flonicky said:
How can there be NO affordable housing? As someone who doesn't follow the policy details that closely, the TOC designation seems to imply some sort of affordable component, otherwise, aren't they're just "buildings"?
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[Sept. 2023] The ministry stopped short of saying whether affordable housing would be a mandatory component.

"The province will be seeking opportunities to work with the building partner to deliver affordable housing through the commercial agreement, including the potential to provide provincial funding to deliver affordable housing at the site," Sousa-Dias added.
 
flonicky said:
How can there be NO affordable housing? As someone who doesn't follow the policy details that closely, the TOC designation seems to imply some sort of affordable component, otherwise, aren't they're just "buildings"?
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[Apr. 2023] Dakota Brasier, the press secretary for Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney, did not directly respond to concerns that the government was not doing enough to build affordable housing.

Braiser said in a statement that Metrolinx first offers the land to "a list of public institutions including municipalities, school boards, post-secondary institutions, not-for-profit corporations and Indigenous groups. If there is no interest from these groups, Metrolinx then lists the property to be publicly sold at fair market value."

"This transparent, and publicly available process ensures that taxpayer dollars are respected while disposing of surplus properties," she added.

 
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As much as I may enjoy a good demolition -- and I enjoy a good demolition -- I'm still 110% opposed to the wholesale demolition of entire city blocks. That sort of urban renewal nonsense is wrong, it sets a dangerous precedent and it is bad city building. This block is not how you build good urban fabric.

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flonicky said:
As much as I may enjoy a good demolition -- and I enjoy a good demolition -- I'm still 110% opposed to the wholesale demolition of entire city blocks. That sort of urban renewal nonsense is wrong, it sets a dangerous precedent and it is bad city building. This block is not how you build good urban fabric.
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While I agree with you on the idea of block busting for urban renewal, is this not a little bit different with a massive infrastructure project being built for the community that will almost certainly benefit the urban fabric? Yes they probably didn't need this entire space just to build the subway, but its also not tearing out the heart of the community. There are obviously some people who are negatively impacted, but that was always going to be the case in any project this big.

Perhaps you are talking about the actual development that is occurring after the subway is built, in which case, you could be right on, we just wont really know until after how the proposed development will turn out. As someone who lives close by, I am trying to be optimistic. IMO, its not as if anything overtly important has been lost here, although the Home Hardware was handy for me personally.

I just hope having this large area to do all the station work will make things as easy as possible to complete the work.
 
I walk by the Mirvish Village development most days and for me, that's become a good expression of how a lot of development should have been done in the city over the past 50 years. It restores some existing fabric, adds a bunch of density and in exchange for the lost landmark, it provides some new features like the park, the alley of micro-retail, the market area and the mid-block "tunnel" access from Bathurst to Markham .

The prevailing approach at Pape & Danforth is the urban renewal approach: the site and the project is so important that we need to demolish everything and start over with a blank slate. That's urban renewal in a nutshell.

But the treatment of this site implies that it's not important despite being the future intersection of two transit lines. If this was important, there'd be an effort to mitigate the chaos at Danforth and Pape and reconfigure the bus bay. If this was important you could argue for a Mirvish VIllage style development with restoration of some of the old buildings which would find uses because it's going to be a much busier location. If this was important, there would be an affordable housing component.

Taking the most expedient route suggests that this intersection isn't implicitly viewed as important because it's not important right now. But it will be an important intersection and in 10 or 20 years some decision-maker is going to be scratching their head and wondering why this location, which is unique among all of the Ontario Line stations, wasn't taken more seriously when it counted.

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