Re: Metrogate
Development bid adds spark to call for subway extension
MIKE ADLER
02/08/07 19:06:00
Plans for condominium towers north of Hwy. 401 at Kennedy Road are sparking a renewed crusade for a Sheppard Subway extension to Scarborough.
Tridel, the area's leading condominium builder, closed a deal last month to buy a 17-acre (6.8-hectare) property on Sufferance Road for a development it calls Metrogate.
The former Toronto Sufferance Truck Terminal, on which Tridel plans 2,100 residential units, a two-acre park and some commercial and office space, also reserves land for a future transit station at a point where a GO rail line and a possible Sheppard extension intersect.
"What you have on that site is the potential for a second Union Station," Ward 40 Councillor Norm Kelly (Scarborough-Agincourt) said this week.
But while declaring his hopes for a "Union Station East" there in the near future, Kelly said he opposed an earlier version of the development plan because its density was "far too high" for what Sufferance, a dead-end street off Kennedy, could handle.
Kelly said the city, at his urging, won concessions by taking a development application by the previous landowner, the Canderel Group of Companies, to the Ontario Municipal Board.
The property was, however, designated for office uses in the former City of Scarborough's Agincourt Centre Secondary Plan and as an employment area in the new City of Toronto Official Plan. The city had wanted it kept as future commercial and office space, Kelly said.
Instead, the terminal, which closed its warehouse Nov. 30 and is being demolished, will be transformed into Tridel's first "green neighbourhood, including what will be some of Scarborough's tallest buildings.
The first of Metrogate's modernist condo towers, going on sale this spring, will be 40 storeys, Tridel vice-president Jim Ritchie said.
Tridel, which has committed to build all of its condo towers according to the Canada Green Building Council's standards for heating and cooling efficiency, is also looking at other "green" systems such as electricity production through co-generation and state-of-the-art stormwater retention for Metrogate, which is beside a section of the erosion-prone Highland Creek.
But the first thing Tridel will change is the name of the road, Sufferance, to something "a little more appealing," Ritchie said, noting that neither the terminal property nor the Delta Toronto East hotel beside it have a Sufferance address.
Ritchie said the company plans only 38,500 square metres of office and retail space, far less than the city wanted, but added, "How deep is that office market? You have to be realistic."
Tridel has built half of the 19,000 condominiums in Scarborough, including a large development near Sufferance in the Tam O'Shanter area. After developing condominiums in the former city for a quarter century, Ritchie suggested, "we have a good feel for what works in the community."
Tridel believes "the infrastructure is there" to handle Metrogate's traffic and though the development sets land aside for a station, "it's clearly not in the plans for the immediate future," he said.
Still fearing "we'll get the traffic and no relief," however, Kelly said it's the station that "could make that site work" and he will encourage fellow councillors and Mayor David Miller to push senior governments on its behalf.
"I want the mayor up there at the earliest opportunity," he said. "I'm taking them out there to walk the site with them."
The Scarborough Community Council chairperson admitted, though, that since the Toronto Transit Commission is determined to first extend the Spadina line to York University, prospects for the Sheppard line extension he wants from Don Mills Road to Scarborough Centre aren't bright.
"Right now, it's a long shot."
Kelly said he was looking to the private sector and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper for the money, since a federal election looms.
"These guys have to have an urban agenda," he said.
The councillor rejected the suggestion another form of rapid transit such as light rail could serve the purpose more cheaply.
"What does a car give you? Speed and comfort. The only form of transit that can compete is a subway," Kelly said.
Edit: just realized this was already posted in Transportation, but there is some project info too....
