Developers propose taller towers for Toronto’s Midtown

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Developers in Toronto’s Midtown area have applied to build about 700 more storeys than the city would have allowed in the almost four years since the province intervened to lift the city’s proposed height limits on high-rise sites in the booming district.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark’s sweeping rewrite of Toronto’s proposed Midtown plan, unveiled in June, 2019, was among the first of a series of contentious moves that the Progressive Conservative government has made in the name of alleviating the province’s housing crisis. The measures have included issuing special orders to speed development, opening up parts of the protected Greenbelt and giving mayors new powers.

The area, which extends for 600 hectares and is centred on the busy, construction-clogged intersection of Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue, has long been a battleground between developers and residents’ associations over its mushrooming condo towers. Many complain that subway trains are already jammed, and school boards have long warned prospective residents that local schools are full.

Development projects in Midtown Toronto that have grown taller since the province scrapped city council’s height limits in 2019

Number of storeys applied

for above previous council-

approved limit

5

10

20

30

TORONTO

Detail

North

0

6

KM

Blythewood Rd

Yonge St

Erskine Ave

Broadway Ave

Roehampton Ave

Eglinton Ave E

Soudan Ave

Bayview Ave

Mt Pleasant Rd

Manor Rd E

Millwood Rd

Davisville Ave

Merton St

0

400

m

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:

TILEZEN; OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS;

CITY OF TORONTO

Development projects in Midtown Toronto that have grown taller since the province scrapped city council’s height limits in 2019

Number of storeys applied for

above previous council-

approved limit

5

10

20

30

TORONTO

Detail

North

0

6

KM

Blythewood Rd

Yonge St

Erskine Ave

Broadway Ave

Roehampton Ave

Eglinton Ave E

Soudan Ave

Bayview Ave

Mt Pleasant Rd

Manor Rd E

Millwood Rd

Davisville Ave

Merton St

0

400

m

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN;

OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS; CITY OF TORONTO

Development projects in Midtown Toronto that have grown taller since the province scrapped city council’s height limits in 2019

Blythewood Rd

TORONTO

Detail

North

0

6

Yonge St

KM

Number of storeys applied

for above previous council-

approved limit

5

10

20

30

Erskine Ave

Broadway Ave

Roehampton Ave

Eglinton Ave E

Soudan Ave

Mount Pleasant Rd

Bayview Ave

Manor Rd E

Millwood Rd

Davisville Ave

Merton St

0

400

m

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN; OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS

Before Mr. Clark altered the city’s plan, developers would have faced 15-20-storey height limits on most Midtown sites. Mr. Clark more than doubled those in many instances.

According to numbers from the city, developers on 43 sites in Midtown have since submitted or resubmitted applications that now include 694 more storeys than Toronto’s original rules would have permitted. These figures are as of Sept. 1, 2022, the most recent date compiled figures were available. Assuming 10 units a storey, as is common in the area, it means at least 7,000 more potential housing units. (The province also loosened rules in a similar plan for the city’s downtown).

When the changes to the plans were unveiled in 2019, Toronto’s then-mayor John Tory called Mr. Clark’s unilateral rewrite a “fiat,” complaining that the only heads-up he received was a text from the minister the night before the move was first reported in The Globe and Mail.

Critics say the province’s revisions in Midtown gutted a city plan that still would have allowed for growth well in excess of the province’s minimum targets while aiming to ensure schools, daycares, parks and water and transit infrastructure could keep up. The province’s changes, they say, have left the city scrambling – while handing hundreds of millions of dollars in potential extra profits to developers.

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The minister’s Midtown decision did more than lift the city’s proposed height limits for designated high-rise areas in the district. The extensive line-by-line rewrite – 194 changes in all – also removed or weakened various other provisions, such as requirements for specific setback distances for new buildings. And it deleted provisions aimed at ensuring local schools have room for new students.

The city has spent the past four years revising its infrastructure plans for water and sewer capacity, parks, recreation centres and child care to try to accommodate the province’s changes. Toronto planners are also trying to mitigate some of the effects of the changes by including setback requirements, for example, in zoning bylaws instead.

Mr. Clark declined to be interviewed by The Globe. He has said that this and other policy changes are needed to defeat NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) politicians and residents and reach the government’s goal of getting 1.5 million new homes built over the next 10 years.

The changes in 2019 surprised even planners in Mr. Clark’s own ministry. According to a partly redacted report signed by the province’s planning staff and obtained by The Globe via a Freedom-of-Information request, provincial bureaucrats had “no concerns” with the city’s submitted plan.

However, internal e-mails obtained via a FOI request filed by York University environmental and urban change professor Mark Winfield, who sits on the board of a local residents’ association, show the rewrites were e-mailed to the province’s bureaucrats by a senior adviser in Mr. Clark’s office and were not drafted by the province’s professional planners.

Victor Doyle, a retired senior planner with the Ontario government and a vocal critic of the PC government’s recent policies, said it is unprecedented for such detailed changes to be drafted by a minister’s political staff.

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“Unquestionably, the level of detail in the minister-amended plan is beyond the capacity of anyone in the minister’s office to do,” Mr. Doyle said, suggesting only developers or their consultants would have the required expertise.

Asked who advised the government on the changes, Mr. Clark’s spokeswoman, Victoria Podbielski, replied with an e-mail that did not address The Globe’s questions. She said the changes to Toronto’s plans were to “increase housing supply and leverage the significant investments in transit by intensifying development around major transit-station areas.”

The city’s original Midtown in Focus plan was passed by council after six years of study and consultations with residents and developers. It largely protected existing low-rise neighbourhoods, while allowing for high-rise growth in areas near transit and large intersections. But city council approved a watered-down version: Toronto’s planning department had originally recommended allowing new buildings on some high-rise sites as tall as 56 storeys.

Councillors on the city’s planning committee, at the behest of local Midtown councillors, directed staff to hold an extra meeting with local residents about the plan’s building heights. That resulted in the endorsement of the lower 15-20 storey limits. But even this modified plan would have increased density dramatically – and with the support of local residents’ associations.

“We had very prescriptive policies because we wanted to make the neighbourhood make sense, to have a complete neighbourhood,” local councillor Jaye Robinson said of the council-approved plan. “And they [the province] just loosened the valve completely.”

Developers had called both the city’s original plan and the altered version passed by council too restrictive. Leor Margulies, a real estate lawyer who is the secretary of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), a developer lobby group, said Ms. Robinson’s drive to slash the height limits at the 11th hour was an example of the city’s NIMBY politics.

“It was outrageous,” Mr. Margulies said in an interview. “You’ve got the core of the subway and the LRT. … Look, if you’re not going to build here, where are you going to build?”

The province’s changes went beyond restoring the heights first proposed by city planners. According to an analysis by the city, the rewrite will boost Midtown’s population to 156,000 people by 2051, up from 62,000 in 2016. The total is 20,000 more people than council’s approved plan would have allowed.

Density in Midtown’s designated “urban growth centre,” the area right around Yonge and Eglinton, could go from 575 people and jobs per hectare – already the highest density in the province and well over the provincial government’s minimum target of 400 – to 1,367 people and jobs per hectare. Both of city staff’s original version and the one council passed would have still put this number at more than 1,000, according to an analysis by provincial planners.

Measured over the entire wider district, much of which is covered by affluent neighbourhoods of detached single-family homes, the province’s plan is not that different. The city’s rules would have resulted in 240 people and jobs per hectare, compared with the province’s 248 – both up from the current 140.

Local councillor Josh Matlow, a mayoral candidate, said the “binary” rhetoric of NIMBY versus YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) has obscured the city’s original goals.

“If you are a young parent, you need affordable child care in the area. You want to know that there is a school space nearby. Anyone of us needs a local park,” he said. “That’s what Midtown in Focus was about.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article said Mark Winfield is an urban geography professor. He is in fact a professor of environmental and urban change at York University.