Toronto will move staff to Etobicoke and Scarborough civic centres

Thestar.com
Sept. 27, 2019
Mike Adler

City of Toronto jobs will flow into civic centres in Scarborough and Etobicoke under the ModernTO plan Mayor John Tory released last week.

But the transfers of municipal employees, “approximately 1,200” to each suburban centre, won’t happen soon.

In Etobicoke’s case, the plan calls for relocating workers to a civic building that doesn’t exist yet.

Members of Scarborough’s business community and a group called the Scarborough Community Renewal Organization, meanwhile, have told Tory since 2016 to send 3,000 city workers to the Scarborough Civic Centre.

The organization -- led by Jennifer McKelvie before she was elected councillor for Scarborough--Rouge Park -- demanded entire departments be moved up from downtown.

McKelvie had said 3,000 employee transfers would “mean 25 per cent of City of Toronto employees work in Scarborough.”

Sitharsana Srithas, Scarborough Community Renewal Organization’s current president, called 1,200 “a great start,” but said that the group will stick with its original request.

Senior and policy-making staff, by working at the civic centre, will experience first-hand the needs of Scarborough residents, Srithas added this week.

ModernTO, while reducing the number of city office building spaces from 52 to 20, promises a “significant revitalization” of the Etobicoke and Scarborough centres, as well as North York’s, to make them “modern office hubs” that can house workers more efficiently.

Scarborough’s building on Borough Drive was finished in 1973, however, and is on a spot where the city sees development sprouting as a Bloor-Danforth subway extension gets built.

Etobicoke’s civic centre opened on The West Mall in 1958, and it’s a long bus ride from either Islington or Kipling Subway Station.

Though final decisions haven’t been made, there are plans to build a new civic centre in a “west-end civic node” in Etobicoke’s Six Points area, said Deputy Mayor Stephen Holyday.

Things have changed since the current civic centre opened, said Holyday, who’s the councillor for Etobicoke Centre. “We need facilities that will meet expectations of people who work in them.”

Scarborough Community Renewal Organization is convinced that moving city staff to the middle of Scarborough “sends a strong signal to private investors” to join them.

Holyday said relocating city employees to Six Points, closer to transit and a critical mass of office buildings, will have a similar effect.

“That’s a good thing for the neighbourhood in general,” he said.

So far, the union representing inside municipal workers hasn’t expressed concern about city plans for the civic centres.

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In a statement, Dave Mitchell, president of Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 79, said that the union applauds efforts to “improve front line staff’s ability to deliver services to Toronto’s communities.”

Speaking about ModernTO generally, Mitchell added Local 79 will work with the city “to ensure that renovated office spaces create a safe and healthy work environment, and that displaced members have a smooth transition to a new work location.”

City officials say details on which employees will move, and where to, are not yet known, and that office reorganizations will take place over many years.