A beloved heritage building that has stood on Toronto's College Street since the late 1800s could soon be partially demolished to allow for the construction of a new 60-storey tower.

A late September application filed with City planners could soon see wrecking crews descend on the 1894-built Toronto Athletic Club, also known as the Stewart Building, at 149 College Street.

The existing building at the address features a design from legendary Toronto architect E. J. Lennox — the same name behind local landmarks like Casa Loma, Old City Hall, the King Edward Hotel and various others — designed in his signature Richardsonian Romanesque style.

Throughout its 13-decade-long life, the Stewart Building has served as an athletic club, the home of Central Technical School, a Toronto Police department and eventually a series of educational institutions, including the Ontario College of Art and Design, the Collège des Grands-Lacs and, most recently, the University of Toronto.

News of significant changes to the property first surfaced last November, when Northwest Value Partners Inc. (NWVP) and Alignvest Student Housing REIT announced the acquisition of the six-storey building with the intent to redevelop the site into a new student housing/residential building.

Sanjil Shah, Managing Partner of Alignvest, spoke to blogTO in 2023, assuring that Alignvest is "working with heritage consultants to look at the alternatives, but the intention is to preserve."

Developer wants to build a tower above an iconic 130-year-old Toronto building 👀 https://t.co/wZLYwuMkZa #Toronto #RealEstate #CollegeSt

— blogTO (@blogTO) November 6, 2023

The extent of said preservation plans has now been revealed in this initial planning application. A heritage conservation plan prepared for the developers notes that the new project "will adaptively reuse and improve the existing building for new residential and continuing institutional uses with a tall building component above."

This includes the in-situ retention of the majority of the existing heritage building, with other sections to be reconstructed to replicate the current aesthetic. However, the report clarifies that the "southwest portion of the building" would indeed be  demolished to make way for the new tower footprint.

Heritage planners stress that despite the new tower extending from the rear of the property, "the retained building will be legible as distinct and its three-dimensional legibility will be maintained as seen from the street" through design features like a four-storey glazed reveal that divides the base from the tower above.

The Sweeny &Co Architects-designed tower rising above the heritage base would take on a minimalist form with an exterior treatment emphasizing the tower's verticality, broken up by a glazed section roughly two-thirds of the way to the top.

A total of 46,600 square metres of space is proposed across the 60-storey building, dedicated primarily to student housing uses with up to 480 private student residence units and as many as 225 residential units.

The combined unit count of over 700 would put residents just steps away from major institutions like the University of Toronto, OCAD University, Toronto Metropolitan University, George Brown College, and the many hospitals and research centres of the University Health Network concentrated on Hospital Row just to the east of the site.

In addition to the residential density, developers want to replace and potentially even expand institutional uses currently housed within the Stewart Building, planning approximately 6,000 square metres of updated institutional spaces.