With the Eglington Crosstown LRT scheduled for completion by 2020, developers are eyeing sites along its 19km length. Eglington is designated as one of the City of Toronto’s Avenues, major streets with the potential for higher densities, redevelopment, and transit services, and is and slated for mid-rise development of six to eight stories. But developers want to capitalize on the established high-rise trend at Yonge and Eglington.
The City isn’t so sure. So far, as Toronto Star’s Maria Vanta reported, six requests for rezoning lots to mixed-use development near Don Mills Road have been denied because they don’t line up with the City’s planning objectives (“Crosstown LRT brings new development, and controversy, to Eglinton“, Friday Jan 9, 2015). A total of 40 similar rezoning requests have been made since construction of the LRT was announced–about half are in appeals at the Ontario Municipal Board. Although the height of many of these proposals may have been an issue, another argument against the rezonings is that protecting office space and other employment land uses will ensure the LRT’s success. The City’s Official Plan protects existing office space; Lorna Day, manager of the Eglington Connects Planning Study at the City, says that jobs make better use of transit than residences. The City doesn’t want to make the mistake of losing office space, something that is speculated to happen at high-demand areas such as Yonge and Eglington, because when employment is located far from transit, most people opt to drive. Yet Day expects new workplaces to eventually come along with the residential developments–just not quite yet.
The Avenues and Mid-Rise Guidelines, which were approved by the City of Toronto in 2010 and are now used to guide the development application process, represent an attempt to achieve higher densities while keeping to the scale and character of development that many residents want. Many don’t want to live in a high-rise condo, but would not mind a third storey apartment. Since 2010, the City has been monitoring the Performance Standards for Mid-Rise Buildings as the first step toward setting the Performance Standards in guidelines, policies, and as-of-right zoning. This may be the real reason that all those applications have been denied–the existing zoning does not yet reflect the City’s mid-rise ambitions, including mixed-use zoning on the Avenues. But it will soon–the City’s monitoring period was over at the end of 2014. The City’s Project Manager on the Mid-Rise Buildings Study was none other than Lorna Day.
An argument could be made for high density nodes within a 500m radius of the major road intersections offering transit service, with mid-rise in-between. This is the TTC’s established pattern for subway lines. The LRT will link to 54 bus routes, 3 subway stations and a number of regional GO Transit lines, so there are many opportunities for high-density nodes. Zoning mixed use development along the corridor would also seem critical to a future jobs-housing mix. Recent changes to the Ontario Building Code, in effect January 1st, 2015, permit wood-frame construction for buildings up to six feet in height, which has finally made mid-rise profitable for many developers. This may result in developers scaling back on height as they no longer need it to obtain profits–witness mid-rise construction in British Columbia since 2009. Perhaps a more livable, community-oriented density is more desirable than another canyon of high-rises.
