Toronto's Trump card was powerful enough to stop Shoppes on Steeles (&404) redevelopment proposal on Markham/York Region's north side of Steeles - since it's on their boarder they'll get all the tax revenue while Toronto deals with most of the congestion & downstream servicing issues.
Just like they do now, when people from Richmond Hill drive down Yonge Street to Finch Station.
But you have to draw a border somewhere and these are the kinds of issues that crop up; York Region isn't going to stop intensification (which is the core of provincial planning policy) because some of the people moving in will use Toronto's infrastructure. I know they tried it at Don Mills but Toronto won't be able to veto every project that comes up along Steeles.
The good news is the PC's are doing a review of regional governance so maybe they'll come up with a better plan for dealing with funding and other issues.
I think an office is a decent idea and I think the density being asked for here is insane anyway (I mean, it's literally triple the approved FSI, I believe) but the City of Toronto is not going to be able to go to the LPAT and stop every York Region condo project south of Highway 7 because it'll affect them too. (I mean, you could make the same argument for the Promenade redevelopment. It's not right at Steeles but a lot of people will take buses to Finch Station and ride Toronto's subway and all the pipes are connected anyway...)
Here, on the Toronto side south of Steeles, Yonge Street is relatively low density and will remain so for the foresee-able future.
Except the massive M2M project is already on sale at Cummer and there's at least 2 more condo projects along the east side between Cummer and Steeles. These developments will keep coming.[
The Yonge Street North Secondary Plan (Drewry/Cummer to Steeles) - basically a carbon copy of North York Centre Secondary Plan - has never been put forward to City Council, it's just sitting in City Planning's back pocket in case if City were to ever loose one of those cases along Yonge north at OMB.
Indeed, this is so. But Vaughan and Markham already put their secondary plans in place.
My guess is that if someone bought that old plaza at the southeast corner of Yonge/Steeles and proposed something similar, it's debatable how much it would help the City at an LPAT hearing that they haven't approved high density there. It'd be easy as pie for a developer to argue that their high density development on a prime corridor with great transit access (hundreds of buses an hour!) is wonderful and the city's refusal is out of sync with provincial policy (which is all the LPAT is supposed to care about); especially once YR has established the precedent.
We're dealing in hypotheticals but it seems obvious this corridor is not at all in stable, low-rise context, either from Finch to Steeles or going along Steeles and up towards Highway 7.
Yes, interesting times ahead,..... but those buying pre-sale here, will basically be handing over their deposit money as 5-10 years interest free loan for the developer.
That does make for an interesting side story
Mizrahi has a better reputation so we'll see how long before their plans are on the table. My impression was they were also in the 50-storey range though I must say that would strike me as excessive, even without this project going up next door. But it's still clear which way the winds are blowing, IMHO.
I'm really not sure you can hold back the tide, subway or no subway.
