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J UNE 2015 | 63 PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRENT WAGLER/COURTESY KRISS COMMUNICATIONS sustainability management (LEED and energy services) for the whole complex. The configuration of these blocks is significant, says Dundee Kilmer's Jason Lester, because unlike high-density developments that seek to maximize land costs with buildings featuring long narrow units, these low-rise towers and large blocks allowed for the creation of wide, shallow units – but at a significant cost to density. "It's what the market wants," explains Lester. And the numbers bear witness. At the time of this writing, the market housing was 90 per cent sold in one building and 50 per cent sold in the other. "And we have more end-users in this project than any project we're asso- ciated with in the downtown core," he says, adding that well over half the units will be owner occupied. To Infrastructure Ontario's VP of project delivery, Peter Wilson, it is a sure sign of a nascent neighbourhood. "When you have a neighbourhood based on a master plan approach, you get people who want to invest in that community. They want to be a part of it," he says. But before the community can take possession of its wide, shallow living spaces, the buildings as they currently stand are configured for a higher den- sity and for a very different user. When Infrastructure Ontario first received proposals from its three bid- ders on building housing according to Pan American Sports Organization specifications, it was determined that bidders had to increase density and reduce the number of buildings to make their proposals cost effective. In Games mode, many of the residences will see athletes bunking two and sometimes three to a room. "That increase in density allowed us to eliminate three buildings from the original proposal and that took out about a third of the project cost," says Tim Dittmar, EllisDon's construction manager on the project. For this first phase, there was no need to fit out kitchens in the units since all the food for athletes and officials would be provided in a massive dining tent on site. The units then, as they are, serve simply as living spaces with bed- rooms and bathrooms – some with mul- tiple bathrooms featuring extra-wide doors as per specifications for Parapan Am Games athletes. In this plan, a legacy two-bedroom market unit, for example, may be configured as a three-bedroom residence in Games mode. Determining clever ways to config- ure and reconfigure the spaces was one challenge in a project whose individual structures were relatively straightfor- ward to build. "It's the magnitude of the whole project that was complicated," says Dittmar. For this phase, 20 acres of the 32-acre site were developed. This includes all the services and road infra- structure as well as developing eight city blocks. All of this was to be done in four years. And with an uncompromis- ing deadline, EllisDon, like most others involved in the project, sought a partner, in this case Ledcor PAAV, to share the financial risk. In what was a dramatically acceler- ated bidding process, the RFP was issued in January of 2011 and site excavation began in September that same year. According to Infrastructure Ontario's Peter Wilson, this was the fastest his agency had ever completed an RFP. "We dramatically compressed our procure- ment process and the bidding teams lit- erally worked day and night," he recalls. To enable the winning team to hit the ground at a running pace, Infrastructure Ont a r io, which pa r t nered w it h Waterfront Toronto to represent the pub- lic sector side of the project, held plenary sessions to inform the bidding teams of all the engineering constraints the site offered. "We had a lot of information before we started. It's probably one of the most studied sites in North America," says Dundee Kilmer's Jason Lester. 2015 Pan/Parapan American Games Athletes' Village / Canary District

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