Living in harmony
‘Ungated’ Barrie community will work with nature to create livable spaces for all
For decades, Barrie has been known as a major hub for urban workers commuting the hour or more to and from Toronto. So much so that it is now commonly considered a suburb of Toronto.
Barrie is also one of Canada’s fastest growing cities. A new project on the edge of Lake Simcoe on Kempenfelt Bay will deliver an innovative, mixed-use community, setting a new standard for architectural design and landscaping. This urban village set on 8.6 picturesque acres of land is a development by City Core, one of Calgary’s largest custom home builders. The wedge-shaped property will comprise a multi-faceted waterfront community that sits on the edge of Barrie’s downtown. The city is in the midst of a large-scale master planning exercise and Harmony Village will factor prominently into their goal of creating a signature waterfront piece and helping to revitalize the downtown.
“They have a string of pearls of parks that ring the waterfront. The street behind us, Bradford St., is seen as becoming a major commercial street that will swing into the downtown,” says lead architect Roland Rom Colthoff, principal at RAW Design.
Plans are underway for five towers from 24 to 28 storeys.
There will also be a series of townhomes that will frame various sections of the site. The designers are proposing a new street called Harmony Rd. that will connect the lakeshore to Bradford St. in order to improve the traffic flow and provide a continuous string of retail services to the community. Also planned is a supermarket at the corner of the property, a drug store and a 40,000square-foot community centre.
Although not right at the water’s edge, the project will connect to an existing greenbelt, a linear bike path and pedestrian way, and an improved Lakeshore Dr. that link up the various parks along the waterfront. There’s also an existing marina across the road from the complex.
“What was important to us is that we wanted to draw people up through the site and have a reason for them to walk through,” says Colthoff.
The “ungated” community is designed to attract residents from across the city and that is quite important to the developer, says Colthoff of Jack Pong, City Core’s president and CEO. “He wants to deliver (the community centre) to the city as part of phase one. It will be open to the entire city.”
The development model was originally targeted towards adults aged 55 and older, but Colthoff explains that with 1,200 units and 1,500 people, the community won’t be entirely dedicated to older adults. “Hopefully it’s going to include a mix of people from the Barrie area; it’s going to include boomers that have retired from Toronto and it may even include students because of” the Georgian College campus.
What is unique about this little village is that it will be built entirely upon a massive underground parking garage. All the green spaces, pathways, lawns and gardens are essentially a “green roof” for this cleverly constructed infrastructure. “We’re calling it a constructed ecology, basically to take advantage of the natural systems — on a roof,” explains landscape architect David Leinster of The Planning Partnership. “Because of the geology of the site, you can’t build a parking garage deep underground. This is actually part of a marsh that connected Kempenfelt Bay to a larger marsh.” This constructed ecology follows a “story” as one moves from the water’s edge up through the property and out onto Bradford St. The promenade morphs ecologies from beachfront to wetlands to grassland savanna and finally to an area of planted trees. There’s an intricate ecosystem that surrounds the site. An existing stream is adjacent to the property and runs into Kempenfelt Bay, as well as a pond that serves as a preserved fish sanctuary. Leinster has added a public urban beach at the south entrance of the property replete with an all-ages wading pool and a sandy beach with Muskoka chairs. “It’s a trick that we’ve introduced along the Toronto shoreline in places like Sugar Beach,” he says.
Leinster stresses walkability and the importance of the project being key to Barrie’s downtown revitalization. “It’s just a couple of blocks from the downtown area, so it’s a very walkable destination. Then, of course, there’s a GO Transit station not too far away, just a few blocks.”
Colthoff believes that you should be able to see the water when you’re buying a lakefront property. “We looked at each of the five towers and ensured that when you’re standing on your balcony or inside your unit that somewhere in your cone of vision or line of sight you would have a view of the lake.”
Another unique feature of the design is what appear to be little tufts of greenery poking out of inset cor- ners and nooks up the sides of the towers. “We looked at taking the buildings and trying to pull the landscape up into the building so there are some garden features.” says Colthoff.
DESIGN COMPETITION
City Core launched a design competition for the project last August and invited four architects to participate: Diamond Schmitt, Core Architects, Hariri Pontarini and RAW Design. The designs were submitted to a high-profile jury that read like a who’s who of Canadian architecture: Ian Chodikoff, editor of Canadian Architect; the Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume; Ian MacBurnie, professor at Ryerson University; Paul Goldberger, Vanity Fair architecture critic; Lisa Rochon, Globe and Mail architecture critic; and Pong. “Subsequent to that they ran a public exhibition of all the entries so that the public in Barrie could comment on them,” explains Colthoff. “As a result of that process they decided to team us up with Diamond Schmitt. So it’s actually RAW Design with The Planning Partnership as landscape architects and Diamond Schmitt as a collaborating architect.” The architectural teams are still in the early stages of the project. Nothing is carved in stone as yet, and they’ve been working largely from their competition submissions, having just started a dialogue with the city of Barrie and the community. “Our understanding is that it was relatively well received so we’re hoping that that’s correct and that it can move forward quickly,” says Colthoff.
Pricing and suite sizes have not been confirmed. Go to harmony village.ca for more information.