M5V Condominium | www.TheTorontoBlog.com

This artistic illustration, provided courtesy of Core Architects Inc., shows the 2-tower condo, retail and office development now being proposed for the southeast corner of King Street and Spadina Avenue …

… in place of the single 39-story tower complex originally proposed for the site, depicted in this rendering provided by Core Architects Inc.

The facade of this 6-storey listed heritage building at 401 King Street West …

… will still, as in the original plan, be incorporated into the new complex, as depicted in this rendering from Core Architects Inc.

The new complex of two towers – rising 21 and 37 storeys, respectively, on an 8- to 11-storey podium – will totally transform the corner site, currently occupied by the 6-floor heritage-listed brick building and a 1-level liquor store.

New proposal: Will a condo, retail and office complex with two highrise residential buildings better suit the King & Spadina neighbourhood than a project with only one tower? That’s one of the questions that city planners will be grappling with as they assess a revised development proposal for a property on the southeast corner of the busy King-Spadina intersection.

The site, most of which is occupied by a 1-storey liquor store constructed in 2009 at 415 King West, could clearly handle highrise redevelopment. But it’s the shape, size and density of any new structure to be built there that has been a sticking point with city planners, the local councillor and area residents.

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M5V condo tower viewed from Clarence Square Park January 14 2011

Big Red Box: I have to be honest: I keep confusing the M5V Condominium tower on King Street West with Boutique Condo at the corner of Simcoe and Nelson Streets, a few blocks to the east. In fact, I have nearly mislabelled photos of the two towers while organizing my pictures. Though they’re products of completely different designers, builders and developers, they’re both tall glass boxes with what I consider quite similar designs — particularly up top.

What does distinguish them, however, are the splashes of colour on the north and west facades of M5V’s tower and podium. And I never mistake M5V when viewing the tower from the north or the west: there’s just no way to miss the distinctive big red box that sits nearly halfway up the 34-storey tower’s northwest corner. (It houses the building’s mechanical room and rainwater retrieval system.)

M5V is drawing closer to completion, and the project website says that building occupancy is scheduled for June. I’m anxious to see the hoarding come down from the front of the tower, so I can see and feel how the building contributes to the King West streetscape. Shouldn’t have to wait too much longer for that.

M5V is a project of Lifetime Developments and TAS DesignBuild. There’s more information and photos of M5V on the project website as well as on the M5V section of the TAS website.

Below are some photos I’ve taken of M5V at different stages of construction in recent months; there are more pics in the M5V album on the Photo Sets page of the blog.