From the Globe:
BATTLE LINES
The Centre cannot hold ... 32-storey towers
July 28, 2007
THE ISSUE
Cadillac Fairview Corp. wants to add 1,354 residential units, including two 32-storey towers, to its new retail development in the centre of Don Mills.
THE DAVIDS
Residents of Don Mills, Canada's first planned community.
THE GOLIATHS
Cadillac Fairview, city staff and council.
WHERE
Spirale Banquet Hall, 888 Don Mills Rd., 7 p.m.
In a two-hour meeting with nearly 600 Don Millsers - a crowd angry at the latest residential plans for the once and future Don Mills Centre - senior city planner Steve Forrester starts by speaking for 52 minutes.
Since a contentious shopping plaza on the site has already been approved, the issue tonight is the adjacent condos. There are too many of them, people think, and the towers are too high. After that, architect Ralph Giannone talks, with the help of a CGI aerial tour of the proposed development, until 8:21 p.m. When the people finally get to speak, there are only 39 minutes of scheduled time left.
The moderator, planning manager Susan Smallwood, quickly starts dispensing with answers, moving from question to question to speed things up. But instead of yelling and screaming, as might happen at other public meetings, people start leaving. They've been hearing proposals since 2001. By 2004, though the plan had morphed into retail and residential mid-rises looking like the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, people didn't want change, and they fought it down.
Now, it seems Cadillac Fairview has thrown up its hands and is going for broke, adding anomalously high towers to the already approved American-style, town-centre complex. If it is being playful by putting in 1,776 parking spots for the condos, no one's chuckling.
People in Don Mills are proud of E.P. Taylor and Macklin Hancock's modernist planning. Says one man who moved to the area in January, 1954, three months after the development was completed, "Let's keep it honest, the way it was, and the way it should be." There is applause and hoots, as there is after almost every resident speaks.
But since the city didn't respond to the proposal within six months, Cadillac Fairview exercised its right to take it straight to the Ontario Municipal Board. Residents must now rely on the developer's desire to make nice, because it no longer has to negotiate.
"It doesn't matter what people say," says one man to the developers and councillors at the head table as he storms out, "you're going to build them anyway." And then he turns to the crowd, "You'll see." The meeting runs an hour late. By the end, there are about 75 people left.
THE ODDS
That Cadillac Fairview will get some major density variance: 1:10.
Bert Archer
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