Yonge & Eg-normous?

Design review panel tells developers to go back to the drawing board

The development proposal for the northeast corner of Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue East would top the much-maligned Minto by 10 storeys. But before the developer moves forward, the City of Toronto’s Design Review Panel has told it to go back to the drawing board by a vote of nine to zero.

Formally submitted in December 2011, the official plan amendment and rezoning application seeks to build a mixed-use building featuring a three-storey podium made up of office and retail, two residential towers of 64 and 44 storeys containing 1,166 units and 371 underground parking spaces.

A rendering of the concept went before the design review panel earlier this year. The volunteer panel, of local architects, engineers and planners at the top of their fields, is meant to promote design excellence in Toronto. It’s essentially a formal peer review process. Not all applications go before the panel, but the significant ones do.

On the northeast corner of Yonge and Eglinton, the panel identified height, spacing and transit considerations as key issues to be resolved. “Of particular concern are wind micro-climate and shadow impact on adjacent stable, low-scale neighbourhoods, schools and streetscapes,” the design review panel found.

Although decisions of the design review panel are non-binding, its comments are integrated into final staff reports that help guide city council’s decisions on whether to approve or deny applications. It would be unlikely that a developer would completely ignore the panel’s advice.

The process began in earnest nearly one year ago when local councillor Josh Matlow was approached by Bazis Inc. He met the developer, with residents representing all four corners of Yonge and Eglinton, to discuss its potential plan.

Matlow said he was caught off guard when the application was formally submitted without warning right before the winter holidays. The plans he was shown were different from those that were submitted. He was also surprised to learn that RioCan was a silent partner in the project. (RioCan owns a 50 per cent stake; Bazis Inc. and Metropia share the remaining stake.)

“The design that they brought forward was a vapid rectangle,” Matlow said. “They seem more interested in trying to get something huge built to make a lot of money rather than genuinely working with the community to build something that will be beautiful and stand the test of time.”

The way to move forward, said the local councillor, is for the developer to come back to the table, and deal with him and residents in a transparent fashion.

“They told us one number and then they brought it in higher for the 64-storey building, and I don’t think it should go higher than Minto.” For Terry Mills of the Sherwood Park Residents Association, there are lessons to be learned from the not-so-distant Minto debacle. “It’s unfortunate that everybody spent their time being distracted by height and density because we really should have been looking at the base portion of the building,” he said. “And in the end, I think what we have is a perfectly good avenue building at Minto that could have been anywhere on Bay Street at College Park.”

Beyond paying more attention to how the development will relate to locals at ground level, Mills sees context as being key. The northeast corner is only one piece of the puzzle along a 200-metre stretch of Eglinton Avenue that is going to be completely redeveloped in the next decade. He is among locals who are advocating for a more co-ordinated approach to planning in the area.

According to Robert Freedman, the City of Toronto’s director of urban design, the developer has a July 17 date to reappear before the design review panel. It’s common for developers to appear before the panel at least twice, he said. Although some level of revision is likely, it’s entirely up to the developer as to how it addresses (or doesn’t address) comments from its first appearance in front of the panel.

City staff have not yet drawn up a preliminary report. The planner handling the file said he’s hoping to see a revision before he moves forward. Once the preliminary report is presented to Toronto and East York Community Council, broader community consultation will begin.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Bazis Inc., Metropia and RioCan, none of the developers partnering on this project responded to interview requests.

Article exclusive to STREETS OF TORONTO