Christopher Brown
Active Member
Especially when the mayor would be there. While a politician, I don't think she plays the game as much as others.
As someone who lives in the area, I haven't heard a whole lot of excitement about the building; it's just another condo to most. Outside of real estate agents and architecture/urbanism wonks like us, it's generally not something most people get excited about. Truthfully, the vast majority of ward 27 has seen rents skyrocket and affordable housing and retail vaporize over the last decade. Even if it was only a handful of store-top, century apartments lost at that corner, this is a huge gilded symbol of wealth forcing affordability away.
The small businesses and George Brown, UofT and Ryerson students aren't throwing parties over it for sure. Okay, maybe some of the Ryerson students, but you get my drift.
Forgive me, but she is elected to represent all constituents in her riding and is as well, by virtue of our system granted a say in matters concerning all of the 416. And vice versa with other Council members having a say as to what happens in her riding, whether she likes it or not. Everyone's view is equal. Some call it Democracy.
What she hasn't got is the licence to support only those developers do what she commands, nor does she have the right to pack up her toys and leave the sandbox when the majority of council and the people reporting to Council have approved this massive investment in Toronto's future. Sure, she can pout in private, but as a public figure her absence that day spoke to a lack of maturity and weakness in character.
Someone do the math on taxes that will be generated by this development, plus the annual flow of real estate taxes into City coffers, plus Land Transfer Taxes paid. That's what builds cities. Money. The hard question needed to be asked is what's happening with all that money.