By Jeff Latto, Chair of SEDRA’s Tall/Mid-Rise Working Group
This is a question worth asking ourselves from time to time. It’s a question worth asking a lot these days as we see the City’s Official Plan challenged and sometimes even abandoned in favour of allowing market forces to determine what the city will look like. This deference to profit-driven design is even more concerning when it is adopted by City officials whose responsibility is to ensure development aligns with our city’s Official Plan.
SEDRA is seeing this firsthand at a development along Yonge Street, at a location that is equidistant from the transit hubs at Yonge-Eglinton and Yonge-Davisville.
The Official Plan (along with its supportive Secondary Plan for the midtown area OPA-405) shows a clear and distinct vision of what kind of city we want. In these documents we see policies that direct intensification to locations called transit nodes or MTSAs (Major Transit Station Areas) where tall buildings accommodate a large number of residences, commercial offices and retail in a very compact footprint, all close to high-volume transit. The building form of tall buildings answers the call for high density. The floor area of a tall building is small, so we tend to see smaller units where bachelors and one-bedroom units are the majority. It’s architecture supporting planning supporting a vision of a city. In between these transit hubs we have Avenues, major streets (high streets) with a predominance of retail with residences above. These residences can be larger and thus accommodate two- and three-bedroom units. Here too there is a building form to meet the challenge set forth by planning; these are called midrise. Essentially the height of a midrise is equal to the width of the road allowance out front, with setbacks towards the top to allow sunlight to reach the street and sidewalks of the Avenue. It is an easy vision to imagine and get behind. We have areas of intensification around transit hubs creating Apartment Neighbourhoods and between these we have Avenues of a ‘gentler’ density. This terminology of a gentler density comes from our new Chief City Planner Jason Thorne.
As the city grows, Thorne is especially enthused by the idea of more midrise housing, seeing it as a gentler way to densify than more clustered highrises. It’s one of the hardest things to get built in Toronto, he says — and making it easier means not only adjusting zoning and policy rules, but smoothing out the process of connecting to hydro and utilities, for example.
“We’re going to have locations where there (are) towers, and that’s great, but I think midrise is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of housing need,” he says. (Toronto’s new chief planner wants to shake up the city and make it joyful again. Here’s how, by Steve Russell, Toronto Star, January 28, 2025.)
This outlook is perhaps even more relevant today than back in January. The investor market that has long supported the rationale for tall buildings with a large majority of small units is showing signs that it cannot be sustained over long periods of time and particularly when the cost of capital (i.e. interest rates) is higher than it has been in the past decade. There is finally a recognition that building larger suites, ones that have two to three bedrooms for families and young couples looking to build a family, may be the better way as this is a market that is very much under-served.
So back to Yonge Street. SEDRA recognized something was wrong when an application for a tall building at 2079-2111 Yonge Street appeared, especially since it was located nowhere near Eglinton or Davisville. It was located smack in the middle of the Avenue that links these two transit hubs. It was strange and out of place, but we knew City Planning wouldn’t approve this as it would set a horrible precedent that would allow any developer to plant a tall building where midrises are only permitted. Or would they?
Shockingly, they would…and they are in the process of doing just that. Sure, they negotiated the height down by a couple of storeys but in the end, we might end up with a 26-storey tower in the middle of a 12-storey street.
SEDRA investigated further and discovered that the density proposed in this project can fit into a midrise building of 12 storeys. We drew it out to show City Planning that the developer can get the density they are seeking in a more suitable built form for this area. We even reminded the City of the Official Plan policies; and how built form equals density; tall buildings for high-density areas (transit nodes) and mid-density (or gentler density) for Avenues. We reminded them of current developments adjacent to and across Yonge Street from the 2079-2111 Yonge Street project that are also 12 storeys, not 26. By showing them there was no need to go up to 26 storeys (or 29 as initially proposed) we demonstrated that the project could fit into the policies of the Official Plan…and isn’t that a relief.
Image: SEDRA rendering showing the SAME density in 12 storeys,
on the same area as the proposed 29-storey project
The reluctance of City Planning to reject the tall building proposal of 29 storeys was due to their resistance to challenge the planning regime of the Province that was promoting housing, housing and more housing. This was being interpreted by City Planning that if they were to reject this application, they would inevitably lose at the Ontario Lands Tribunal (OLT) where the developer could appeal if they weren’t allowed to have their tall building approved. SEDRA was given the opportunity to present the midrise alternative to the developer, along with Community Planning and Urban Design departments. Shock appeared again when it was clear that there was no interest in the room for looking at midrise as a ‘required’ built form. There was no interest to defend the Official Plan.
So, the question arises again; what kind of city are we building? If it’s not as described in the Official Plan, then what is it?
What SEDRA finds saddest when asking this question is that the voice of the community is not being heard. Our voice is contained in and bolstered by the Official Plan, a document created through countless exchanges between communities, city planners and development industry representatives. For us, the Official Plan is an agreed-to road map for building our city on shared principles, as understood by the community, the city and the development industry. We can all play by the same rules, so to speak. We can all answer that question in the same way and point to the Official Plan as evidence that we can all agree. In fact, so too should the Province as the Official Plan is updated to address their planning directives. It does raise yet another question: if the Province approves the Official Plan as meeting all their initiatives for more housing (i.e. density) then what is the planning rationale for not building to the Official Plan?
SEDRA has followed through on the available avenue to challenge this tall building on Yonge Street. We have gone to the OLT to voice our concern. But we know there is no chance of a win here, not when our natural ally the City won’t fight for the Official Plan. Our only course is to write this article and bring it to the public’s attention: the stability of seeing midrise built form on Avenues is in danger.
That is, of course, if you are concerned about what kind of city we are building.