How Toronto’s latest mega tower got the green light

The story of how one very tall, very dense building at Yonge and Bloor got approved by the city - despite objections.

TheStar.com
Sept. 12, 2016
By Jennifer Pagliaro

What’s been pitched as a “sanctuary in the clouds” is making heads spin at ground level.

An unprecedented development - an 80-storey Toronto condo tower that will be second in height only to the CN Tower - sets a new standard for density at a crucial downtown intersection. Those extremes have created schisms at city hall over more than a year, during a planning process that has left key questions lingering: How much is too much? And who decides?

What occurred with this tower, which Yorkville developer Sam Mizrahi has dubbed “The One,” does not reflect how all building applications are dealt with in this city. But it is an example of how, some councillors say, the city is being built higher and higher, under duress.

As real estate wars see developers buying smaller and smaller parcels of land at rising prices, they are increasingly building skyward to cover their costs.

That’s been noticed at city hall. City councillors and staff say developers are applying more frequently to build well above the prescribed height and density for a neighbourhood. Councillors say there is little recourse to accommodating exceptions, with a provincially legislated appeals body capable of overturning council’s planning choices.

With the province in the midst of a review of that powerful body, the Ontario Municipal Board, city advocates say it’s finally time to get serious about removing Toronto from its grasp.

In the absence of reform, this is how one very tall, very dense building got the green light at council.

Sitting in her second-floor office in the busy stretch just before summer break, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam is losing patience.

It’s been 15 months since Mizrahi Developments first submitted its application to build on the southwest corner of Yonge and Bloor Sts., in the heart of her development-rich Ward 27 (Toronto Centre-Rosedale).

“We’re not anywhere closer to finding a resolution that anyone can live with,” the second-term councillor says of One Bloor West.

It’s June, and just a day earlier Wong-Tam had been pushing back against the application moving forward at committee, as she tried to work out some crucial details - how the community will be compensated for the added height and density.

Wong-Tam knows what she’s up against. She’s been here hundreds of times before.

If developers get pushback at city hall, they can appeal to the OMB, where they are often successful in having the proposed height and density approved, leaving local councillors with little room to negotiate for amenities or to make sure the building fits with the existing fabric of a community.

“There’s a lot of money at stake,” she says. “The threat of the OMB means you have planning by OMB.”

The One will join a growing club of super-tall, super-dense buildings in the downtown core.

Though the building proposal has been scaled back since it was first submitted in March last year - revised from a height that at one point was as much as 341 metres, to just under 305 metres - it will still out-scrape the city’s current tallest skyscraper, First Canadian Place, which stands at 298 metres. It will dwarf all the existing towers in the area, most of which stand at 30 to 50 storeys. A new build across the street, One Bloor East, will measure 254 metres.

There are other comparable towers in the planning pipeline: One of the yet-to-be built Mirvish towers on King St. has an approved maximum height of 305 metres, and a tower that’s part of the redevelopment at 1 Yonge St. is proposed at 303 metres.

Of more concern is the building’s density. With 80,457 square metres of gross floor area on a 2,843-square-metre site, the tower’s proposed density is 28.3 times the site’s area. With a site size of 4,690 square metres, One Bloor East’s density is much lower, at 17.3 times the site’s size. The tall towers proposed at 1 Yonge and King St. have similar densities to One Bloor East.

The condo tower will be grounded by eight tall storeys of glassed-in retail, at 36 metres, including a large ground-floor space reserved for an anchor tenant. The development community has speculated that this will be an Apple flagship store. (No one who spoke with the Star for this story would confirm or deny Apple is the signed lessee. Mizrahi has promised “top international retailers.”)

When staff reported to the Toronto and East York Community Council about the building proposal this May, the revised design - and the possible precedent it would set - raised a lot of eyebrows.

“I think it’s too dense. I think it’s too tall,” said Councillor Joe Cressy, of neighbouring Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina. “And I think it’s too much.”

Sam Mizrahi speaks in convincing showroom hyperbole.

The luxury suites developer says the goal with The One has been a “reverse-engineered” design, to create “21st century,” “uncontaminated” space that will allow condo dwellers and retail tenants to use a “magic wand” to build the custom spaces of their dreams.

His construction budget is $1 billion, and the returns also promise to be huge. Mizrahi, speaking to the Star at length earlier this summer, offers up the comment that more than 2,000 people have already pre-registered for the 416 advertised units.

A slick video on the condo website set to orchestral strings plays like a movie trailer: “From the luxury shopping avenue everyone loves, there is everything and there is your home,” the breathy narrator says. “Custom-designed, up above it all. A sanctuary in the clouds.”

The developer says the site is ready for a building this size.

“I think it’s time,” he says, referencing Chicago and Paris, New York City and London. “I think this is the right intersection and corner to do it.”

The controversy started when the historic Stollerys clothing building was demolished over a single weekend last year. The demolition, which was done legally, upset Wong-Tam and local community members who had hoped to secure the building as a heritage site.

Then, last March, Wong-Tam wasn’t included in a meeting about the project she says occurred without her knowledge, with staff from Mayor John Tory’s office and Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who has been involved in some public spats with the downtown councillor.

Mizrahi argues he was at risk of losing his high-profile retail tenants if council did not approve the needed zoning amendments by mid-July.

Minnan-Wong says Mizrahi was the one that approached him, saying he was having trouble getting a meeting with Wong-Tam - an assertion she says is baseless. Minnan-Wong says that as deputy mayor, he didn’t think it was inappropriate to get involved on the file, even though it was in another councillor’s ward.

“Given that it was an important piece of property that had city-wide implications, that was enough for me to entertain a meeting and understand the problems that they were experiencing and try to find some solutions,” he told the Star.

A spokesperson said the mayor’s office is “regularly involved” with development discussions and noted the project at Yonge and Bloor was “iconic” in nature.

As Wong-Tam and the community tried to reach a proposal they could stand behind, in consultation with the developer, Mizrahi filed an appeal to the OMB in May, even though the city had yet to make a decision on the file. Provincial rules allow developers to appeal if a decision is not made within 120 days of the application being submitted.

In June, planning staff returned with a positive report, calling the requested building allowances “acceptable” and including a long list of conditions for community benefits. At that committee meeting, Wong-Tam criticized staff for moving too quickly.

“We’ve never seen this kind of density,” Wong-Tam said. “Why would you write a supportive report subject to so many conditions that are so material to the application? ... Why not wait until we have all the information we need?”

Staff argued the building “is generally in keeping with the built form standards of the other towers at and near the intersection.”

The city’s senior planner on the file, Oren Tamir, told the Star the staff report “speaks for itself.”

“The recommendations in the report secure the positive attributes of the proposal in the public’s interest,” Tamir wrote in an email, saying staff did a thorough review that recommended several community benefits. Those benefits include paying for new traffic controls and providing yet-to-be-determined land near the development to create a new public park.

Staff’s final report on the application found it fit within the city’s planning policies and guidelines, which identify Yonge-Bloor as a significant intersection and directs that the tallest buildings should be placed at major intersections.

One of the conditions recommended by staff was that the developer build and maintain a PATH connection that would link the building to the two subway lines below. That was in addition to the cash-in-lieu developers normally pay for social infrastructure such as community centres and park improvements.

In June, despite several working group meetings with the developer, the community remained concerned about traffic congestion, park space and other amenities.

“We’re not against development; we just want to make sure development works in a way that works for the community ... And some projects are better at striking that balance than others,” Michael Landry, president of the Greater Yorkville Residents’ Association, told the Star this week. Livability of the neighbourhood is critical, he said.

The developer was pushing back, Wong-Tam said. One of the arguments was that the developer did not want the pedestrian tunnel to be a condition of approval but rather considered as part of the company’s cash contributions.

“I had tremendous political pressure on this file from the get-go,” Wong-Tam said. She said the involvement of the mayor and deputy mayor’s office contributed to the pressure on city planning staff to approve the application - which has even put a strain on what she said has been a good working relationship with staff.

The problem, Wong-Tam said, is that with a positive report from staff and appeal already launched at the OMB, the developer had the upper hand in negotiations about those community benefits. City planning staff could be called to testify in support of the “acceptable” building application, compromising the city’s ability to fight at the board and to push for needed benefits for the community.

“It doesn’t leave a local councillor and a local community a lot to work with,” Wong-Tam said.

With the positive staff report on council’s agenda in July, Wong-Tam and staff negotiated a settlement with Mizrahi that would still secure some community benefits, though not all the conditions staff originally proposed.

The agreement, which was approved by council, would remove any requirement for Mizrahi to build the PATH connection. The deal included an unprecedented amount of money, $21.9 million in cash-in-lieu of community benefits - what Mizrahi’s lawyer called a “good faith offer” - for which a majority is to be used toward the construction of a pedestrian tunnel, estimated by city staff at $11.3 million.

“It was really a collaboration with the city,” Mizrahi told the Star after council had signed off on his building.

The settlement still has to be approved by the OMB, with a pre-hearing scheduled in November.

Wong-Tam says her experience on this file reflects a new reality at city hall, where overworked planning staff are challenged to keep up with applications and often face defeat at the OMB.

“I’m being asked to settle all the time,” she said. “We can’t continue to send our forces out there where they’re going to be slaughtered on the battlefield.”

The city’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, told the Star decisions to settle are not a workload issue, but acknowledged her team members currently have an “unprecedented” number of building applications in front of them.

While the review of the OMB was launched this summer, Wong-Tam says she’s not holding her breath. The city has repeatedly called for the province to remove Toronto from the OMB’s purview, without answer.

In the end, she says, the city reached a settlement on One Bloor West she can live with, but she is left questioning how much new growth the community can bear. Who loses out as the city builds up?

“We were grappling with that,” she said.

The winners, she said, are easy to identify.

“I have no doubts that all the different shareholders in the project are going to walk off with the payday.”

MAKING SENSE OF THE OMB

What is the OMB?

The OMB is a provincially legislated, quasi-judicial body that has existed since 1906, when it was created as the Ontario Railway and Municipal Board to exercise oversight of streetcar expansion in cities. It became simply the OMB in 1932 and now deals with a broader scope of land planning appeals, including zoning amendments, as well as development charges and issues related to expropriation.

How does it work?

Municipal planning and land use decisions can be appealed to the board, whose members are appointed by the province. The OMB describes its members as having “diverse backgrounds such as lawyers, former elected officials, engineers, surveyors, planners and public administrators.” Those board members have the power to overturn the planning decisions of all elected municipal councils. As in a court, there are pre-hearings, attempts at a mediated settlement, and hearings, which employ expert witness testimony.

Why is it controversial?

In his book, Planning Politics in Toronto: The Ontario Municipal Board and Urban Development, Aaron Moore, a fellow at the University of Toronto’s Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance, writes that the unelected OMB “is the most powerful board of its kind in North America,” noting it has “the same power, rights, and privileges as the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.”

But unlike an appeals court, which decides whether to hear an appeal based on arguments that the previous judgment contained specific errors of law, the OMB hears every appeal as new.

Some at city hall argue that puts too much power in the hands of developers, who, Moore’s research shows, are more often favoured at the OMB then any other party (the city or community). As Moore notes: “A developer can avoid dealing with a municipality altogether and can use the municipality’s own planning experts against it.”