Any lawyer, any planner, any expert witness sent by the City to the OMB to argue a case is obligated to do their best. I'd say that you may have a feeling that the City isn't trying hard enough, but I suspect that those who have had experience in the cases would not agree.
I think the problem is that the City argues that the land should remain as the same kind of employment—industrial in the Mondelez and Celestica instances—and that's why it has lost at times. The OMB weighs that against the Places To Grow Act which stipulates that we have to intensify, and the board sees that industrial land is typically quite land intensive for each job it supports. Retail and Office commercial employment land uses typically provide many more jobs per acre, and the OMB understands that as a way to accomplish intensification. Since you can provide more jobs in less space, that opens space for residential and other uses on the land.
In regards to the City wanting to preserve commercial office and retail zoning in the sub-centres, I get that, but development is not just a matter of planning concerns, it's a matter of economic forces too.
The business side of things goes like this: industrial firms can rarely afford to set up in the 416 now because of land prices and taxes, so these lands typically have a difficult time finding new owners to perpetuate the earlier land use. Instead we end up with owners seeking land uses that provide a greater return on investment, like residential, office space, and retail. Firms looking for office space are finding that their employees, especially younger ones, want to be located in the core. That's made it difficult (but not impossible) to find tenants for all of the office space that is proposed in the sub-centres around the city.
That's been evidenced on this very site, where a planned 25-storey office tower proposal has been sitting inert for years. Now a developer wants to maintain some office space, recognizing that the City won't support the complete removal of commercial office space from this site, while "paying" for the development through the sale of residential condos above.
Personally, I'm not opposed in principal to commercial-only zoning going mixed-use by adding residential. In this case I have no idea if the numbers in this first proposal are "right", or of there should be more commercial, less residential, what have you. That's for the City to figure out, and concerned citizens to voice their opinions on of course… and we will see how the numbers change (or don't) as the proposal progresses through the planning process.
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