The west side of Bayview north of Eglinton is experiencing multiple development applications for projects that well exceed the precedent-setting initial application on the east side at 1837-45 Bayview. You may know the story already from earlier articles in Leaside Life, but frankly it deserves to be better known. The Gupta Group’s application was submitted immediately after the provincial government rewrote the Yonge-Eglinton Secondary Plan (YESP), the City’s plan to accommodate increased density expected with the coming of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, which permitted 20-35 storeys in the Bayview Focus Area instead of eight storeys. The next application jumped across the road to the gas station site, and the subsequent projects (four to date) are all on the west side of Bayview; 660 Eglinton East (the Sunnybrook shopping centre site) application preceded the provincial changes to the YESP and is now expected to become a new application, likely pending the outcome at 1802 Bayview.
The typical pattern of these applications is that following declaration of “complete application” and the required community consultation meeting, an application goes through North York Community Council and then City Council, where it is regularly refused, with direction to “continue discussion with the applicant.” In the meantime, the applicant has already appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) after the failure of the City to render a decision within legislated time limits.
Then there is a fork in the road: the applicant can either continue to the OLT at a not insignificant cost in money and delays, or they can offer to meet for settlement discussions with the City and the local residents’ association, in this case, Broadway Area Residents Association (BARA) which, commendably, has stepped up to participate in settlement discussions, on a limited budget basis. This has been the story in the case of 1840 Bayview, the ESSO gas station site, and 2-20 Glazebrook, the semi-detached homes. However, in the case of 1802 Bayview, an application for a 46-storey tower, the applicant (Gairloch) was unwilling to enter into settlement discussions, and so an OLT hearing date was set for an eight- or nine-day hearing in December.
1802 Bayview has proven to be different in another way too. Applications tend to ask for a Zoning Bylaw Amendment application, but may also ask for an Official Plan Amendment for the site where the use is not fully compliant with the Official Plan. In this case, Gairloch asked for both OPA and ZBA on their site, but in addition, asked for OPA and ZBAs for 7-15 Glenavy and 590-592 Roehampton, which are located immediately west of their property, across Badali Family Lane.
So, they were asking to redesignate and rezone lands they did not own (which is allowed), but they failed to include the additional lands in the official application to the City. The importance of this request to redesignate the additional lands to Mixed Use is that this would make these adjacent lands a “transitional zone” and easier to justify a 46-storey tower! They did state there was no actual development application for those properties as part of the application. But what it does mean is that, not being included in the official application says that it was not part of the community consultation, and so the community had no opportunity to comment on the proposal, nor City Council to make a decision on the status of additional lands,
The fact that the request for extra lands to be redesignated had not been submitted as part of Gairloch’s application was called out by the OLT, and the parties agreed to adjourn the “merit hearing” and instead sit as a “motion hearing” to deal with the issue of whether the hearing should (or should not) consider the additional lands within the hearings scope. At the end of the motion hearing on Mon., Dec. 2, the Chair made her decision – to not allow the additional lands to be included (despite the applicant’s witness statements having assumed that they were).
The merit hearing proceedings commenced on Wed., Dec. 4, and continued to Thurs., Dec. 12. We look forward to a decision, unavailable at the time of writing.
The importance of 1802 Bayview as a precedent for other developments – notably the Metro site next door and an expected re-application for the 660 Eglinton (Sunnybrook Plaza) cannot be underestimated.
While this piece has focused mostly on process, it is the planning issues and arguments that are uppermost in the long term. These are cogently summarized in BARA’s closing statements, which will be posted on the BARA website (https://bara.dcms.site/).
BARA executive members followed the proceedings each day, and deserve much credit for their civic duty.
