Danforth).
• A mixed-use building containing two towers at 24 and 30 storeys located at 9-25 Dawes Rd.
• Three residential towers standing at 49, 46 and 40 storeys, including a six-storey community centre at 6 Dawes Rd. (at the southern tip of Dawes Road just north of the Danforth GO station platform and running in an east-west direction to almost Main Street).

For more on the Main Street Planning Study, please see our earlier story at https://beachmetro.com/2020/01/22/main-street-planning-study-big-buildings-and-big-density-are-coming/

To see the Main Street Planning Study, go to https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/planning-studies-initiatives/main-street-planning-study/

---