[M II A II R II K]

Jen Keesmaat’s Big Idea

Read More: http://torontoist.com/2013/01/jen-keesmaats-big-idea/

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Keesmaat told reporters last week that she wants to see the City change zoning regulations to automatically allow mid-rise development along Toronto’s “avenues”—a specific list of designated arterial roads, like St. Clair and Danforth, which form the spines of residential neighbourhoods but themselves are already somewhat built up. The goal is to accommodate Toronto’s growing population by increasing density while maintaining more moderately scaled neighbourhoods, distributing some development across several main streets rather than concentrating it only clusters of giant towers.

- Officially, this has been one of Toronto’s planning goals for quite some time. One key problem: the City’s own zoning rules don’t currently support that vision. The problem is a conflict between two key documents: our Official Plan (a big-picture vision, in which a municipality sets out its planning direction and a strategy for managing future growth) and our zoning bylaw, which lay out the specific rules about what a developer is allowed to build at any given location. Paul Bedford, one of Toronto’s former chief planners, distinguishes between zoning and the Official Plan simply: “the Plan is about vision, the zoning bylaw is about precision.”

- Because obtaining a zoning amendment for large changes is arduous (as opposed to an easier-to-obtain variance, for smaller matters), it effectively tilts the playing field towards big developers: the ones asking not just for small changes in height or use but for substantial ones, ones that they think will maximize the profit (including covering the trouble of going through this amendment process in the first place). This is what Keesmaat is hoping, specifically, to change. The idea is to get to the point where mid-rise construction wouldn’t need to go through the time-consuming zoning application process at all, enabling a developer who wanted to build mid-rise on an avenue to simply apply for a building permit and go, able to construct mid-rise “as of right” (i.e. without needing special permission). “We would essentially take out a whole layer in the process, which is quite time consuming, and for developers quite costly,” Keesmaat told us last week, when we asked for more details about her plan.

- Keesmaat hopes that the corridor-wide Avenue Study process will defuse some of the local antagonism to developers. “I think it’s better for consultation to happen in the context of the study, because you get less parochial interests then with a specific application.” Mid-rise developers are, predictably, excited about the possibility of a shorter, less onerous process. Shane Fenton, vice-president at Reserve Properties (developer of 109OZ, among other buildings), says the current process actually causes more disruption than a more permissive one would. “Someone who wants to build six storeys has to go through the same process as someone who wants to build 30,” says Fenton. “A lot of developers look at that and think, ‘why is it worth my time and money’?”

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