New Tower Proposal for Liberty Market Building Site

Like clockwork, the moment a new condo is proposed in Toronto, there is opposition. Be it locals who are fearful of change, or business owners who feel that construction will slow traffic to their storefront, people step up and voice their displeasure with a project.Last week, residents of Liberty Village started a social media campaign to attempt to have a potential condominium stopped, “saving” the Liberty Market Building. Generally, these types of reactions are common when dealing with people who have been living in areas that are facing the transition from low-rise too high-rise, but what makes this reaction so peculiar is the fact that Liberty Village itself is a high-rise community.

Liberty Village is a trendy pocket of downtown that played a big part of the condo boom. Developers like Liberty, Plaza,and Lifetime have stepped up to the plate to bring both homes and infrastructure to the area. It seems somewhat odd for residents who purchased in an area that was built on condos to complain about…condos. It’s as if residents in Cityplace complained about condos going up next door. This was the vision for Liberty Village ten to twelve years ago, nothing has changed.The plan that has caused this level of frustration with the locals is Lifetime’s proposal for a new 32-story tower on the site of the Liberty Market Building. The plans call for retail on the ground floor, and six storeys of office space. The tower will be one of the most interesting proposals that we have seen in the area, which makes the resistance all the more questionable.