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

Dr. Snoot

Dr. Snoot

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https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/200595

The province passed the above ministerial zoning order for Blocks 17 and 26, with permission for buildings up to 141m tall. The lot is the Dominion Foundry Complex, which I think has some heritage protection.

To my knowledge there is no development application for this block.

I find this pretty alarming, as this height is quite out of context for the area, the buildings are heritage, and MZOs are supposed to be used in exceptional circumstances.

Does anybody have information on what’s happening?
 
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mcornett said:
www.thestar.com

Doug Ford’s provincial government ‘sidesteps’ local community, overrules Toronto on developments in West Don Lands

The Ontario government says it is ensuring affordable housing gets built, while new ministerial orders don’t guarantee those types of units or any com...
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com
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I'm not sure how this can be seen as anything other than corruption. Blocks 20, 4, 5, and 7 at least had development proposals available to the public (and were likely going to be approved by the city within a few months time). No plans for this site have been made to the public, with approval for up to 50 stories, on top of a heritage building. I get the mantra for "Cutting Red Tape", but this is impossible to justify. The city has done a good job in the WDL. This rezoning just opens the door to a total eyesore.
 
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Automation Gallery said:
Hey, who we kidding here?
..., we know that the best scenario here for City Planning approvals would still be 1-2 yrs .instead of their normal 2-3 years
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Ok... but there isn't even a proposal out to the public. It's not like the city's planning is holding up a project here. There is no project here.

An MZO change is nonsense for this site.
 
lomeri said:
Ok... but there isn't even a proposal out to the public. It's not like the city's planning is holding up a project here. There is no project here.

An MZO change is nonsense for this site.
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The province has done this for a few other provincially owned lands around the province already, this isn't the first one. There is one in Vaughan and one in Hamilton that got approval with no notice to the local municipality and no active development application. I believe the Hamilton one is supposed to support affordable housing, like the one in Toronto, and the Vaughan one permits a long term care home.
 
innsertnamehere said:
The province has done this for a few other provincially owned lands around the province already, this isn't the first one. There is one in Vaughan and one in Hamilton that got approval with no notice to the local municipality and no active development application. I believe the Hamilton one is supposed to support affordable housing, like the one in Toronto, and the Vaughan one permits a long term care home.
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Okay, this doesn't change anything. If the province is going to use MZO to accelerate projects that have economic and social value, they should at least do so for projects that are already proposed.
 
Once a crook, always a crook.

I'm just waiting for the day this Conservative government gets itself into a multi-billion dollar scandal, just like every Ontario governing party in power seems to get itself into these days. Although with the Cons, it will likely be extremely controversial the day it happens and it will probably revolve around development schemes the way they are going.
 
Amare said:
Once a crook, always a crook.

I'm just waiting for the day this Conservative government gets itself into a multi-billion dollar scandal, just like every Ontario governing party in power seems to get itself into these days. Although with the Cons, it will likely be extremely controversial the day it happens and it will probably revolve around development schemes the way they are going.
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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.
 
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allengeorge said:
Well, I’m frustrated because the city has been doing a decent job getting public space improvements into WDL buildings. Now that these developers have a free pass, I look forward to them not giving a s*** about what they’ll foist onto the city.
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I wouldn't be that negative about it - the developer had been putting forward plans (even initial plans) that are decent. At issue is whether the MZO is justified - were the plans being unduly slowed or delayed? I don't think there is a strong argument for that.

AoD
 
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