Toronto West Don Lands: Blocks 17 & 26 | 141m | 43s | Aspen Ridge | Core Architects

Look, I'm not trying to make anyone in particular look good or bad here, but when it comes to the city erupting another shelter or a respite centre wherever they want, it appears to be an entirely different story for some reason. They open up a shelter without giving it a proper thought, without consulting an elected Councillor of the ward where they did it and you see virtually no public outcry. Journalists and other 'public servants' are calling residents a bunch of NIMBYs when people have a legitimate concern because, pardon my French, crackheads are literally shouting, shooting up, mugging people and defecating near a school (and I'm not even making this up, look up Roehampton hotel). Furthermore, these residents are honest taxpayers, normal homeless and those crackheads too are practically living on their dime; residents just don't want any of the criminal/dangerous stuff on the streets where they live and the city services they pay for to operate in a proper manner. But somehow we shouldn't care about their opinion because NIMBYsm is bad (not sure if these public servants, these decision-makers, whose mismanagement of public assets led to this alarming situation we're currently in, would welcome such a change in their own neighbourhood by the by)

But when a province makes a similar move to allow private companies build something tall who-knows-where on a who-cares-what abandoned block then it's suddenly a big story, there's a public outcry, a boiling point has been reached. It's not NIMBYism, it's not mind your own business and just let people build housing, it's bad and terrifying. Despite the fact that this time around, the builder will pay all the taxes and fees, the builder will create workplaces and the builder will make use of this block making it livable, certainly not going to turn it into a drug infested den of crackheads lmao.

I'm relatively new here, both to this forum and to this country as well, maybe that's why I find it very hard to understand this doublethink, it's just too difficult to wrap my head around it.

The site is in a master planned neighborhood and was planned to remain heritage. Thousands of people moved to the neighborhood expecting that.

Also, all the great things you’re saying are promised... aren’t promised. There’s no proposal. There’s nothing anyone in WDL can evaluate. Nobody knows whether it will actually be well designed. Nobody knows whether it will preserve some of the heritage building beneath. Nobody knows about the public amenities or spaces it will create. It’s not like some proposal is active for the site that the city has been dithering on. The public knows nothing other than what the new zoning rules suggest. An MZO should at least follow an actual proposal for a building or structure. And no, giving the public a month or two to comment isn’t a crisis of a delay.
 
I found the Star's headline a bit hyperbolic and not helpful - but perhaps I am not just becoming over sensitive myself to journalistic bias given the times we live in.
 
Either way, running roughshod over local democracy isn't the best way of getting development "approved".
I agree with the above.

That said, there is a strong argument that the city could be a lot faster during the process, especially for smaller developments. But there are better ways to do that as opposed to randomly handing out MZOs.
 
Here's a more positive take on this, by a G&M columnist

Queen’s Park is changing Toronto’s plans – and that’s not all bad

The City of Toronto and Queen’s Park are at odds. It’s a familiar pattern during the reign of Premier Doug Ford: His Progressive Conservative government has stomped on the city’s toes.

The issue this time is land-use planning. Last week, the province approved three development projects for the city’s downtown, using a tool called a “ministerial zoning order” to override the city’s own process. Local councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam complained of “Premier Ford’s contempt for the City of Toronto’s ability to govern our own affairs.”

There’s no doubt that Mr. Ford has shown such contempt: For starters, he chopped the city’s council in half during an election. But land-use planning isn’t an issue that breaks along normal partisan lines. This move by Queen’s Park promises housing, including substantial affordable housing, in exactly the right place. And it raises a good question: Why is it so hard to deliver such things in Toronto?

The three projects are all in the Distillery District and the adjacent West Don Lands neighbourhood, on the eastern edge of downtown, near a wealth of planned transit stations and the new East Harbour office district. They’re on provincial land, and the first two have active development applications that include affordable housing.

One is a three-building set, mostly on Front Street, up to 13 storeys tall. The second, on Mill Street, is a six-storey office building with two residential towers, and the third is a 50-odd-storey building on Eastern Avenue, for which there is still no public proposal.

Steve Clark, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, said the issue is speed. “We’ve made it clear that we are going to reduce unnecessary delays and deliver affordable housing in this province,” he said in an interview. He said the three projects together will deliver roughly 2,000 market-rate apartments and 1,000 affordable ones, secured through agreements between the province and the developers.

The developers on the first two projects are a partnership of Dream Unlimited, Tricon Capital and Kilmer Group. They’re already building next door, in another part-affordable building of high-design quality.

Joe Cressy, the local councillor for most of the area, said this move is unnecessary. It “has reduced the city’s ability to secure and ensure the social infrastructure that is necessary to create a livable community,” Mr. Cressy told me. “These projects were already moving fast."

But that depends what you mean by “fast.” It often takes three years for a development project in Toronto to get city approval (and more to actually begin construction). Of the West Don Lands projects, one has been with the city since early 2019. It was about to be approved by city council. That makes an 18-month process – for a project with 30 per cent affordable housing, excellent public space and exemplary architecture. The next project, on Mill Street, has been with the city for six months. The third hasn’t even been publicly proposed yet.

So the province’s move sped up the last two by one or two years, maybe more. That’s a significant saving of time and therefore money. And it’s rare. In Toronto’s opaque and complex planning system, almost nothing is approved without long negotiation.

In this context, Mr. Clark said, “the affordable housing advocates on Toronto council have been asking us to deliver housing as quickly as possible. That’s what we’re doing.”

And, he pointed out, this year Toronto asked his ministry for ministerial zoning orders – the same controversial process – to advance two of its own supportive housing projects. If that was a good tool to shut down the not-in-my-backyard folks, he asked, why is it not appropriate here? That, too, is fair.

The Ford government hasn’t earned Toronto’s trust. Mr. Clark’s manoeuvres don’t help. And yet: Toronto needs to put up many more buildings as quickly as possible. The city is poised to add another million people by 2041 – maybe more.

If the city doesn’t add a couple of thousand sizeable developments, at a much faster pace than it is currently building, the current housing shortage will only grow. And any serious climate-change policy for Toronto and Ontario should mean even more development in the central city, where residents can (and do) live car-free in smaller homes.

Rather than throw buns at each other, the Ford government and the downtown left should find some rare common ground in making that happen.

 
Here's a more positive take on this, by a G&M columnist

Queen’s Park is changing Toronto’s plans – and that’s not all bad



Not just any columnist, UT's own @AlexBozikovic.

For the record, I usually agree with Alex but I think this is a bad take.

As far as I'm aware, the MZO doesn't guarantee 1000 units of affordable housing, and I don't know that anyone has been able to get the math to work to get to that number. Speeding up the development process sounds good in theory, but why Block 17, which has no development application?

Also, as far as I can tell from the block plan, Block 26 has already had a road built on it? Either the blocks were renumbered or somebody messed up and wrote 26 where they meant 36:
Screen Shot 2020-10-28 at 1.22.20 PM.png
 
If it's land owned by the Province, I don't see why they'd need the city to approve anything. The city exists at the Provinces discretion.
The city drags its feet on development proposals, and public consultations are all but worthless 90% of the time.

Look at the city's own attempts to build affordable housing, they've already wasted a year on pointless meetings with NIMBY's, and it will be another 5+ years before anyone moves in.
 
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If it's land owned by the Province, I don't see why they'd need the city to approve anything. The city exists at the Provinces discretion.
The city drags its feet on development proposals, and public consultations are all but worthless 90% of the time.

Look at the city's own attempts to build affordable housing, they've already wasted a year on pointless meetings with NIMBY's, and it will be another 5+ years before anyone moves in.

Okay, but there’s no development proposal here. It’s not like the city has been fumbling approvals here. There has not been anything to approve, and there’s still no plan available for the public to see.
 
If it's land owned by the Province, I don't see why they'd need the city to approve anything. The city exists at the Provinces discretion.
The city drags its feet on development proposals, and public consultations are all but worthless 90% of the time.

Look at the city's own attempts to build affordable housing, they've already wasted a year on pointless meetings with NIMBY's, and it will be another 5+ years before anyone moves in.

This is a very short-sighted perspective. Community consultation and the leverage the City can exercise in the planning process has resulted in significant changes to many projects, quite often for the better in terms of public benefits. Yes, delay is concerning, but a building will exist and affect a community for decades, so it is very important to get things right at the outset.

More to the point, the ad-hoc use of MZOs is not the answer to the problem you perceive to exist. IF there is a problem with the system, it should be changed for all development projects in a thoughtful manner. It is not difficult to understand that MZOs are not a substitute for a planning process and that they lend themselves to corruption and non-transparency. They should not be used except where there is a very pressing reason that can be clearly articulated by the province for each subject site. The province has offered only lip service regarding "affordable housing".

In the case of Block 20 in particular, there is no development application, yet the MZO gives specific permissions, such as exact setbacks, "up to three buildings" and "up to 141m in height". It is obvious that the province has a project in mind, yet this has not been diclosed to the public, which should be concerning for obvious reasons. Finally, the MZO gives no protection to the heritage buildings on site (look up the Dominion Foundry Complex), which are some of the only historical properties in the West Don Lands. If you don't think the public should have input on how these are developed, that's just foolish.
 
Not just any columnist, UT's own @AlexBozikovic.

For the record, I usually agree with Alex but I think this is a bad take.

As far as I'm aware, the MZO doesn't guarantee 1000 units of affordable housing, and I don't know that anyone has been able to get the math to work to get to that number. Speeding up the development process sounds good in theory, but why Block 17, which has no development application?

Also, as far as I can tell from the block plan, Block 26 has already had a road built on it? Either the blocks were renumbered or somebody messed up and wrote 26 where they meant 36:
View attachment 279423

You're correct, Block 26 is Lawren Harris Square (a roadway), which can't be closed. I sure hope it doesn't count toward the 500m of "publicly accessible space" that is required by the MZO. I also hope there was no mistake regarding Block 36 -- given the approvals in the MZO, it seems we are looking at a facadectomy or demolition of all the other heritage buildings in Block 17. The warehouse in Block 36 is the only building that would remain whole.
 
Two things to add:

1) The negative impact of this, if any, is unclear. Just because certain community benefits aren’t required in the MZO, that doesn't mean the province won’t require them. The minister promised 30% affordable housing in all these projects. They might break this promise. But they might not.
2) The west Don lands is being underbuilt. The existing master plan is far from perfect. (it’s mid rise, with huge gaps between the buildings and wide streets, achieving middling density.) This absolutely is a place where there should be tall towers.
 
My observation is that there are a lot of points brought up by multiple posters.
  1. Toronto's planning process takes too long. (I agree)
  2. MZOs are the answer. (I disagree)
  3. Community feedback is the problem. (I disagree. My guess is that it's a process/local-political-football/official-plan/zoning problem, but that's less sexy to talk about and fix.)
  4. This MZO is a good way to get density. (Maybe?)
  5. This MZO is a good way to give us affordable housing. (I disagree. I guess I'm more cynical, but if the minister wanted this, it would be in the MZO as opposed to a talking point)
  6. MZOs are the way to get density in general. (I disagree. Fix the process and make it transparent for everyone.)
  7. WDL is underbuilt. (I agree)
 
The planning process in Toronto IS slow but part of the reason is that Toronto has FAR too few Planners, there was a report about this to Council a year or so ago and they got the OK to appoint a few more but not what was recommended.
 
It can be argued that the ends justify the means, but in this case it makes sense that council should not accept this as a solution. The process needs to change - yes - but not in a technocratic, top down, un-democratic process. I have no doubt that affordability and increasing housing supply have no relationship to the MZO here. I would love to know which developers have the ability to whisper in the governments ear. Between this, and the convoluted routing of the Ontario line, I think there is some gross politics at play.

I don't have a problem with the end result as proposed... But I would be exactly 0% shocked if this turned out to be a cynical political maneuver to maximize profits for developer buddies.
 

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