Toronto Building Bought Through Estate Sale Becomes a Community Hub

What was once a run-down building on the corner of St. Clair and Westmount Avenues in the Corso Italia neighborhood of Toronto is now a 6,800-square-foot (630 square meters) mixed-use building that acts as a hub for the community.

On the ground floor is a coffee shop, Lion Coffee, and a creative agency, Dog and Pony Studios. On the second floor is a coworking space, Lokaal, while the multi-disciplinary studio Dubbeldam Architecture + Design is located on the third floor. There is also a half basement apartment in the building, occupied by a local photographer.

The building is still standing and in use today because of Dubbeldam Architecture + Design. When Heather Dubbeldam, principal of the firm, decided that she wanted to relocate her office away from downtown Toronto, she chose to purchase a property. And when the building she found proved to be too big for her business, she decided to lease the extra space to others. Dubbeldam’s husband, Kevin McIntosh, runs the coworking space, Lokaal, and acts as the director of business development and operations at Dubbeldam Architecture + Design.

“Having all of those businesses together in the same space creates these potential cross-pollination opportunities,” said Heather Dubbeldam, principal at Dubbeldam Architecture + Design. “The idea was to build this creative community.”

Dubbeldam Architecture + Design was previously located in 401 Richmond, a restored heritage industrial building in downtown Toronto that is home to many creatives and art galleries, as well as amenities like a café and a daycare center.

Since Dubbeldam and McIntosh were coming from a strong artist community at 401 Richmond, they wanted to emulate that in their new building, located at 142 Westmount Avenue, albeit on a smaller scale.

The initial incentive for relocating the office was inspired by Dubbeldam’s growing annoyance with her daily commute. “There was the low-grade added stress of having to drive to the office, or taking the TTC [Toronto Transit Commission], which for us would take double the time to get downtown,” Dubbeldam said.

After commuting for years, Dubbeldam and McIntosh realized that they had to make a change. “My husband and I decided that we wanted to live and work within walking distance, so the principle of the 15-minute city was something that we related to in terms of our projects and our lifestyle, and we wanted to make that happen,” Dubbeldam said. The 15-minute city is an urban planning concept in which citizens can access most daily services, such as work, shops and schools, through a 15-minute walk or bicycle ride. This approach promotes active transportation and public transit as opposed to car dependency.

Dubbeldam and McIntosh began looking for real estate to buy closer to their home, but they could not find anything, until they stumbled on a building sold through an estate sale. The new office is a 15-minute walk, and a two-minute drive, from their home. “Walking or biking to work is healthier, and you don’t have to worry about traffic,” Dubbeldam said.

The building that Dubbeldam and McIntosh bought was an older apartment building with retail on the ground floor and apartments on the second floor. It was in bad condition, but this created an exciting opportunity for the couple. “We don’t ever like to demolish or change something that is in good condition because of embodied carbon and materials. It’s just a waste, and we don’t like waste,” Dubbeldam said. They tried to maintain components with high levels of embodied carbon like masonry and wood, though they had to rebuild some of these items based on their condition.

The plumbing, mechanical systems and lighting needed to be replaced, and they were all swapped for more efficient options, such as LED lighting. “It was a good exercise in terms of the renewal of the building and making it really useful and well-built for the next 100 years, but we had underestimated the full extent of the renovation,” Dubbeldam said.

The renovation process was particularly challenging, as Dubbeldam and McIntosh were the client, the architect, the contractor and the site superintendent all at once. It happened that way because the approval process took longer than expected, and the contractor that they usually work with was not available. “It was a challenge, coordinating [the renovation] while running our business full-time,” Dubbeldam said.

In terms of the façade design, Dubbeldam wanted to do something fun and playful, but on a budget, so the area around the windows were painted with drop shadows, creating a trompe l’oeil effect.

The drop shadows were painted the same colour as actual shadows, “so it’s kind of confusing; when some people walk by, they stop and think that it’s 3D,” Dubbeldam said, laughing.

The windows were created by joining smaller windows to make larger ones, removing some bricks in the process. “There were initially a lot of really small windows all over the place at different levels and then all different colors of bricks, so it was a bit of a dog’s breakfast,” Dubbeldam said. “We opened up bigger, more regular windows, so that was a big thing for natural light.”

The windows were also placed to face different directions based on the prevailing breezes. “We can open every window on the street, and we get this natural ventilation going through the building,” Dubbeldam said. “It’s really amazing on some days where it’s breezy outside.”

Besides windows, wood furnishings are also ubiquitous in the building. The inspiration came from a trip that Dubbeldam and her team took to study sustainable architecture in Scandinavia. “We had just come back from trips in Denmark, Sweden and Norway with the studio, and we were really inspired,” Dubbeldam said. “We were using wood before, but it was a deliberate reference to the Scandinavian approach, with the blonde wood and the birch. It warms everything up.”

They also added a curved ceiling over the top level, which has integrated lights in it. “Everybody who walks up there says ‘ooohhh I like that!’, especially because it relates to the movement of that space.”

Dubbeldam Architecture + Design currently employs 10 people, while the coworking space houses 25. If the architecture practice expands, it can add offices on the third floor and expand into the coworking space.

“We can have 12 or 14 big desks, and then the desks can be subdivided to about 16 in our current space,” Dubbeldam said. “The intent of the coworking space was to give us flexibility if we really grow.”

While Dubbeldam said that it’s not part of their business plan to grow that much, the opportunity is there. “We are a small studio with big projects. We punch way above our weight, and we often collaborate with larger firms on bigger projects when we don’t have the capability in terms of staff.”

Besides the expansion opportunities, more work is planned on the building. Dubbeldam said that a roof deck is in the works, where “there will be lots of parties eventually.”

The building is situated in Corso Italia, a small neighborhood in Toronto located on St. Clair Avenue between Westmount Avenue and Lansdowne Avenue. It is considered Toronto’s second Italian neighborhood after Little Italy, and it is now a multicultural area, with over 80 percent of the neighborhood being first- or second-generation immigrants. There are many businesses along St. Clair Avenue, including hair salons, restaurants, cafés and a variety of retailers.

Before the building renovation began, Dubbeldam was already starting to see nice shops move into the neighborhood alongside the empty vacant properties that were seemingly abandoned by their landlords. “We really wanted to transform this corner into something much more interesting,” Dubbeldam said. The building occupies a prominent corner in the neighborhood, residing simultaneously on the main street, St. Clair Avenue, and along a side street, Westmount Avenue.

The building was renovated with materials that were sourced locally, and by workers who live nearby. “The carpenters who were working on the building live within a few blocks, they could literally walk to the job site,” Dubbeldam said. “The structural engineer lives in the neighbourhood, so there was a small radius in terms of where everybody was coming from.”

In order to encourage members of the community to interact with the property, four parking spots on the side street were removed and replaced with AstroTurf. “There are people hanging out there — teenagers playing on the grass and families coming and sitting on the AstroTurf with their kids. There are no benches, nothing, but we wanted to start the transformation,” Dubbeldam said.

Dubbeldam and her team are now working on a design with trees, planters and built-in benches to improve their outdoor space. “When you are creating a little bit of public space, that’s how you affect revitalization and transformation.”