City Settles with two of three Developers in the Triangle

The OMB awarded the developers in the Queen West Triangle practically everything they wanted in the OMB judgment earlier this year.  Active 18 and the City appealed and lost in our attempts to have the case re-heard.

In an attempt to avoid Divisional Court, the City settled with two of the developers Wednesday night at Council.

Active 18 wishes to thank and commend Mayor David Miller for all the leadership he has shown in making the decision to appeal the OMB decision back in February, and more recently, with no bargaining power, calling the developers to the table and asking them, for the sake of our city, to re-consider their designs for the public realm (sidewalks, streets and parks) in the Queen West Triangle.  We applaud and thank the Mayor for trying to salvage some good from a dreadful and regressive OMB decision.

In the end, however, the developers did not concede much.  Although Active 18 played no part in this settlement, we were briefed by Councillor Giambrone’s office and the Planning Department about these “deals”.  Requests to see the settlement documents have gone unanswered so far.  All we know is that the “deal” the city got was for Verdiroc (developer of 48 Abell Street, the soon-to-be-torn-down 100,000 square foot, one-hundred year old warehouse containing 80 artists’ live/work studios) to promise to create some additional setbacks and recessed balconies on the upper storeys of their development, as well as 6 (six) - 600 square-foot artists workshop spaces at grade in what is charitably described as “the mews”, a space which we feel is dangerous, narrow, and unsafe.  This is the sum total of what the developers have given back to our City.

We do feel that had the planning department been more creative and/or more clever in their negotiations, a lot more could have been achieved.  As has been the case over the past two years, however, the Planning Department has shut the community out of the discussion and seems to make unilateral decisions about how the community should develop without regard for neither the existing zoning by-laws and/or Secondary Plans, nor the wishes of the community.

We are also deeply disappointed with Councillor Giambrone because he failed to include the community in the negotiations (despite Active 18’s Official Party status at the OMB) or push hard for the community's interests with the planners and developers.

Needless to say, Active 18 is not pleased with this settlement. The plan for the Triangle falls well short of community sustainability and livability.  Thanks to the OMB the developers got their way, City of Toronto be damned!

Active 18 Association

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