Josh Matlow (Ward 22) has invited residents to a skating party to celebrate the completion of the newly finished Hodgson Senior Public School outdoor ice rink. The gathering will take place Sunday, December 14 between noon and 2 p.m. behind the school at 282 Davisville Avenue. Below are some pictures of the year-long work at this venerable outdoor rink during its resurrection. The old rink was built in 1980. Both the old and the new rinks mark Hodgson as one of only a few open-air artificial rinks in the city. It would be a worthy local task to record the history of hockey and pleasure-skating at the Hodgson rink. The school itself was built in 1915. The old rink had suffered many break-downs and engineers were worried that an ammonia leak might poison kids or others. There was a further delay in re-building the rink when the City was unable to get the school board (TDSB) to agree to a lease for public use that would make the cost of the work worthwhile. Finally, a ten year agreement was reached. The South Bayview Bulldog is indebted to Twitter picture poster Matthew Pelligrino, who appears to have had a personal role in the work seen below and called The Big Pour. Beneath it are photos supplied by CIMCO refrigeration, which installed the mean-looking blue refrigeration unit that keeps the ice in diamond-like condition.
Four local boy scout chapters are again offering Christmas trees for sale this year. The 58th Scouts are at their usual location, the parking lot of the Church of the Transfiguration at 111 Manor Road (at Redpath Ave.) between 6 and 9 p.m. week nights and between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekends. Beginning tomorrow, Friday, December 5, 2014 the 132nd Scouts are at their usual spot, the parking lot of Leaside Presbyterian Church at Eglinton Ave. E and Hanna Road. The sale begins at 5 p.m. Friday and runs through Saturday December 6 from 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. If trees still available, the boys will there on Sunday December 7 from 11 a..m. to 3 p.m. And the 82nd and 69th Scouts have teamed up to sell their trees this weekend at Trace Manes Park on McRae Drive between the tennis courts and the library. They will be there two weekends between Saturday, December 6 and Sunday, December 14. Hours are: Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The mayor seemed to warm to his subject as the news conference opened to questions. He speculated about having forklift trucks available to instantly remove parked cars from rush-hour lanes and ferry them away. He acknowledged that his plans might prove disruptive to deliveries and the essential work of paper shredding trucks. The practice by many service companies, such as Rogers and Bell, of parking a van and routinely placing a traffic cone at each corner has yet to be reckoned with. The mayor spoke glowingly about a “determined bulldog” in Ward 25″s Jaye Robinson, the new public works boss She stood with the mayor at this morning’s briefing.
Practical matters
The mayor was not closely questioned on some practical matters. Business may have something to say about delayed deliveries. The mayor’s determination to avoid simultaneous closures of Lakeshore Road and the Gardiner Expressway will be popular but may run up against the immutable nature of the calendar. Getting everything done without such overlaps may prove a bit of a hurdle.
Residents from Ward 22 and Ward 26 jammed the little meeting room in the Leaside Library on McRae Drive tonight for an information session on the proposed nine-storey development on the west side of Bayview Ave between Soudan and Hillsdale Ave (inset top). Many people stood all evening. The Brown Group has yet to make an application of any kind to the city and the company’s moderator Adam Brown offered this as evidence of the firm’s sincerity. Design features and setbacks notwithstanding, the meeting was deeply opposed to the idea of a nine-storey building on Bayview. Josh Matlow (Ward 22) took the floor briefly and said nine storeys is the maximum that will be permitted in the new world of an LRT-equipped Eglinton Ave. “It is only reasonable that we would wish to build down from there as we move away from Eglinton,” he said. There was brief uncertainty as to present zoning until Geoff Kettel said the land was “neighborhood” — a designation that would permit no more than three, perhaps four storeys. Mr. Brown was insistent on the company’s desire to have peace with residents. He seemed to modify his opening assertion that the Brown Group did not intend to negotiate on the height of nine storeys. The building plan as it sits calls for stores on Bayview with as many as 30 residential rental units overlaid by as many as 170 “sales units” that would be sold. The most expensive of these units would be in a three-story box of glass sitting atop the six floors below. It was these three glass floors that drew the most criticism. An underground parking garage would contain 240 spaces for cars and 190 racks for bicycles. The building would be graded in the form of steps on the west side. At present, it rises at an angle of 45 degrees. At the front, the angle is more like 80 degrees. Brown Group proposes to build a block-long service lane behind the structure with a wall-like fence separating the property from residences to the west. In addition, the developer has purchased two homes, one each on Hillsdale and Soudan, on the outside of the fence as a barrier to the disruption caused by construction. Commercial store fronts would extend along Bayview and around each corner onto Hillsdale and Soudan, a characteristic that Brown said would provide “an animated retail space.” A number of residents spoke in favour of retail space on the west side to complement the stores on the east side of Bayview. Also present at the meeting were Jon Burnside (Ward 26), Vanessa Rose of Mr. Burnside’s office and Patrick Rocca. The meeting heard that there are many steps and many more meetings before a plan could be approved. 