New vision proposed for Thornhill's Promenade area

Public square at the corner of Centre and Bathurst Sts.

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 2, 2016
By Simone Joseph

Picture a block surrounding Thornhill’s Promenade Mall with a public square at the corner of Centre and Bathurst streets ringed by restaurants.

Imagine shops, seven 27-storey condo towers and an internal roadway system. Then, picture a sidewalk edged with stores on the north side of Promenade Circle.

This is the vision for the area presented to the public by land use planner Weston Consulting and architect Les Klein of Quadrangle Architects, both hired by the Torgan Group.

This company is proposing to develop the area around The Promenade Shopping Centre, including The Promenade Village Shoppes which is just south of Centre Street.

A vision for this Promenade area was presented at a public meeting Wednesday night at Thornhill’s Rosemount Community Centre.

“We want people to have the ability to live, work and play in the same area,” said Ryan Guetter, vice-president of planning and urban design firm Weston Consulting.

He pointed out that this area will be adjacent to rapid transit busing on Centre Street.

The area would also include an added 2,750 parking spots (for condos and commercial purposes).

Thornhill residents at the meeting, many of whom live near The Promenade, were outspoken about their opposition to increased density and to the vision presented.

When a resident interrupted architect Les Klein’s presentation, one woman in the front row said: “Nobody is happy about this. Let them present their side.”

Sam Cohen, one of the owners of Torgan Group, pointed out in a phone interview Friday that Thornhill residents requested this development. The idea came from the community, he said.

“They found this location fantastic and they approached us."

Several groups of seniors approached his company three or four years ago, he said. Many of them want to move from a house to a condo and remain close to their children who live north of The Promenade in the Bathurst Street and Rutherford Road or Major Mackenzie Drive area.

“They have been looking for years to find a place that is exclusive. They don’t want a big house anymore,” he said.

But resident Smadar Meiri had several objections to the proposal at Wednesday night's meeting.

She has been living in the community for 25 years and said the proposal is “not attractive. It is being exploitative, adding traffic and anxiety and not giving us safety”.

Juliet Wintrobe is concerned the Promenade neighbourhood will fall prey to the same trappings as the neighbourhood where she used to live in the Sheppard/Yonge streets and Hwy. 401 area of North York.

This area changed from a neighbourhood of three buildings when she moved there in 2002 to 12 buildings by the time she left in 2013.

“It became a traffic nightmare,” she said. “People were stuck in garages and on the street. They couldn’t get out.”

Rhoda Eisen-Nussbaum and Sheila Spiegel live on Promenade Circle and already worry about their safety as pedestrians crossing the street.

 “Someone is going to get killed. It is so dangerous,” Eisen-Nussbaum said. “I don’t need more traffic.”

Spiegel echoed her concerns: “It is bad enough now we can’t go across the street. It is going to be horrible,” she said.

Torgan Group, which also built Pacific Mall in Markham, is no stranger to controversy .When Torgan Group started building the mall 20 years ago, ”you won't believe what resistence we had,” Cohen said. Since then, it has become a valuable community asset, according to him.

Traffic concerns are “legitimate,” Cohen said. ”We need to deal with it and find solutions,” he said, pointing to public transportation as a solution.

He pointed out studies have shown the Yonge subway extension won’t happen without needed density.

“We are creating a community place with nice stores, a lot of cafes and restaurants. They will have a nice place that will encourage the Promenade to have better shops and tenants,” he said.

“This project, we will get a reward at the end,” he said, pointing out that for example the development will have a public square similar to the one at Shops at Don Mills, an outdoor Toronto shopping centre, where people bring their children to enjoy the open space.

The Torgan Group plans to apply for an official plan amendment, which Klein explains is mainly a change to the potential height and density allowed in the area.

According to the city’s official plan, developers can only build up to a maximum of 14 storeys.

The vision presented Wednesday night proposes 27 storeys.

Klein explained that it is early on in the development process, this is just a vision and that there may not even be seven  buildings. It could end up being five or six buildings, he said.

“We are very, very, very far from designing these buildings. We are simply imagining one way in which densities and height we are asking for will be distributed,” Klein said.

Shadow studies have been done and these studies found with this development, there would be no negative impact on neighbouring communities, Klein said.

Shefman put forward a motion at the Nov. 15 Vaughan council meeting that a secondary plan, meaning a detailed plan for the area, be approved. Council passed this motion.

This detailed plan would map out an entire block, from Bathurst Street to New Westminster Drive and from Centre Street to Clark Avenue.

At a future date, The Torgan Group’s development application will go to Vaughan Council.