The South Bayview Bulldog

Set aside the evening of Tuesday, June 21 for an important public consultation meeting focusing on Leaside’s traffic problems. This is the first of several public meetings organized by the Leaside Property Owners Association (LPOA) on long-term solutions. The meeting is in the William Lea Room at Leaside Gardens.

Bloomberg News as copied in the Globe and Mail is telling of a combined venture on Yonge Street at the Summerhill crossroads with the former CP Rail station. The parties are RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust, Tricon Capital Group Inc. and Diamond Corp. They are said to be planning to develop a combined retail and residential project in the area. The joint venture agreed to buy the real estate – a row of high-end boutiques and a block of land – for $85-million, sources tell Bloomberg. RioCan’s interest is said to be in the retail portion, and it intends to buy into the high-rise rental tower and new retail development planned for the site, the people said. The deal is for the Shops of Summerhill, with about 31,000 square feet of fully occupied retail space, and an adjoining block of land that contains a four-storey office building and a parking lot with the potential for a high-rise tower, the people said. Other investors have agreed to take stakes in two additional properties in Woodcliffe’s Summerhill portfolio: a defunct train station built in 1915 that now houses one of the largest LCBO stores, and a development site that contains a low-rise office property that can be expanded to a nine-storey tower, the people said.

The Leaside Property Owners Association has released results of its survey of the large development proposed by the Diamond Corporation in collaboration with Dawsco Corporation, owner of the land known as 939 Eglinton Ave. E. This property extends south along Brentcliffe Road to Vanderhoof Ave. The size of the concept has caused Jon Burnside (Ward 26) to call it the “Big Daddy” of developments inspired by the arrival of LRT service along Eglinton. It would feature four towers — 19, 20, 31 and 34 storeys. The information below was prepared by the LPOA and appears to be a digest of the complete survey, which was done in February and March.  Big Daddy condo will set tone for land east of Laird  

2,169 individual responses were received (once duplicates and out of area responses were removed). The M4G postal code has a total of 3,741 houses and 2,882 apartments (6623 households). Approximately 18% of respondents lived in the same household as another respondent, so it would appear that we received at least one response from over 25% of Leaside households, which we consider to be a very good response rate, considering that many responses came from people who were NOT already on the LPOA mailing list and therefore made their way to the survey via other notifications.

Almost 76% of respondents were aware of the development proposal (and 69% of respondents were aware of it because they’d read about it in Leaside Life) prior to receiving the survey. 22% had been unaware of the proposal until they received the survey notification.

Almost 92% of respondents felt that high-rise (over 11 storeys) buildings were inappropriate for this site. Only 5.5% thought they were appropriate. 78.5% were in favour of a mix of low and mid-rise buildings (up to 4 storeys, and 5-11 storeys) with just over 12% supporting all mid-rise development. 7% supported various mixes of mid and high-rise and low, mid and high-rise, with only 0.74% supporting all high-rise.

Not surprisingly, given the above results, 92.67% of respondents did not think that the development proposal for 939 Eglinton E. was appropriate for Leaside. A mere 4.32% thought it was appropriate, with 3% saying they didn’t know.

90% of respondents did not think that the building massing and number of dwelling units were appropriate for the site. 63% thought that the amount of public open space proposed was inappropriate. Opinions were much more divided re: office space and retail space although it would appear that over 40% were either in agreement with the amount of space provided or didn’t disagree with it. (Unfortunately, space limitations meant we weren’t able to quantify that question).

Traffic congestion was of extreme concern to 87.5% of respondents. A mere 0.79% had no concerns at all about this issue. Almost 70% were extremely concerned and another 15% very concerned about local school capacity. Less than 5% had few or no concerns about this issue. Sense of community was of considerable concern to 83% of respondents, as was shadowing of the neighbourhood, and parks and open space (just over 75% each). 90% expressed at least some concern about the ability of the current utilities to support the proposed development and 85% had at least some concerns about the appearance of the proposed buildings.

Questions related to the intensification of the entire Laird Eglinton Focus area showed major concerns with traffic increases on both major and residential streets (90% and 95%), increase in population (85%), increase in on-street parking on residential streets (87%), impact on community cohesion and safety (80%), impact on community amenities and shadowing by tall buildings (77%), and lack of space in local schools and lack of parks/open space (75%). About 70% were very concerned about the adequacy of the local utilities, 67% were quite concerned about lack of affordable housing and visual appearance and character, and 43% about the lack of affordable daycare. Just over 52% had major concerns about the impact of intensification on the existing businesses in the Leaside Business Park.

In general, the small percentage in favour of the development were also those with the fewest or no concerns about the issues, although there were a few who supported the proposal/high-rise development and still indicated great concern with things like traffic congestion – apparently not connecting the impact of high density development on things like traffic and space in the schools.

About one third of respondents (731) provided additional written comments regarding the proposal for 939 Eglinton – some of them quite long and very thoughtful. Well over 90% of the written comments indicated that the respondents thought that proposal was too big, too dense, too high and out of character for the Leaside area. Many felt that the proposal was insensitive and motivated by greed. Traffic congestion (existing and future) and the existing lack of space in local schools was mentioned repeatedly. A great deal of frustration was expressed that the Official Plan and existing by-laws are constantly being challenged by developers, who take proposals to the OMB – which most think is very developer-friendly.

The opening of the farmers market at Trace Manes Park caught some poor weather Wednesday. It was chillingly cold on the parkland grass at Millwood and Rumsey Rds. There were about seven vendors with most selling homemade goods. The busiest were those selling fresh produce.

Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk says last summer’s Pan Am and Parapan Am Games in Toronto came in $342 million over budget. As well, the province still paid more than $5 million in performance bonuses. The government, on the other hand, insists the Games were on budget because the ultimate cost was roughly the same as the $2.4-billion bid budget in 2009. But Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk noted that by her calculations the original budget should have been closer to $2.2 billion and the total cost of the Games was $2.5 billion. There is much talk today of the pride Ontario can take in these events and an assurance that it was all good value. Value of course is a matter of opinion. Many will wonder if there isn’t a better way to achieve such competition short of these staggering amounts of money.

Excavation for an LRt system in Ottawa went incredibly wrong as a huge sinkhole opened up Wednesday morning on downtown Rideau Street in Ottawa not far from Parliament Hill. Miraculously, no one was hurt. Police say 911 calls started coming in at mid-morning and they have been blocking off streets surrounding the cave-in at the corner of Sussex Drive. No injuries have been reported, although a taxi is believed to have been swallowed up by the sinkhole, which television footage shows was full of water from a broken water main. The city says nearby buildings have been evacuated because of the smell of gas. Water service in the area has been cut and traffic has been re-routed. The road itself had been limited to bus and taxi traffic only since last summer due to road and subway construction. This is the second sinkhole to open up in the downtown in recent years. In 2014, another road just a few blocks away collapsed. Officials blamed it on unexpected soil conditions encountered during a tunnelling operation

The van on Rideau Street is now under water #ottnews #sinkhole pic.twitter.com/l6Gk5WjM2s

— CTV Ottawa (@ctvottawa) June 8, 2016

See later post 

There is great excitement surrounding the epic new stage play co-written by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It opens in June but don’t count on going anytime soon as the play is sold out until well into 2017. Harry Potter is played by Jamie Parker.