1. When and if the plans for demolishing 48 Abell go through, the developer, together with St. Clares’s Multifaith Housing plans to replace it with 199 units of affordable housing.

   Does it stink that it takes the revenue generated by a massive upscale development in a trendy area to get any social housing built at all? You bet it does. Does that mean we can ignore the social housing that St. Clare’s will build as part of this development? Not as long as we have well over 60,000 people on a waiting list for a place to live in this city.

   Posted by John Spragge  on  01/18  at  10:15 AM
3. I echo Ken Greenberg's assessment that this is the last straw in defense of a fundamentally flawed planning structure. We are not talking about a minor policy adjustment or "more energy" at the City. We need fundamental reform, and a Provincial government that embraces that reform agenda. In my post on the subject, I recommend that a "Four Pillars" approach to sustainability be applied across government planning: Economic, Environmental, Social and Cultural. Without these "lenses" and their incorporation into planning structures and institutions, the legitimate aspirations of communities will continue to fall through the cracks.
   
   Posted by Mark Kuznicki  on  {comment_date format=’%m/%d’}  at  {comment_date format=’%h:%i %A’}
Posted by Mark Kuznicki  on  01/18  at  01:21 PM

4. Re: Active 18 Replies to OMB

   Several months ago I bought a live/work loft unit at the Westside site at 150 Sudbury (Urbancorp). At the time I believed it would be a low-midrise project with a pedestrian bridge connecting King to Queen St. Now I’m hearing it may be a 16 story structure with dense condo development around it. The destruction of 48 Abell is very disconcerting along with all the ‘bad will’ these developers seem to be generating in the community. I have traveled to the West End for the galleries, the art and the vibe for as long as I can remember. Buying into the community seemed like a natural choice as I am an Empty Nester and a Photographer.
   I have serious questions about what is going on and fear I may have to back out of the project.
   Please tell me where I can turn to for answers.
   Diane Aubie

   Posted by diane Aubie  on  02/11  at  12:07 PM

5. Hi Dianne, I can understand your concern. I suggest you call the developer’s sale office and express your concerns to them as a first step. Secondly, call you councillor and complain about the “bate and switch” tactics that allowed you to think you were getting the project you paid for.

   Active 18’s work to produce a coherent development plan should be the basis of development in the area because it acts as an informed planning document individual developers don’t have the budget—or inclination—to fund.

   Posted by Editor  on  02/15  at  11:03 AM

6. Hi Dianne:

   Don’t feel so bad about moving into that area. What you have not read here is that 48 Abell Street will be built in 2 phases. The first phase will hopefully include 190 affordable housing units that will be made available to families as well as artists (30-40 are designed for artists). The first phase of the project will be a great addition to the neighbourhood. St. Clare’s Multifaith Housing submitted their application to the City for funding. The developers that own the Bohemian Embassy and the West Side Lofts are not against the affordable housing, but the neighbourhood locals are!

   Posted by  on  02/18  at  12:33 PM

7. Sue, your comment is disingenuous at best. Active 18 has, from the start, said they are not anti-development. They have gone to great effort and expense to assemble some of the city’s if not the world’s leading urban designers to generate ideas that make for a better neighbourhood and effective cultural incubator. The OMB decision is based on an expedient legal ruling and the approved plan a disaster. Active 18 wants to maintain elements of a community that is already affordable.

   Posted by  on  02/18  at  12:45 PM

8. Active18 cannot come out publicly and say that they are against affordable housing or development because that makes them sound like a radical community group. They are well educated business savy people with great contacts. The are good at creating a great story and promoting it. That is their real life jobs. They are using their skills to get the message that they want out, but in order to do that, they cannot advertise the fact that affordable housing is apart of the project.

   Do you not find it weird that they NEVER mention the affordable housing?

   Posted by  on  02/18  at  08:07 PM

9. Some points:

   • I see no basis for accusing Active-18 of hostility to affordable housing.
   • I can only call the number of affordable units this project will provide, 200, miserably inadequate when weighed against the scale of the need.
   • Two hundred affordable units will still make all the difference to 200 families.
   • The live/work units at 48 Abell do rent for more that the units intended to replace them will.
   • The units at 48 Abell violate both zoning laws and fire codes.

Do we have to sacrifice an “arts” neighbourhood and good urban design principles for just a little more housing? If we have to choose, what choice should we make? I suspect urban designers and the people sleeping on steam grates would make different choices here.

I would appeal to those discussing this issue, as in all urban issues, to make a straightforward case. As we intensify this city, we will have to make a lot of really hard choices. It may hurt to give up an arts neighbourhood for more affordable housing; equally hard to sacrifice housing for the arts. We can’t make good decisions when faced with har choices, unless we accept the truth, the whole truth, about the choices we have to make.

‘Mayorzilla’ getting power hungry
Miller wastes time, money appealing OMB decisions

Terence Corcoran
National Post

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

What a perfect and instructive coincidence. Just as the Conference Board of Canada yesterday issued another solemn call for new powers for cities so that local politicians can carry out their good works as valiant stewards of our national urban treasures, Toronto city council goes into hilariously childish and dysfunctional meltdown. Rather than given more power, Toronto council should be placed under provincial supervision.

Led by Mayor David Miller, darling of the left and master of stagey demagoguery, council members first broke up an official photograph session after the Mayor stomped out when some councillors refused to sit where the Mayor wanted them to sit. Charges of childishness, tantrums and hissy fits followed.

This little Mayorzilla event was nothing, however, compared with Mr. Miller’s orchestration later in the day of a 31-11 council vote to waste money by appealing three Ontario Municipal Board real estate development decisions. This, too, is part of the ongoing campaign by the city and other think-tanky groups, such as the Conference Board, to hand more political power to local governments.

The more Toronto city officials press for more power, the greater the evidence that the city is incompetent to use even the power it has. The OMB appeal, aimed at getting a court to overturn approvals of three developments on Queen Street West—the so-called Queen West Triangle—is a travesty of process and politics, a warning that local governments are bastions of arbitrary power and local tin pots rather than good governance.

Next to taxing powers, recently and dangerously expanded in Toronto, the biggest political scam in local politics is the abuse of planning and zoning powers. The city’s mishandling of the Queen West Triangle, under the Mayor’s watch, makes the case against urban power expansion. It also shows that the Ontario Municipal Board, much denigrated by the Mayor and the city, is actually an essential last line of defence against out-of-control and rights-destroying local politicians.

Just about every angle of the Queen West Triangle story is warped. The dominant angle is the claim that the area under development, south across Queen Street from the trendy Drake and Gladstone hotels, is home to a vibrant “artists community” and filled with “creative” types who will be displaced by rising residential towers.

This myth is in part the creation of a group called Active 18, a leftish collection of locals headed by CBC personality Jane Farrow and others who live in the area, but north of Queen from the development. Among their claims is that if the developments go ahead, vital creative resources and an entire artist based economy will be lost.

A typical claim comes from Vera Frenkel, an artist who describes her art as being “rooted in an interrogation of the abuses of power and their consequences.” In a presentation to the OMB in opposition to the developments, Ms. Frenkel argued for preservation of 48 Abell St., one of the buildings to be demolished.

According to Ms. Frenkel, “as many existing buildings as possible should be retained and put to good use. They are affordable and filled with artistic activity—48 Abell is a good example. It would be unfortunate to turn artists out of existing buildings in favour of condominiums.”

Posted by Sue  on  02/21  at  05:40 PM

First of all, 48 Abell is an ageing industrial building that contains about 80 residential units, most of them occupied by regular tenants -- a lawyer here, a worker there, maybe a Drake hotel staffer and others of similar background. At most, about 16 people who could be called "artists" have space in the building, some with quasi-retail operations at ground level. These are the only "creative" people who would be displaced in the entire three-development project that the OMB approved, not just at 48 Abell but on two other adjacent properties. As for 48 Abell, it is to be replaced in the first phase by 190 affordable rental units, not condominiums. Also part of the developer's plan is 30 live-work units to be allocated on a first choice basis to any of the current artist residents of 48 Abell. As well, eight artists' workshops will be built, in all adding 3,900 square metres of non-residential space to the area. In the end, at least twice as many artists could live in the Queen West Triangle than now live in 48 Abell. Ms. Frenkel claims to be concerned about "the abuses of power and their consequences." But then she proposes to use government power to prevent the owner of 48 Abell from disposing of the existing building, and blocking the developer from exercising property rights of development. Ms. Frenkel also wants the city to more or less expropriate the uses of other "empty buildings in the area which could easily be used by artists." Spurred on by the likes of Ms. Frenkel and others from Toronto's creative classes, a group always ready to use local government power to abuse property owners and taxpayers, Mr. Miller has been all too willing to oblige. If only, he says, we had the power! The power he wants, however, and the power the OMB has consistently denied the city, is the power to arbitrarily dictate development. The city's official plan is a joke, ignored by council when it wants and enforced when it wants. The main function of the OMB, a necessary evil, is to protect the rights of property owners from the power abuses of politicians who have demonstrated they are unfit for the power they have, never mind the power they want. © National Post 2007

Posted by Sue  on  {comment_date format=’%m/%d’}  at  {comment_date format=’%h:%i %A’}

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