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2007 01 18
Active 18 Replies To The OMB
Reading Toronto contributor Ken Greenberg provided this image illustrating what kind of development the OMB's decision allows.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 (Toronto): At a press conference today at Toronto City Hall, members of the local residents’ group Active 18, Councilor Adam Giambrone, and architect and urban designer Ken Greenberg condemned the recent decision of the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) to approve a “condo jungle” of developments on Queen St. West. The Queen West Triangle, as it is colloquially known, is a mixed use area in Toronto’s growing gallery district that currently contains the fifth largest concentration of artists in Canada (by postal code). Many of those artists live at 48 Abell Street, in a warehouse building now fated for demolition.
Both the OMB and the City came under fire at the press conference. Active 18 member Charles Campbell, who represented the coalition before the OMB, noted “the unfortunate decision of the OMB should not be set up as an excuse by the City for its overall poor performance in this matter.” He pointed out that understaffing at the City Planning Department, delays in putting crucial planning documents in place, the failure to designate 48 Abell as a heritage building and the lateness of the City’s attempts to acquire parkland meant while the City had been effective in presenting planning evidence at the OMB, it was simply too late.
“Something is broken here. Who’s in charge of city planning?” asked Ken Greenberg. “This decision could not make a more powerful argument for the abolition of the OMB and the creation of a more workable City Planning structure.” Greenberg noted that the OMB is a unique institution that distorts the entire planning process in Toronto - misallocating resources, sapping energy and producing consistently poor outcomes for Toronto citizens. He also stated that it was “hard to imagine that anything more could have been done by Active 18,” pointing out that the community had understood the need and opportunity for growth, consistently supported reasonable development in the Triangle area, and had spent hundreds of hours of volunteer time consulting with the community, noted professionals, and attempting to work with the developers and the City.
Councilor Giambrone stated that the City has asked staff to prepare a report outlining any options for an appeal or next steps.
The following prominent Toronto citizens join Active 18 and the City in expressing their dismay at the OMB decision and its ramifications for good planning and development:
Alan Broadbent, Chairman and CEO, Avana Capital Corporation
Stephen Bulger, Stephen Bulger Gallery
Helen Burstyn, Chair, Ontario Trillium Foundation
David Crombie, President and CEO, Canadian Urban Institute
Diana Crosbie, President, Crosbie Communications
Vera Frenkel, artist
Jane Glassco, Trustee of the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation
Dean Goodman, Levitt-Goodman Architects
Siamak Hariri, Hariri Pontarini Architects
Janna Levitt, Levitt-Goodman Architects
Catherine Nasmith, Architect, President - Architectural Conservancy of Ontario
Paulette Phillips, Artist and Professor of Art at the Ontario College of Art and Design
Jessica Rose, artist
Sandra Shaul, Annex Residents’ Association
Alex Spiegel, greendoors development inc
Deanne Taylor, VideoCabaret
Christina Zeidler, Gladstone Hotel
Eberhard Zeidler, Zeidler Partnership Architects
This list of names is growing and will be regularly updated on the Active 18 website.
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.
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’}
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
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.
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
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
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
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.”
