Commercial Storefront Systems in Scarborough: A Black Anodized Front, Twelve Doors and a 108° Corner for The Hawthorne

The Hawthorne is a mixed residential and commercial building in Scarborough, and its new front is aluminum from the sidewalk to the second floor. Canuck supplied and installed the whole glazing package: the ground-floor storefront, twelve aluminum doors and frames, and the windows on both floors. Muddy York Electric was the client and ran the job as general contractor. The crew was on site from June to September 2025.

Two things made this more than a standard storefront. The building's front does not turn a square corner, and the finish was black anodized, which shows every mark.

Four decades of doors for names Ontario knows — Canada’s Wonderland, Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, the LCBO, Metrolinx, Marriott & Hilton hotels, the University of Toronto — plus thousands of businesses across the GTA. Dependable people, quality products, since 1979.

What went in

Everything is the Windspec 655 flush glaze series in black anodized aluminum. Flush glaze means the glass sits flush with the outside face of the frame, with no raised stop around each light. On a front made of many small lights, like this one, that is what gives the clean, unbroken grid you see from the street. With a capped system, each light would have a raised frame around it.

The package, floor by floor:

A corner that is 108°, not 90°

The storefront is made of three separate sections, and they meet at a 108-degree angle. That single number drove most of the engineering on the job.

A storefront system comes with standard corner posts for a square corner. Nothing off the shelf makes 108 degrees. Two sections joined at that angle need a custom bracket system to hold them together at the right angle and carry the loads through the joint, and then a custom black anodized capping to cover the joint so it looks like part of the same system.

The capping is what you see. The goal was a junction with clean sightlines, no visible gap and no exposed bracket. Behind it, the joint also had to be sealed against wind and water, because an unusual angle is exactly where a storefront leaks if the sealing is an afterthought.

If a building's plan has corners that aren't 90 degrees, ask how they will be joined before you pick a system. The answer decides both the price and what the finished corner looks like.

Black anodized is unforgiving

An anodized finish is not paint. It is an oxide layer grown into the surface of the aluminum, and that is why it lasts. It is also why you cannot touch it up. A scratch on a painted frame can be filled and painted over. A scratch on anodized aluminum stays, and on black it shows.

So on this job the handling mattered as much as the installing. Every piece had to be handled carefully and kept protected while it was being installed, on a site where other exterior trades were working on the same walls.

Two floors, one sequence

The installation ran level by level across both floors. The second-floor casements at the front and back are set high on the building, which means planning access for each one and coordinating with the other exterior trades working on the same walls.

The frosted glass in the second-floor bathroom is a small line on the scope, but it is the kind of thing that shows the job was drawn unit by unit. The bathroom window is the same casement, in the same framing and finish as the rest, with privacy glass instead of clear. It gives privacy while still letting daylight into the room.

Questions this job answers

What is a flush glaze storefront?

A storefront where the glass sits flush with the outside face of the aluminum frame, instead of being held in by a raised stop or cap. It gives a flatter, cleaner elevation, and it suits fronts with many lights, where a capped system would add a raised edge around every one.

Can a storefront turn a corner that isn't 90 degrees?

Yes, but not with standard parts. Storefront systems include standard corner posts. For any other angle, such as the 108° corner on this job, the sections are joined with a custom bracket and the joint is covered with custom capping in the same finish. It adds engineering and fabrication time, so it belongs in the price from the start.

Is black anodized aluminum a good finish for a storefront?

It is durable and holds its colour, because the finish is part of the metal rather than a coat on top of it. The trade-off is that it cannot be repaired by painting, so it has to be protected during construction. It suits a building where the glazing goes in after the messiest exterior work, or where the other trades can be sequenced around it.

Can the same system do the doors, the storefront and the windows?

On this job it did: the storefront, the twelve doors and frames, and the fixed and casement windows are all Windspec 655 in the same black anodized finish. Using one system across the building is what makes a new front look designed as one piece rather than put together from parts.

Where this sits

This was storefront and curtain wall work, with aluminum doors and commercial windows in the same system, on a mixed-use building in Scarborough. For the same kind of work on your own building, start with the storefront doors in Scarborough page.