Fourplex owned by Nigel Churcher on Toronto's Shaw Street. Design by architect Gregory Rubin.Poiesis Architecture
From the sidewalk, the fourplex that Nigel Churcher, a veteran Toronto art director and set designer, built over the past several years fits into the cheerful eclecticism of Little Italy specifically because it doesn’t quite fit in.
The thoroughly rebuilt south half of a century-old Shaw Street semi, just north of College, has all sorts of elements that give it the kind of character that adds to the character of a character street. The three stacked archways facing Shaw (one an expansive window, one covering a small porch and one enclosing a first-floor side entrance) are reminiscent, according to architect Gregory Rubin, of “a campanile, the layered arches in Italian bell towers.”
Instead of a front door, there’s a sunken 160-square-foot terrace that opens onto one of the two basement studio apartments. The unit at the rear has an identical version, and both double as entrances and spacious but secluded open spaces for the tenants. The first-floor apartment has two bedrooms and the top two floors are a large single unit, with balconies looking both east and west. Finally, the new third-floor roofline is flat and somewhat elevated, although it appears as if part of the sloped gable from its older conjoined twin has nosed its way into the repointed red brick of the front wall.
It is, most notably, a bespoke missing-middle project that aims to celebrate this additional density instead of seeking to conceal it.
Yet Mr. Churcher’s newly completed Little Italy development (he and his partner Jessica moved into the two-storey unit last month) offers something of a cautionary tale about the complexities that can lie in store for so-called “citizen developers” who set out on their own to convert conventional homes, especially in dense neighbourhoods, into the fourplexes or small-scale apartments now permitted under Toronto’s new land use policies.
Fourplex owned by Nigel Churcher on Toronto's Shaw Street. Design by architect Gregory Rubin.Poiesis Architecture
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“Nigel is a great client,” says Mr. Rubin, who, with architect Alejandro Lopez, runs Poiesis Architecture. “He’s got a design vision, and I would love to work with more people like that.” But Mr. Churcher, a demanding figure who works in the intensely creative and technical world of film and television production, had an inkling that he’d be frustrated by his digression into development, and he was. “I’m in an industry where we design and build and make mistakes and fix mistakes at a furious speed,” he mused one sunny morning last week as he sat on the little porch overlooking Shaw, taking in the street life. “I’m the guy in charge.”
As it turned out, building a multiplex in modern Toronto isn’t at all like building film sets.
Mr. Rubin wasn’t the first architect Mr. Churcher hired when he began thinking about rebuilding the semi he’d bought on Shaw. Not long into the process, back in 2016, he brought in Mr. Rubin to present some ideas about a new façade as part of the project to convert the dwelling from a single-family house to a multiunit building. “I thought, ‘Oh, Nigel works in film,’” recalls Mr. Rubin. “‘Let’s present this like an opera set.’” He built a pair of scale models, before and after, presenting them under a miniature theatre proscenium as acts one and two.
The idea by that point had already become snarled in the City planning approvals process because the application came with a long list of minor variances, not least of which was the notion of replacing a conventional front entrance with the sunken terrace. That concept, the City informed Mr. Rubin, wasn’t in keeping with the neighbourhood’s character.
He didn’t buy that argument and embarked on a small planning study, which yielded a map showing numerous semis and singles along Shaw with sunken front yard entrances and light wells leading to basement apartments. “I can’t speak to the history of these projects, but [they’re] in the neighbourhood,” he says. “We’re really trying to just expand on a typology.” The planning department didn’t support Mr. Churcher’s application at the Committee of Adjustment but at least agreed to work with Mr. Rubin to figure out solutions. They got a yes in May, 2017.
Construction, however, only started in 2020, owing to delays that had to do with more regulatory snarls, the sticker-shock of development charges and a host of unexpected hurdles.
At one point, city officials decided the existing brick façade needed to be preserved – a costly and perplexing recommendation that would have forced Mr. Churcher to hire structural engineers to prop up the wall with the kind of steel girder buttress that has become commonplace for preserving the façades of older downtown buildings being redeveloped as high-rises. Both Mr. Churcher and Mr. Rubin questioned the wisdom of that approach; Mr. Rubin eventually hired a mason who confirmed that many of the old bricks weren’t worth saving.
Another requirement that mystified Mr. Churcher: A recommendation that he commission a soil compaction survey. While some properties along Shaw are notoriously unstable because they were formed by landfilling Garrison Creek, Mr. Churcher questioned the methods for making the assessment: “[The house] has been parked here for a hundred years, and now the soil it’s been built on isn’t stable?” he asked. “Don’t you guys see the irony in all this?” Mr. Rubin, however, argues that such steps are taken in the interest of safety, both the residents’ and the general public. As he puts it, “You’re going to find out sooner or later what kind of soil you’re building on.”
Perhaps the most vexing burr under Mr. Churcher’s saddle involved the utilities in this new building. With four standalone units, each had to have its own heating, water, gas and electricity. Also, because of steadily stricter energy efficiency standards that eliminate leaks in such dwellings, he had to invest in specialized ventilation systems to prevent moisture buildup.
Mr. Churcher had a vision of minimizing the footprint of all these mechanical systems, but his idea was thwarted, he says, because all the contractors worked on their own, according to their own methods. “The co-ordination of all the required professional consultants is ineffective,” he says.
Standing in front of the utility closet in one of the studios, Mr. Churcher gestures unhappily at a space that looks like an airplane engine. “It’s designed by the plumber, the electrician, the HVAC guy. No one cares about each other, so everything just gets slammed in here. This,” he continues sourly, “was a great opportunity to do something super fantastic. These boxes don’t have to be this shape.”
In some respects, Mr. Churcher found himself enmeshed in a process – design and then construction – that has just become a lot more technically involved than he realized, largely due to the steady layering on of building code regulations and evolving engineering standards.
Yet the city’s rigid and often opaque planning process, as well as the drip-feed of additional fees, contributed to his frustrations. Mr. Churcher came away with the impression that no one individual was responsible for seeing through his project – certainly not someone who fills the buck-stops-here role he has on TV or film productions. “You can’t take four years to make a film, right?” he says, declining to say how far over budget he went with the fourplex. “One of my complaints these days is [that] we are losing the ability to make a decision.”
Mr. Rubin, for his part, defends the technical guardrails that his profession imposes on such undertakings, but acknowledges that the City needs to address the ambiguities baked into its processes if such anomalous projects are to become more commonplace. “The City had trouble sometimes not knowing what to do with things that are out of the ordinary.”
But Mr. Lopez, who joined Poiesis in the midst of Mr. Churcher’s project, offers a reminder of the payoff with such tricky ventures. “What’s amazing when you’re on the third level is you see how many midsized buildings there are in the neighbourhood, and that have been there probably since before zoning,” he says, itemizing a quintessentially Toronto tableau, with neighbours sitting on their back terraces, having a cup of tea or a smoke, set against the views of the skyline. “These spaces exist out there,” adds Mr. Lopez, “and they’re very vibrant.”
How costs skyrocket
Because Nigel Churcher’s project was a fourplex, it required four separate Toronto Hydro meters as well as voltage upgrades to manage additional features, such as air ventilation. The first quote, he says, was for $38,000. Then it rose to $104,000 and finally he spent $120,000, in part because the nearby transformer couldn’t handle the additional load. “I seem to have my own transformer,” says, adding that Hydro never provided an explanation for the price. “I am not sure how they calculated that cost.”
Cost wasn’t the only issue, as others who tried to build multiplexes have discovered. Architects Janna Levitt and Dean Goodman acquired a corner lot in the Annex, on Ulster Avenue, with the goal of building a five-unit multiplex with condo tenure; they were downsizing and intended to use two of the units. Ms. Levitt says Hydro, which is owned entirely by the City of Toronto, initially informed them it didn’t know how to handle such upgrades on previous single home lots, and then took almost a year to finish the work.
“Hydro had not caught up [to the zoning changes allowing multiplex] and did not appear very interested in catching up,” says Ms. Levitt. “There is a gap between liberalization of zoning in the city and advocacy with the other authorities having jurisdiction. That’s one of the critical issues and Hydro is one of the biggest gaps.” She had to contact the media (the Toronto Star first reported the story) and then push her local councillor, Dianne Saxe, who sits on the Hydro board, to use her influence with the utility. The project got a green light within a week.
The City of Toronto says all such projects need to comply with the Ontario building code. But a spokesperson added that “the City is actively monitoring outcomes from recent multiplex applications, including the process for Toronto Hydro review and approval, to determine potential future policy.”
City council and Hydro earlier this month approved a new agreement allowing for a more streamlined approach to such projects, with new rules expected by Jan. 1, according to Hydro spokesperson Daniel McNeil. “Toronto Hydro recognizes that it has work to do to ensure that it keeps pace with connecting multiplexes, and since February, we have updated our procedures, practices, and standards to streamline this process for our customers,” he said. “This includes ensuring we can enable more multiplex developments, as well as any enable additional laneway or garden suite connections on the same site.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Alejandro Lopez as a designer. He is an architect licensed in Ontario. The article also incorrectly stated that architect Gregory Rubin started working with the fourplex’s owner, Nigel Churcher, in 2015. They began working together in 2016. This version has been updated.