City must 'talk the talk' to make prudent planning decisions

A Church-Wellesley development proposal has had little pushback by residents, yet it may not get city approval. It's time for the city to start having more dialogue with residents and developers to make better planning decisions.

Thestar.com
Sept. 12, 2017
By Christopher Hume

At a time when NIMBYism has turned the backyards of the city into a battle zone, it's hard to know what to do when the neighbours are not fighting one development proposal or another.

Most recently, the prospect of an eight-storey luxury condo on Davenport had the celebrity NIMBYites of the Annex frothing at the mouth.

So the rage-free response to a plan for a 43-storey residential tower on the northwest corner of Church and Wellesley, the heart of Toronto's Gay Village, comes as a bit of a shock.

Surely the building would be too tall, too dense, too big? Surely it would overpower the neighbourhood, destroy its character, ruin its heritage, break its bylaws, wreck the streetscape?

Why aren't local celebrities speaking out, writing angry letters and tweeting their disapproval? Why isn't the media wagging its collective finger and tut-tutting in unison? Where are the NIMBY hordes when you need them?

Could it be that the locals actually like what they see, that they are open to development - highrise development no less - and that they welcome change and look forward to the future?

"The time is right," says long-time Village resident Alex Filiatrault. "The Village needs to transform, even reinvent itself. I think everyone agrees the street needs to be revitalized. Church and Wellesley is an important corner. The project is needed and it might as well be a landmark."

Most obviously, the landmark Filiatrault refers to is the podium on which the tower sits. Its most powerful gesture is a two-storey plaza that faces the intersection. The floors are connected by a grand staircase that serves as a seating area as well as a way up and down. The upper deck is clearly intended to be a vantage point for watching the street. Retractable glass walls can be open and closed depending on the weather.

"Whatever gets built here must have two identities," says planner Robert Glover, whose firm, Bousfields, wrote a report on the project, "one for Church, which is lowrise and retail, and one for Wellesley, a more conventional tall building street. The corner is loaded. It's the central public space of the neighbourhood and the building has to recognize that."

The city, by contrast, is focused more on height. Forty-three storeys far exceeds the area's midrise zoning. But on the other hand, the corner is served by a bus route and only one block east of a subway stop. Given that Toronto's Official Plan encourages densification, the site seems ideal for a tall building. Not everyone agrees, however.

"I think it's way too tall," says local Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 29 Toronto Centre-Rosedale). "How much density can you put on that site? We can't manage it even today. The developer, One Properties" - who submitted their application to the city in August and are still waiting to hear back - " was told at the start that this isn't a tall building site. They were advised early on that their project would be difficult to approve because of its height and massing."

She confirms the developer did a good job at community consultation: "They worked really hard to build a broader consensus. But support wasn't unanimous." As she also points out, "It never is."

Critics might look to the sad fate of another downtown village - Yorkville - to bolster their argument. Decades after its heyday in the 1960s and '70s, little remains of Yorkville beyond its name. It has been buried beneath waves of ugly, inappropriate and insensitive development.

Still, Ken Greenberg, the prominent Toronto urbanist who led three public meetings held earlier this year, makes no secret of his disappointment with the city's response to the Church and Wellesley proposal.

"City planners never came to any of the sessions," he says. "They missed out on all the community engagement. Their attitude was, 'Make a formal application and we'll talk about it.' The corner has the potential to become the heart of the Village. The community wants something extroverted. I'm not saying the building needs to be as tall as it is, but if planners had come, the outcome would have been different. The opportunity to have a dialogue was lost."

This failure to communicate is critical to any understanding of why the planning and approval processes in Toronto are so deeply dysfunctional.

When Canada's most acclaimed city planner, Larry Beasley, ran Vancouver's planning department in the '90s, he had his staff out speaking to residents every night of the week. They listened as much as they spoke. Both sides learned.

As Beasley makes clear, before a city can walk the walk it must talk the talk.