Eglinton East LRT | Metrolinx

[Northern Light]

I'm going to come back to a bit of a hobby horse of mine, in-the-box thinking.

When people describe the problems in Malvern, what they largely refer to are the TCHC blocks and maybe some of the private sector rental.

Not to say they're aren't urban design issues, and transportation issues but its a concentration of poverty issue/economic development issue/isolation of people who may not own cars issue etc, that tends to get people's focus.

The answer is invariably to extend higher-order transit to this terribly sited and planned location.

Why not just move the community?

I'm not kidding.

You're looking at a dozen or so relatively short hirise buildings that would form the 'core' of concern with a few townhomes for good measure.

Moving those buildings, ie. reconstructing them close to higher order transit, I would suggest might be cheaper and more effective in improving people's lives than routing the transit to this location.

There's ample public land at various key sites around the City that would minimize the need for purchase of real estate.

If the new buildings were done either mixed income or paired (one market building for every TCHC build) the net cost, using very crude numbers, looks to me to be in the 450M-650M range.

(for purposes of those who may ask, I assumed a cost of $150,000 per unit for construction, estimated the number of units, and assumed mainly public land being involved)

Compare that to both the capital cost of extending higher order transit to Malvern, any operating losses that may follow, and the need for long-term investment in existing public properties there and I'm not sure why we wouldn't do this the way I'm suggesting.

Just a thought.

 

[sixrings]

Why not move STC to Kennedy and Eglinton / or to Kennedy and Sheppard while at it... Im not kidding either.

 

[JSF-1]

Not going to happen, even though in my opinion it would be one of the best things to happen to both Scarborough and the neighborhood around Kennedy & Eglinton. Sure in hindsight STC should be at Kennedy & Eglinton but this is a mistake that is neigh impossible to correct. The sheer amount of re-zoning and expropriations required to develop what should already be a hub of density and activity would be massive.

 

[sixrings]

Not going to happen, even though in my opinion it would be one of the best things to happen to both Scarborough and the neighborhood around Kennedy & Eglinton. Sure in hindsight STC should be at Kennedy & Eglinton but this is a mistake that is neigh impossible to correct. The sheer amount of re-zoning and expropriations required to develop what should already be a hub of density and activity would be massive.

you do realize that they would be in charge or rezoning... how hard would that be. They are applying to themselves for the new limits. Anyways I can agree to move malvern versus attempting to fix their whole lot by a magical subway stop.

 

[JSF-1]

You do realize even the slightest hint that the City wants to re-zone a low density residential neighborhood would be political suicide for any politician and would have residence up in arms. Breaking the "Yellow Belt" is nothing but a pandora's box of problems even if I believe it must be done, nobody at City Hall has the balls to do it.

 

[sixrings]

You do realize even the slightest hint that the City wants to re-zone a low density residential neighborhood would be political suicide for any politician and would have residence up in arms. Breaking the "Yellow Belt" is nothing but a pandora's box of problems even if I believe it must be done, nobody at City Hall has the balls to do it.

Then why are we building subways to Scarborough if they don't want density nor can the city change zoning for it?

 

[JSF-1]

STC is already zoned for density, where as Kennedy and Eglinton is nothing but low-density single family homes. Its very hard to re-zone an area people already live in, especially one that is just single family homes. At some point you're going to have to start knocking down houses to put up a condo and good luck with that.

 

[Avenue]

This might be a little misled but I think the whole Jane Jacobs/Stop Spadina Expressway/Forest Hill must be saved movement is responsible for the untouchableness of the resource wasting Yellow Belt. It may have been good or somewhat progressive for its time but treating every house like Hagia Sophia because 'communities!' did the city a lot of harm.

It also created a very conservative city building culture where even the most necessary expropriation is problematic and shunned.

 

[JSF-1]

It was both good and bad. Good because I personally don't think blasting highways through your city does you any favors, but it was also bad because as you said it sort of set a precedent.

 

[Northern Light]

Why not move STC to Kennedy and Eglinton / or to Kennedy and Sheppard while at it... Im not kidding either.

Why would you be?

Its an entirely reasonable discussion to have. Except that its up to private developers to relocate their stuff at their expense, where as in Malvern we're largely discussion the relocation of public assets.

 

[crs1026]

Rezoning the yellow zone would be a lot easier if the proposals were something other than high-rise condos. There are all sorts of challenges to the city's quite reasonable Avenues standard (8 stories) and similar (eg, Bloor West in Etobicoke has a 6-story standard, currently under challenge at the OMB). Make the density increase sensible, and people will find solutions. Hopefully the revisions to the OMB process (I'm out of the loop - has that legislation actually been proclaimed?) will move us in that direction. That level of density in places like Kennedy/Eglinton would go a long way to making it a better community.
Residents will fight tooth and nail against high rise in their neighbourhood, and they should.

- Paul

 

[Avenue]

Residents will fight tooth and nail against high rise in their neighbourhood, and they should.

As if they don't fight townhouses, low rise rentals, mid rises and so on - basically anything that is not single family housing. That argument hasn't been valid for a long time.

 

[JSF-1]

Personally if it were up to me I would have Toronto move to the Japanese 12 Zone system, since I believe it would be a much easier pill to swallow.

 

[Northern Light]

Not going to happen, even though in my opinion it would be one of the best things to happen to both Scarborough and the neighborhood around Kennedy & Eglinton. Sure in hindsight STC should be at Kennedy & Eglinton but this is a mistake that is neigh impossible to correct. The sheer amount of re-zoning and expropriations required to develop what should already be a hub of density and activity would be massive.

I was with you till the last 1/2.

The City controls the land Kennedy Station sits on, including acres of parking, it also controls a very large Rec. Ctr on the other side of the Stouffville corridor. That's already a large chunk of land. (about 10ha/25 acres)

But beyond that, you have one low-rise office building, one gas station and 3 retail plazas that together another 6ha or 15 acres with very little assembly effort.

Eglinton to the west of that is largely midrise apartments, followed at Birchmount by another good sized public holding of 41 division and an adjacent TCHC property.

Eglinton to the east is largely low-density commercial. Very upzone-able, and not expensive to buy, in Toronto terms.

You only get into buying single-family homes if you want to go north or south on Kennedy and strategic buying would net you another 20 acres out of maybe 50 or so properties. Let's compare again.

Average property here is only about 600k. So 30m buys you that land.

Compare this with the cost of subway extensions and LRTs.

Far more cost efficient to redevelop where the subway already is, and not that complicated either.

 

[OneCity]

That's the truth. We always see the so called divide between Scarborough and Toronto is brought up time after time, but everyone including Scarborough own Councillors seem oblivious to the very same divide that exists in Scarborough between Scarborough Centre and everywhere else. Its no secret areas like West Hill and Malvern are neglected in favor of Scarborough Centre and unfortunately nobody seems to care, not even the Councillors in this part of the city. If I was representing eastern Scarborough I would have flipped my shit on DeBaremaker a long time ago since we can't afford the EELRT and the SSE seems to jump in cost every month. The whole "Donwtown/Suburban" divide exists in Scarborough as well and if the EELRT isn't built than it will only get worse. DeBaermaker specifically is himself the same type of "Downtown Elite" he seems to vilify every chance he gets, however the downtown in this case is Downtown Scarborough. To him Scarborough ends at Bellamy. Whats more disgusting though is the fact that the politicians who are supposed to represent the people of eastern scarborough let this happen, time and time again.

Not really. Toronto had a short cut transit plan in Transit City that was was extensive yes, but poor on the details that has set us back. Scarborough is not divided. The heavy majority of residents from all areas of Scarborough want a better connection thru the Centre and improved local transit elsewhere. The City is finally heading in the right direction with plans that the people who live here can agree upon and pressure can be put on the upper levels to fund as are now seeing as opposed to fighting internally to hack in transit to save short term funds for other areas. Theres still a handful of Downtown area councillors who want to short cut against Scarborough's future but have been put on ignore by any relevant Political group to push forward with a plan people here support. This nonsense hasnt helped but no longer matters politically. The plan will never be perfect but its great to see the City getting on extensively well connected trasnit in all areas, and dealing with the many unique needs separately instead of a blanket short-term approach.