Condo mania and time for change

John Sewell copy for Post City Magazines, December 2005.

Some people think when the Royal Ontario Museum withdrew its plan to sell the former McLaughlin Planetarium site to a developer for a 42 storey condominium tower, that signaled a political change in the city.

You might remember the furor in early November. At a well attended community meeting – 200 was the number in attendance, by all reports – the crowd was in significant opposition to the tower, saying it had no place in the university precinct. After hearing too much from the opposition, the head of the ROM, William Thorsell, said the Museum would not proceed with the proposal. The crowd was delighted. It meant the ROM would not be getting the $20 million it had hoped to scoop from the sale, and that would pose some problems is reaching the $230 million needed for the current rebuilding program.

Mr. Thorsell was overheard to say, in clear reference to high rises, that the mood of the city had changed.

Certainly there has been considerable opposition to high rise proposals in many parts of the city, opposition that to this point has gained little traction at city hall. Residents in Yorkville have complained to little effect; so have people living in the Annex, and the best they could do was knock the proposed 34 storey tower at Bedford and Bloor down by two stories, which will hardly be noticed on the street. We have a city council that seems to think these big towers are generally fine in our neighbourhoods, and they are letting them happen at a ferocious rate not seen since the high rise boom of the late 1960s.

If one dares speak out about a planned tower you think is inappropriate, you risk being labeled a Luddite or a NIMBYist by journalists like Christopher Hume of the Toronto Star, or John Bentley Mays of the Globe and Mail.

But has the mood of the city changed? Was the ROM tower the breaking point?

I think the clear answer is no. For city hall it's business as usual in giving the green light to these developments. Just look at what the community councils were considering when they met in mid-November. The Toronto and East York Community Council considered reports on no less than 18 Official Plan amendment applications at this one meeting. Not all of them were approved, and not all of them concerned high rise towers, but enough of them were to indicate there's reason to be concerned, including a proposed 35 storey tower at Davenport and Bay; a 19 storey tower on Bloor west of Avenue Road; a 25 storey tower at Eglinton and Dunfield; a 26 storey tower at Soudan and Brownlow; a 55 storey tower at the north east corner of Bay and Yorkville; and a whole bunch of towers south of Bloor. (The world was a bit calmer at the North York Community Council, where the councillors considered only four Official Plan amendments.)

These proposals, remember, were all up for decision at but a single meeting of the community council. It makes a joke of this thing called an `Official' Plan, which City Council amends about 100 times a year. Wouldn't it be better to call it the Tattered Plan?

And we know there are other towers waiting at the wings – for a site at Summerhill and Yonge, for the Four Seasons in Yorkville, on Avenue Road north of St. Clair, and so forth. It's hard to keep up with all the high rise proposals for mid-town Toronto , and most of them get approved.

The mood of the city's leaders hasn't changed, unfortunately. A better explanation for ROM's withdrawal of the proposal is that it couldn't face the year of public criticism it would have to endure while the tower wound its way through council and the OMB. It's hard to raise money while the citizenry is in a clamour about what you are doing. Most developers don't have to worry about their public image, so they won't take their lead from the ROM.

What's intriguing is the historical parallel. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was such citizen anger at the high rise proposals that voters kicked the old dogs out and brought in a fresh crew of community activists, including tiny perfect mayor David Crombie. The new council (on which I was lucky to serve) passed the 45 foot holding bylaw and rewrote the rules to protect neighbourhoods and get sensible development which respected existing structures.

Today's council seems a lot like the council back then – its main business seems to be to approve inappropriate development, and it seems unable to focus on anything else except running a very forward campaign of ticketing citizens alleged to be offending city bylaws. Is it time for change come the municipal election next November?

- end -