Thistletown land pledged for mixed-income community
Premier Kathleen Wynne and Mayor John Tory announce move to develop Kipling-Finch site.

TheStar.com
Nov. 1, 2017
Kristin Rushowy

A tract of provincial land in Toronto’s northwest end will be home to a mix of affordable housing, rental units and market-rate dwellings.

Premier Kathleen Wynne made the announcement Wednesday morning alongside Mayor John Tory and provincial housing and poverty-reduction minister Peter Milczyn.

“We’re moving ahead to create another new affordable mixed income housing community just north of the 401,” Wynne said. “We’re unlocking a large parcel of land in the Thistletown neighbourhood in Etobicoke with hundreds of new mixed income units for the community. And we’ll be working with the city to transform that provincial land into a community filled with homes of varying sizes and affordability.”

She said the area, near Kipling and Finch Aves., will “include rental units but it will also include home ownership opportunities for lower income people.”

The government and city have previously announced similar plans for surplus sites near Yonge and College, as well as the West Don Lands.

Tory said the government’s release of “three very substantial pieces of surplus land … are going to allow for hundreds, in fact hundreds and hundreds of affordable housing units and this is going to be a benefit to the people of the City of Toronto; people who are struggling to find affordable housing, people who are in need of the support of all of their governments to make sure they have a life that is fair and that gives them an opportunity.”

The Thistletown site, of which one-third will be affordable housing, is located at 51 Panorama Crt., which at one time was the Thistletown Regional Centre. It is 48 acres, with just under half set aside as protected ravine lands.

Wynne and Tory were also asked about a meeting they held just prior to the Wednesday announcement — their first in many months — with Tory joking that the two had been on a “summer break.”

“You know this week alone I have seen the premier I think three times outside of this meeting already and each of those times we have taken a brief moment to talk about something that is of mutual interest to us,” Tory said. “Our relationship was never in question … in all relationships sometimes you take a little break and it’s like a summer break. And now we are back here in the fall and we are doing things together and we are doing things for the benefit of the people we both serve and the same with the government of Canada. We are working together.”