You four may be of the same mind when it comes to your dislike for this design, and you're not alone, but…
The City has a limited ability to control architecture. They do what they can through the Design Review Panel process, a peer review system with no authority to compel changes and which depends upon the willingness of the applicants to take the advice of the DRP. The City does look at "view vistas" and shadow studies as those items can be reduced to mathematical equations which correlate to standards: no buildings closer together than X metres so people have a view out their windows, no floor plates larger than X square metres so that shadows move around buildings quickly enough to give all neighbours some sunlight during the day.
I don't know exactly what it is that you're decrying in the design, but the Province would likely have to give the City new powers to dictate whatever changes you might want… and the Province has not shown a willingness to grant municipalities more control over what many consider to be a matter of taste. In our current system the market is supposed to take care of the taste issue: the product wouldn't sell if the public thought by-in-large that a building was ugly. There is so much demand, however, that even if thousands might think a particular design is ugly, you only need hundreds who are happy enough with the design to allow a building to sell.
If it's the materials you're not happy about, (could it be overuse of glass spandrels and aluminum mullions?), the City has no power to stop those materials from being used. The City has enacted a new bylaw which stipulates a 60-40 opaque-transparent exterior for buildings as they can make a legal case for increasing the energy efficiency of building envelops, but the City does not have the power to say "the 60 percent opaque portion must all be limestone or brick". If it's the black and white tinted balcony glazing you're not happy about, then you're completely in the un-legislated territory of taste which the market is supposed to take care of.
In regards to The One, if KWT actually is "hell bent on delaying" it, (no doubt she would disagree with the way you have characterized her stance), then it's not because of The One's architectural qualities which she cannot control, but because of planning concerns that she can. Both she and the mayor have said The One has to go through the planning process like everyone else, something that has only come up because of the haste with which Stollerys' stone façade was dismantled. Sure Mizrahi had the demolition permits, but were people on the sidewalks properly protected when the demolition team initially went in with crowbars? It didn't look like it…
42
