Richmond Hill council approves proposal for 16-storey development at John Birchall Road

Ward 3 Coun. Castro Liu expresses frustration at short notice of revised proposal, lack of time to review it

Yorkregion.com
Sept. 20, 2023
Melissa Wallace

Council approved a revised development proposal to permit two 16-storey apartment buildings, connected by a six-storey podium, and approximately 450 dwelling units at 0 John Birchall Rd., Richmond Hill at a Sept. 13 council meeting.

The subject lands are currently vacant and have a total lot area of 0.94 hectares (2.32 acres) with frontage on both Leslie Street and John Birchall Road.

The applicant, Leslie Elgin Developments, had originally proposed a development consisting of a 31 and a 27-storey building with 617 units in 2021.

On June 28, 2022, the applicant appealed the subject official plan and zoning bylaw amendment applications to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) on the basis that council did not make a decision on the applications within the statutory time frames under the Planning Act.

Council met and rejected the original proposal on Feb. 8, 2023. Staff continued to work with the applicant to produce a proposal that would reduce the height of both towers.

At the Sept. 13 meeting, residents expressed concerns about traffic congestion in the area, density and obstructed views.

Moyez Lalani, who lives directly behind the proposed development, said his community of approximately 120 participants and their respective families were only informed of the revised development a few days prior and were unhappy with the revised plan.

“We were very disappointed that Richmond Hill City staff would recommend that we should accept this proposal for the reasons of legal fees or rolling the dice with the OLT,” he said. “Although the ludicrous proposed height of the buildings has been reduced, the buildings are now very wide as opposed to tall so obviously there are concerns with shadows.”

He also mentioned a lack of affordable housing units and traffic studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic that don’t give an accurate picture of congestion.

“There’s significantly more traffic, it’s like a double-S turn, you can’t see the cars coming and now you want to add 450 units?” he said. “It could be 800-plus cars to this street and is simply a bad idea.”

Deborah Giannetta, manager of development at the City of Richmond Hill said staff conducted shadow impact, environment and traffic effect studies and found no concerns.

Coun. Carol Davidson, concerned the applicant hadn’t included affordable housing units in its proposal, asked the applicant to reconsider doing so to match with reality.

“Affordable housing shouldn’t be a concession, it should be part of the process starting with you and everybody else who wants to build housing,” she said. “Affordability is paramount or else we’re going to end up with some white elephants that aren’t fully inhabited.”

Coun. Castro Liu, Ward 3, felt frustrated that he, along with affected residents, were given short notice of the revised proposal and had little time to review it. “The process sucks and it leaves us with no choice,” he said. “This is the third time in recent months we [as council] have had to do this in the 11th hour.”

He put a motion to defer the decision to a special council meeting on Sept. 20. The motion failed to carry on a 5-3 vote (Coun. Karen Cilevitz was absent).

The city’s commissioner of planning and building, Kelvin Kwan, said deferring the decision would put staff in a precarious situation, costing additional time and resources. It would also risk having the OLT side with the applicant, allowing them free reign to create an even higher structure.

“We need to endorse our staff’s position they got the most they possible could for the community,” said regional councillor Joe DiPaola. Deferring the decision, he said, would mean, “we would be spending millions of dollars, staff resources to-- best case scenario-- get to where we are and really taking a risk of there being a monster structure in this community.”

Council approved the revised proposal with a motion that carried 6-2.