OMB approves Don Mills condominium plans & Arena

May 27, 2010

OMB approves Don Mills condominium plans . Cadillac Fairview's plans to redevelop the lands around the former Don Mills Centre with highrise condominiums has received final approval from the Ontario Municipal Board.
The decision was delivered in a May 25 decision document by OMB vice chair Jan Seaborn. It paves the way for Cadillac Fairview to begin work on condominiums at the Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue site, formerly the Don Mills Centre shopping mall.
The project will see condominium towers next to the new Shops on Don Mills retail centre. Some of the buildings will be quite tall, ranging in height between 12 and 24 storeys.
Cadillac Fairview will also pay $4.5 million toward building a new arena in the area, and provide a $17 million community centre to the city.
Council signed off on that deal in February of this year - but other parties from the community continued to press objections to the project.
In the decision document, Seaborn said long-time resident and former politician Dennis Timbrell argued that the project was too dense for the surrounding area, that the arena wasn't helpful to the community, because there wasn't space in the area to build it.
Seaborn ruled the project could go ahead.
"Simply put, no real purpose would be achieved by sending the matter back to Council," wrote Seaborn. "There was no evidence of impact other than the suggestion that the re-development is too dense and the residential buildings too high. I cannot accept, based on what is before me, that this is the case."
source: inside toronto.
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Don Mills Civiatan Arena
Frustration over the city's ongoing inability to find a site to house a replacement for the aging Civitan Arena erupted at North York community council this week.
"How many years have we been at this now?" said Don Valley East Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, suggesting city staff are dragging their feet on the issue.
"I'm actually quite annoyed and disappointed. It is a solvable problem if you want to solve it. We've been long on excuses, short on results."
Councillors said it's time to ramp up the search by investigating more creative locations, including land at the Ontario Science Centre and unnamed sites the Don Mills Civitan Service Club has in mind.
So far, all the identified potential spots, including at the Shops at Don Mills and a controversial proposal at the southwest corner of Don Mills Road and Hwy. 401, have come up bust.
A report to the Tuesday, May 25 meeting of community council identified more potential locations, including the southwest corner of Hwy. 401 and Don Mills Road, land beside Leaside Memorial Gardens at 1075 Millwood Rd., the northwest corner of York Mills Road and the Don Valley Parkway loop, Sunnybrook Park and Bond Park.
But the report also outlined problems with proceeding with any of those options.
With the 50-year-old Civitan Arena at 1030 Don Mills south of Lawrence Avenue scheduled to shut in 2020 and construction of a new arena expected to take three or four years, councillors stressed a new site needs to be ready to go by 2015.
"If we continue the course we're on now, we're not going to end up with a good solution," said Don Valley West Councillor Cliff Jenkins, who directed staff to come back with a report investigating more creative solutions by next February.
"I think it is important that we need to keep the heat on this time. Ten years are going to go by in no time. There is no time to lose on this."
Fellow Don Valley West Councillor John Parker said it was recently brought to his attention by the city's real estate division that there is a parking lot at the north end of the Science Centre that the organization has failed to pay the city rent on for many years.
The land is now being turned over to the city's Build Toronto, whose mandate is to turn under-utilized sites into money-makers for the city.
The parking lot could be used for a new arena because it is well served by transit and there are no nearby residents to disturb, Parker said.
"I see it as a highly viable site," he told The Mirror.
He said he's been surprised by the city's lack of ambition in finding a new site.
"I don't see a conscious desire to stall but there is no effort to discussing alternatives," he said.
"I put it down to inertia."
If a new arena is not up and running by 2020, there's a good chance the Civitan club will fold, David Croutch, president of the Don Mills Civitan Hockey League, told The Mirror.
The hockey league is the club's largest program, serving 500 children a year, many of them needy.
"We have until 2020 to get the hell out of Dodge," said Croutch, who doesn't believe city staff grasp the importance of the issue.
Civitan has several potential locations for a new arena in mind, but won't name them because it fears driving up the price.
Croutch said he hopes the city will work closer with the club to find a site for the new arena. end
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Plans to build a four-pad hockey arena in Toronto's port lands will be finalized this summer in a public consultation with neighbours and stakeholders before coming to the August meeting of Toronto's Executive Committee.
That was the word from the city's Community Development and Recreation Committee Wednesday, May 26 as they got their first public discussion about plans for the $34 million waterfront facility.
The sports facility has generated controversy over the past few weeks, as a plan emerged to build the four-pad arena at the corner of the Don Roadway and Commissioners Street. That plan would have seen a giant parking lot stretching south to the shipping channel - in a configuration that critics said would be better in a suburban environment than as a signature piece in Toronto's waterfront.
Architect Ken Greenberg quit the project, saying the four pads needed to be stacked to two storeys to make a more compact and appropriate design.
That design is now on the table. But the committee heard that stacking the pads could drive the cost far beyond its budget. Parks general manager Brenda Patterson told the committee a second-storey pad costs 50 per cent more to build than one on ground level.
Designers are also looking at moving some of the approximately 200 parking spaces - a number revised down from earlier reports of more than 400 parking spaces - underneath the structure.
When everything is tallied in, Patterson said it would be very difficult to build the project for under $34 million, and even if the city found room to finance it, the city would be hard-pressed to allocate it to that single arena.
"We have arenas, pools, community centres, a whole host of infrastructure needs and we would need to make sure those needs were addressed," said Patterson. "Right now there is a limited amount of funding in parks, forestry and recreation's capital budget."
The committee also dealt with the location. Several members wanted to know whether other sites - such as the decommissioned Hearn generating station - might be a better location. But staff said the spot would need sewer service and a wider road. And they pointed out the Commissioners site is convenient to the Don Valley Parkway, so the facility might serve more of a regional area.
Local councillor Paula Fletcher said she supported the location.
"I think this site as a transition piece between the major film production facility to the north and residential to the south is not a bad plan - it's not a bad thing to go there," she said. "I will say there's a huge opportunity here."
Several deputations said the site would act as an important pressure valve for the growing demand for ice time.
"The lack of affordable ice owned by the city is a problem for families," said Roanne Argyle, whose daughter plays in the East York Girl's Hockey League. "We think the construction of a four-pad facility in south central Toronto will provide many things, including providing hockey clubs with a first class facility for tournaments - and it will act as a pressure valve for the community."
The matter will next be coming to Toronto's Executive Committee in August - at which point councillors will be asked to approve a final design for the project, and also have a clearer idea of the final cost.
source inside toronto