Battle brews over conflicting plans for rail deck park
Developers’ vision for eight condo and office towers on a deck over the rail corridor is at odds with the city’s plan to build a 21-acre “Rail Deck Park.”

TheStar.com
June 9, 2017
Jennifer Pagliaro

Everyone wants to build a park over the railway. But how should it be built and who should do it?

A showdown is brewing at city hall over two competing plans: one a 21-acre park pitched by the mayor and local councillors; and another, a 12-acre park bordered by eight office and condo towers, pitched by a group of developers who say they will soon own the air rights to build on the space above the rail tracks south of Front St., between Bathurst St. and Blue Jays Way.

Mayor John Tory, local councillors and senior city officials pitched their legacy project last August, but there is currently no funding for the early estimated cost of $1.05 billion.

The developers, not major players in the downtown sphere, have just pitched their biggest project ever and one of the largest in the whole city.

The two proposals are now about to go head-to-head at city hall where officials say the developers’ bid to build towers on top of the deck is out of step with the city’s goal of protecting the space solely for parkland as the downtown core continues to see booming population and employment growth. For that reason, the local city councillor has called the developers’ proposal “dead on arrival.”

But the developers insist they hold the rights to build over the rail corridor.

On June 13, the Toronto and East York Community Council will consider the city-initiated proposal to rezone the corridor for parkland in an area that is currently deficient in park space.

Tory first announced, with much fanfare last August, that the city would officially pursue a “Rail Deck Park.”

City planning staff have considered the possibility of decking over the rail corridor to build a park as part of a major review of services in the downtown core, which they reported on in 2015. A later report spelled out the preliminary estimate on cost is more than $1 billion.

Carmine Nigro, a principal at Craft Group of Companies, was standing on the southern edge of the rail corridor for the August announcement. He said for more than a year, he and his business partners at Kingsmen Group and Tawse Realco had been discussing their own proposal they call the ORCA or “Over Rail Corridor Area” project, with city staff.

In 2015, the developers said they showed planners an early drawing for the deck, complete with a mix of buildings.

The current proposal is more modest but still a massive build. It includes eight towers ranging in height from 13 to 45 storeys, including 2,750 condos, 79,800 square metres of office space, parking for 1,225 cars below the deck, a potential connection to a future GO station and “up to” 60,700 square metres of retail space.

It also includes 12 acres of park space.

The developers, in an interview with the Star, said they believed they were working collaboratively towards an application to the city they could agree with.

They provided a letter from Gregg Lintern, the director of community planning for the Toronto and East York district, as what they say is evidence of that. In the March 2016 letter, Lintern outlined a number of considerations with a proposal of that size in the middle of the downtown core and welcomed the developers to participate in a planned city study of the area.

“The development of a balanced, clear, rational, precinct plan for the rail corridor will ensure that we can move forward in a co-ordinated and orderly fashion,” Lintern wrote.

Lintern explained to the Star in an email: “Staff did not take a position on any development scheme for the corridor and advised that the city process must precede any applications.”

The developers got a call from the mayor’s office, Nigro said, to be at the August announcement.

That day was the first they heard that the city had plans of its own, he said.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Nigro said in the boardroom of their Queensway-area office in Etobicoke. “I was stunned ... We were caught by surprise.”

The developers, who have formed a consortium called P.I.T.S. Developments Inc., have now officially submitted their application. City staff say they are reviewing it, which is the normal process. They have yet to comment on any of the specifics of the proposal.

A new city staff report on the table at community council next week calls the city’s own plans for a park a “transformative city-building opportunity.”

“The Rail Corridor Site is the last significant undeveloped area that can accommodate a major new park and open space ... in downtown Toronto,” the report says.

Of the developers’ competing proposal, staff wrote: “The proposal will be assessed in relation to a wide range of city-building objectives for ‘complete communities’ ensuring a healthy and livable downtown is maintained and strengthened, considering the substantial growth that has been occurring and that is projected to occur in the future.”

“Approval of residential and/or non-residential uses in the Rail Corridor Site would potentially limit the unique opportunity it affords for a high-profile, public use such as a major park and open space.”

The area around the rail corridor — from Dufferin St. to Yonge St. and Queen St. to the waterfront — has seen its population balloon in the last decade, from 16,690 residents in 1996 to 90,810 in 2016. That number is expected to grow to 137,430 by 2041 — at a much faster rate of 51 per cent compared to the projected city-wide growth rate of 18 per cent.

Employment growth is also expected to accelerate at a faster than average rate, with projected jobs in the area totaling 329,970 by 2041.

Tory — speaking to the Star by phone Thursday from Chicago where he had toured the well-visited Millennium Park, decked partly over railways and a busway — said the developers’ plan in Toronto “runs counter to what we’ve said we want to do as a city council, not just me.”

“I just say to them, ‘well, we’re building a park here’,” he said. “I just won’t run an administration that sort of says, ‘well, we’re just going to sort of throw up our hands and say, well, we can’t afford to do anything about it’ ... We will find a way to pay for these things.”

Councillor Joe Cressy, who represents the area as part of Ward 20 (Trinity-Spadina) told the Star simply: “We don’t build towers on parks.”

“The city receives outlandish and ridiculous proposals all the time,” Cressy said.

The developers say their proposal provides adequate park space at 12 acres and resolves the problem of funding the deck with a private partnership.

But the entire 12 acres won’t come without a cost to the city, the developers say.

As a result of building eight towers, the developers are legislatively obligated to provide the city with four acres of parkland. The remaining proposed park space would be built at an undisclosed cost to the city.

And there remain questions over the right to building over the railway.

What’s known as “air rights” are a complicated matter in land-use planning.

Various railway companies own the rail lands and everything eight metres above it. They also own the air rights above that eight-metre mark, which the development group has an agreement to purchase — confirmed by lawyers’ letters sent to the city in September.

What is unclear are the conditions on that sale which has yet to close. Asked if there are any conditions that the land be rezoned to allow for condos and other development, the developers unequivocally said: “No.”

That could mean that if the developers’ application is refused — there could be an appeal to the controversial Ontario Municipal Board, which is soon to be undergoing reforms — the city could then be forced to negotiate with the developers for those rights to build their own rail deck park vision.

A staff report examining those issues is expected at the end of the year.