Item - 2020.SC12.4

The Scarborough Community Council submits the item to City Council without recommendations.

Scarborough Community Council directed:

1. That the City Solicitor, Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning and appropriate City Staff attend a meeting with the local Councillors and the applicant, to discuss a possible resolution in advance of the January 29, 2020 City Council meeting and that the City Solicitor report to City Council at the January 29, 2020 meeting with the outcome of the discussions.

This application proposes to amend the Toronto Official Plan to add a Site and Area Specific Policy (SASP) for the lands known as the Eglinton Square lands (1-70 Eglinton Square, 1431 and 1437 Victoria Park Avenue, 14-26 and 19-23 Engelhart Crescent, and 64-68 Harris Park Drive) to permit a mixed use development.  The SASP would provide for a mixed-use community to develop over time on the lands.  The mixed-use development would include multiple tall buildings with a range of building heights and stacked townhouses with a total of 1,630 residential units and 26,004 m2 of new retail uses proposed to be developed in five (5) blocks.

The Official Plan Amendment (OPA) application was submitted on October 4, 2016, and has been appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), now the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT) citing City Council's failure to make a decision within the prescribed time frames set out in the Planning Act.  The appeal was filed on November 10, 2017.

A related Rental Housing Demolition and Conversion application (File No. 16 230698 ESC 35 RH) under Section 111 of the City of Toronto Act (Chapter 667 of the Municipal Code) was also submitted on October 4, 2016 to allow for the removal of 91 rental units in eight (8) existing apartment buildings, to be replaced elsewhere in the future redevelopment of the site. Review of this application is underway and a decision on this application will be deferred until such time as a decision has been made by the LPAT on the OPA application, and a decision has been made on the Zoning By-law Amendment (17 242390 ESC 35 OZ) application for these lands.

On December 16, 2019, the City received a letter from the applicant's solicitor, being a "with prejudice" settlement offer and formal revision to the application ("Resubmission

Letter"). The Resubmission Letter advised that the applicant has amended its application to include all of its lands inclusive of the existing shopping mall, and excepting the block containing existing rental dwelling units (known as Block E in the original application), including a proposed density of 4.9 times the area of its lands. The letter cites that the reason it is amending its application is because the City asked the applicant to resubmit to include all of its holdings. The City, as common in many applications, requests a block context plan to understand how the development proposal fits within the larger context including other sites. This is especially the case in an emerging development area that will be the subject of major redevelopment in the future. City Staff did not request or invite a resubmission to include the shopping mall block, but only to illustrate the development proposal in the larger context that happens to include lands within the same land holdings as the subject lands.

The Resubmission Letter was not accompanied by any supporting reports or update letters from the original application, as acknowledged in the Resubmission Letter. City Staff are not in a position to adequately review, circulate and comment on the revised proposal given the timelines and lack of a complete submission package. It is unusual to receive a revised submission requesting additional density from an original submission and therefore the original supporting reports cannot be used to support the revised proposal.

Without a circulation and review, City staff cannot support the revisions.  Should the applicant intend to pursue a revision to its application, they should formally resubmit and provide the required documentation for City staff to review and after a reasonable circulation period, City staff will seek further direction. Until that time the City cannot establish a fulsome list of issues in opposition of the revised application at a hearing before the LPAT.  Accordingly, the report largely addresses the original application, however also recommends that the City Solicitor oppose the revised application.

The purpose of this report is to seek City Council's direction for the City Solicitor, together with appropriate City staff and/or external consultants, to attend the LPAT hearing to oppose the application in its current form. City staff have concerns with how the proposed Official Plan Amendment can be supported in the context of the GMSP consultants' reports and recommendations for the broader Golden Mile area and for the subject site.  

The GMSP consultants Transportation Master Plan ("TMP"), Community Infrastructure Strategy and the Master Servicing Plan ("MSP") provide comprehensively analyzed information to assist with the direction on how growth can be accommodated within the Golden Mile Area.  These studies will also be used to inform the emerging policy direction in the proposed Golden Mile Secondary Plan, as presented in the report dated December 20, 2019, and being considered at the January 8, 2020 Scarborough Community Council meeting.  The proposed Official Plan Amendment, in its current form, is not consistent with the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS 2014), does not conform with the Growth Plan (2019), and does not conform to the City's Official Plan.

This report also recommends that the City Solicitor and appropriate City staff be authorized to continue discussions with the applicant in an effort to address the issues outlined in this report.