A city council motion moved last month to build a 20-storey building on the corner of Duplex Avenue and Orchard View Boulevard showed a serious disregard for the neighbourhood, said locals.
“At the end of the meeting, it looked like nobody listened,” said Matthew Kou, whose elderly mother lives next door to the future development and will have a wall constructed 3.6 metres from her property line. “Right now there’s no common sense [being used] at all.”
Kou isn’t the only one feeling overshadowed by the building and the decision. More than 180 locals signed a petition against the development. Their main concerns are the building’s density (which is greater than the density of the Yonge Eglinton Centre), the height, the lack of transition from a commercial area to a low-rise neighbourhood and the implications of a traffic increase. Kou said residents feel they haven’t been heard, even though Coun. Karen Stintz held several meetings with the community and lot owner Orchard View Holdings Inc.
The sentiment was enough that a local working group hired planner Terry Mills, who is running to replace Stintz as councillor, to present a neighbourhood-focused plan to community council. Mills said a lack of foresight was used in the planning process, specifically regarding the lot’s neighbour to the east, the Stanley Knowles Housing Co-operative. By preserving space for a social housing expansion now, Mills said the city would save money down the road.
Stintz, however, said the plans have been going back and forth for nearly 10 years, and that both the city and the developer have tried their best to listen to locals. “They wanted a floor off, they got a floor off; they wanted a reduction in density, they got a reduction in density,” she said.
Adam Brown, the developer’s lawyer, also said several strides have been made since initial plans were proposed, such as making the building slimmer and increasing the space between properties.
