b'PROJECT PROFILETURNING BACK TIME1928 LOBLAWS BUILDING REBUILT LIKE A GIGANTIC LEGO PROJECTBy Sarah B. HoodBACK IN 1919, A FAMILIAR CANADIAN BRAND WASworking and living space while preserving historic faade CREATED WITH THE OPENING OF THE FIRST LOBLAWSelements brick by brickliterally.Groceterias store in Toronto. By 1928, with 69 stores and a growing foothold in the U.S., the company erected a bold newApart from its age and its footing on landfill, the building posed building on Lake Shore Boulevard to house its expanding other challenges: buried Garrison Creek runs diagonally under the business operations. south end of the site through a massive 1900-vintage concrete culvert on wooden piles socketed into bedrock, and the Gardiner They built the first state-of-the-art warehouse to service Loblaws stores across Ontario and to fuel growth, says Tony Grossi, president of Wittington Properties Limited, the master developer of a dramatic new $400-million-plus complex on the site, which blends Loblaws history with the personality of an evolving neighbourhood.The original Loblaws Groceterias Company Building at 500 Lake Shore Boulevard West was a wonder of its time, with facilities for baking cakes and cookies, churning butter and smoking meat to be shipped by truck and rail throughout the Loblaws system. People and products moved around the interior using a system of electric trams, and written communications whizzed from floor to floor via pneumatic tubes. It was built on land that was reclaimed just before 1928, Grossi says. They covered up a long wooden wharf, Queens Wharf. In operation by Loblaws until the 1970s, the building was still used as a warehouse until the Daily Bread Food Bank moved out in about 2000. It fell into disrepair, while the community around it grew tremendously. Our challenge was how to bring back a legacy building without reducing the value of the land, says Grossi. TheTHE BUILDING INCLUDES A CEILING FINISHsolution involved a visionary reimagining of the site into shopping,MADE OF 300-YEAR-OLD HEMLOCK24Quarter 3 2020 BUILDERSDIGEST'