Tag: Sunnybrook Plaza

At the well-attended information meeting about the proposed redevelopment of Sunnybrook Plaza, one impressive speaker was Kate Whitehead. She is a mother of three who lives on  Bessborough Dr. in North Leaside. Ms Whitehead has opened a Facebook page which following that meeting on April 28, 2015 has been receiving reaction to her forcefully delivered remarks. The South Bayview Bulldog has reprinted Kate Whitehead’s remarks below 

The proposed high-rise at Sunnybrook Plaza threatens the very fabric of our community. Leaside is not downtown Toronto. Anyone who has driven downtown, with all of the massive high-rise development occurring there, may have noticed the same thing I have.  The city is getting dark.  As walls of condos fill in every available space in the streetscape one is left with an impression that they are driving through a tunnel.  A tunnel where every building looks the same.  A tunnel that blocks out the sun.

Leaside is not downtown Toronto.  Leaside is a community where children can ride their bikes to their soccer games at Leaside high.  It is a place where you can grow a garden.  It is a place where you know your neighbors.  It is a place where, during the ice storm, a group of neighbors spontaneously arranged themselves to walk the streets with willing hands and saws to clear the debris from people’s lawns.  It is a safe place to retire.  It is a safe place to raise a family.  If developments like this one are allowed to proceed, this will end.  It will end and with it will go something that is very valuable to the residents of the entire city.  Something that makes Toronto somewhere you would want to live.

Do we want Leaside to simply become part of the tunnel?  It seems to me that the city is in an ever accelerating process of abolishing neighborhoods in favor of streamlined, profit maximized, large-scale development.  In so doing new housing goes up quickly and at great profit to developers, but at what cost?  It seems to me that citizens of this city will have few alternatives to large-scale developments.  There will be no place like Leaside left for people who find themselves wanting such an alternative.  If we pave communities like Leaside over with condos, there will be no turning back.

I can see why someone would want to buy a condo in Leaside.  I can almost envision the promotional material that RioCan will produce.  There will be pictures of families playing in the park, pictures of tree lined streets.  An invitation to be part of the vibrant community that is Leaside.  The irony is this.  The concept that will be promoted in those cheery brochures is the very thing that will be destroyed by the development.  Developers like Rio-Can will have been successful in selling out two groups of citizens.  Those whose neighborhood has been lost and those who thought they were moving to the Leaside of old.

  I’m sure many other people will highlight what we already know.  Large-scale developments like this will clog an already gridlocked Bayview where development is intensifying all the way up to the 401 with no new infrastructure planned.  Increased traffic will spill in to the residential streets.  Overcrowded schools will become more overcrowded.    These concepts almost seem to lose their significance in their repetition.  I think of it on a more personal level.  What does adding this level of density do for the average person in Leaside?  It means a parent spending part of the evening stuck in Bayview traffic rather than being home with their family.  It means a teenager going to an overcrowded high school and getting a strained education.  It means a 7-year-old riding his bike down the sidewalk and getting hit by a car.

Members of the community participated in the Eglinton connects consultations.  We are not naïve.  We know that, with the LRT, and with the growing population of the city, that some development is coming.  Putting a midrise on the site of Sunnybrook plaza, even WITH the current bylaws will change the neighborhood and be difficult for many members of the community. But with the ink still dry on the new bylaws, Riocan proposes to ignore them and ask for more.  This begs the question what is the purpose of a bylaw in the first place?  It is not a platform for upward negotiation.  It is a limit.  It is a negotiated limit.  It is a statement of collaboration between the city, business, and citizens.

If I look at the diagram of the proposed development I see some very clear demarcations.  The 8 story base upon which the two towers sit is the kind of building that was envisioned for this corner by the Connects collaboration.  Those 8 stories WITHOUT the two towers are what we, the community, thought we were agreeing to when we actively participated in making a development plan in light of the LRT.  This is what RioCan can build if it respects the community and the bylaws.

The 8 story building (still larger that what was originally envisioned for the block and a significantly larger structure than what is there now)  represents a compromise and a win win solution.  It provides a mixed use building.  It provides a building in keeping with the proposed new streetscape of Bayview and Eglinton. It provides intensification and new taxpayers.  It will undoubtedly provide a more than reasonable profit for RioCan.

So let’s look at the towers.  What is the benefit of 7 full stories on top of the maximum allowed (even by the most liberal definition)?  The downsides I have already mentioned and are numerous. I would argue there is no benefit to the community, either those of us who are already here or those of us who are coming.  Who are benefits is RioCan.  Only RioCan. I challenge them to outline a benefit to the towers other than profit.

In the last election, the Toronto Star noted that our community had more “SLOW DOWN” child safety signs than election signs.  We are a community who is united on the common cause of safety for our children and preservation of our streets.  We are engaged and we are able and we are invested. We have the power to harness the potential of the community and we will.  We believe Leaside is worth preserving for our children.

We will oppose allowing Leaside to be an extension of the wall of condos stretching out a shadow from lake Ontario. Why is RioCan proposing 19 stories?  I think it is audacious and they are floating it to see if we are complacent enough to let them get away with it.  RioCan, we are not.

Let’s put aside unreasonable and unworkable plans.  I would ask RioCan and the city to listen to the community and respect the bylaws.  Let’s work together to find a win win situation that we all can support.  Lets collaborate to build a Leaside that both present and future Leasiders can be proud of and flourish in. Lets demand “Right Sized”  (not Might Sized) development.

These images show a proposal for two towers containing residential and commercial units for the site of Sunnybrook Plaza. The South Bayview Bulldog reported on January 14, 2015  that the 1952 plaza was nearing its end. The property is owned by RioCan REIT which has commissioned Turner Fleischer Architects to make these depictions. According to Urban Toronto, the proposed development would feature 13 and 19-storey towers with a combined 426 residential units, made up of 71 one-bedroom, 201 one-bedroom plus dens, 56 two-bedroom and 98 two-bedroom plus dens. Rising to respective heights of 216.5 feet and 164 feet, the two towers would step back from a base building with a predominant height of eight storeys, articulated with stepbacks and setbacks at various heights. The base building would contain residential units on floors 2-8, second floor green roofs flanking a 707 square-metre outdoor amenity area and a 1,014 square-metre indoor amenity space on levels 2 and 3. At ground level 24,929 square feet of commercial retail space would address the Eglinton Avenue and Bayview Avenue frontages. Midway along the Eglinton frontage a sheltered walkway 5.49 metres wide would provide pedestrian access through the building to the north side of the development where vehicular access and the residential lobbies are located. Urban Toronto doesn’t mention parking although there would have to be an underground facility.

Listening to the employees of two large tenants at Sunnybrook Plaza, the venerable shopping strip has perhaps two years of life left in its long history as the first strip mall to be built in Toronto after World War II. “We’ve been told by Rio.Can that in maybe two years they will start taking things down,” said one employee. It is a feeling felt throughout the mall and in Leaside too. People are talking more openly than ever about the condominium that will replace Sunnybrook Plaza. Rio.Can has proposed a zoning amendment to the property that would permit towers 19 and 13 storeys high and have retail at grade. There will be retail growth east of Laird Drive, but that’s not Bayview Ave. Will development on Eglinton lead to a re-birth of business on South Bayview? One property owner, Brown Group, wants to build a nine-storey retail-residential building on Bayview between Soudan and Hillsdale Aves.Urban Toronto

The New York Fries Poutinerie in the Sunnybrook Plaza has closed after just 12 months at the strip mall.  It is said by neighbouring merchants that the company had complained that the location never turned a profit.  The length of the lease is unknown but a critical factor for the parent company, South Street Burger, is that it was able to make better use of the store’s expensive fryer at another location where the company was making money. Such units are said to cost as much as $50,000 new. It is not  known just what time period remains on the lease but the one year which has elapsed since opening probably does not see the end of it. The landlord is Rio.Can. It had been hoped by New York Fries that its proximity to Leaside High School would bring a substantial lunch business at the very least. But the LHS kids who find their way to Sunnybrook at noon are said to find it easy to make the additional trip to the Metro grocery where there is an extensive choice of fast food and, some say, better prices.  

Metrolinx, the Ontario government agency charged with managing the construction of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, will shortly open an office in the Sunnybrook Plaza. The information was confirmed by Metrolinx Monday (July 7, 2014) to the South Bayview Bulldog with an undertaking that more information is on the way. The building permit in the window of the former Source Electronics space at Sunnybrook is dated  July 3,. 2014, so Metrolinx may not be quite ready for its formal public announcement. The location is next door to Home Hardware. It appears from the look of the work done so far that Metrolinx will be able to accommodate members of the public in semi-private spaces. One can imagine discussions about issues related to the multi-year construction now underway on Eglinton Ave. East. As is known, the intersection of Eglinton and Bayview Ave. will see the building of the main LRT station for this corner at the site of the McDonald’s across Eglinton from the plaza. Another entrance to the LRT will be built in the Metro parking lot on the northwest corner. There will be surface work related to the tunneling as well with all the traffic delays that this may entail. Stations will also be built at Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Eglinton and at Laird Drive and Eglinton. All this work will disrupt the rather easy way Leasiders and others have been able to get about their neighborhood.  Also this week Metrolinx has published a diagram-map showing how the traffic on Eglinton east of Brentcliffe Rd. is being reduced to one lane each. This week’s squeeze is temporary but will be followed by many more as work continues to bore the tunnels west to Yonge Street. The diagram (below) shows the location of the tunnel work in beige and the traffic pushed to the north side of Eglinton.

Uptown Restaurant in the Sunnybrook Plaza has closed. The location will re-open shortly under new management as a Sushi outlet. The Uptown existed for most of its life as the Sunnybrook Restaurant and must be fondly remembered by many. It underwent a Food Network makeover and name change in October 2012. That didn’t work. Business operators in the plaza say the rent increase which came due recently was pretty stiff. As to Sushi, it’s hard to imagine that the appetite for that dish hasn’t been well sated by the many such cookeries in Toronto, but presumably the marketplace will tell us. The fixed menu pan-Asian idea would seem to be less expensive structurally and the ingredients cheaper. Still, the competition must be wicked. When Tokyo Sushi first opened on South Bayview it was not uncommon to see the manager outside trying to lure customers from the next-door Fukui into his place. Elsewhere in Sunnybrook Plaza, we have late word that the UPS store has changed hands. We’ll have more on that. At the location formerly occupied by Source Electronics, the windows are papered over but there is no leasing sign posted. This suggests that the store has been taken. Photos: Uptown Restaurant, Unoccupied store formerly housing Source Electronics.