‘Assault’ of the eight-storey condo
TO ATWOOD AND FRIENDS, URBAN INFILL IS FOR THE LESS FORTUNATE
In recent years, Margaret Atwood has become a darling of Toronto’s urban progressive set. It started in earnest when the Brothers Ford were eyeing the city library budget, and she launched a petition to keep it whole. When Brother Doug responded that Atwood “could walk by me (and) I wouldn’t have a clue who she is,” people hooted and howled in delight. Atwood’s Twitter account was a reliable source of trite anti-Harperism that used to sustain this crowd, some of whom think The Handmaid’s Tale is more or less what conservatism looks like. Though she once described herself as a Red Tory, there was enough to sustain her impeccable credentials — until now, perhaps.
Atwood owns a home on Admiral Road, which is among the leafiest and loveliest streets in Toronto’s leafy and lovely Annex neighbourhood. (For non-Torontonians: it’s a collection of mediumsized-to-enormous Edwardian, Victorian and stylistically endemic homes, right in the middle of the city. A five-bedroom on a 35-foot Admiral Road lot is currently listed at $3.6 million.)
Some Annexites are in a lather about a planned eight-storey condominium development, the rear of which would look out impudently over Admiral Road’s backyards. In a letter, supermarket magnate Galen Weston and his wife Alexandra complained the building would “change the neighbourhood in such a negative capacity (that it) will devalue all of the assets we currently love about living here.”
“It will no longer be the ideal place for our young family to grow up,” the couple moaned.
Cleophee Eaton, another retail scion, and her husband Scott McFarland complained of privacy violations and demanded that any rear-facing balconies be “Juliette-styled.” (You may gaze briefly upon our magnificence, but not while barbecuing.) Graeme Gibson, Atwood’s novelist husband, alleged the plans “hover close to a brutal and arrogant assault on a community that has been here since the 19th century.” The Westons one-upped that, calling it “an environmental assault on our neighbourhood.”
Atwood’s intervention, by comparison, was relatively subdued. Still, she wrote, “I join my neighbours in their concerns.”
For Toronto progressives, this is apostasy: in their view (and mine), population densification is the only way forward. The city is booming.
Gazillions of people want to live here. There’s nowhere left to put them. Sixty- and 70- and 80-storey residential towers have been sprouting like weeds, and people stand in line to buy the units. And there are inevitably complaints about them, not least from ensconced owners of single-family homes protecting their investments.
But this is an eight-storey building — eight! — and the complainers are well heeled, indeed. If life in the Annex turns out to be unbearable for the Weston clan, they can sell their house for a king’s ransom, muster whatever additional resources might be necessary from the Weston or Bata retail fortunes and move literally anywhere else in the city. They cannot possibly expect sympathy. Yet on Monday, Atwood gamely took to Twitter in an attempt to defend herself from some disappointed fans. It did not go well.
She attempted to draw attention to the plight of several trees that would suffer or give their lives as a result of the development (to be replaced, of course, with other trees). Alas, she suggested some of the trees belong to her “un-rich neighbours.” Nobody owns a house on Admiral Road who isn’t rich by most popular definitions.
The development isn’t “needed,” she said; affordable housing is needed. But all types of housing in Toronto is in short supply — hence the price. Reducing that supply, even by nine units, won’t make anything more affordable for anyone.
The neighbourhood would welcome the building if it were affordable housing, Atwood later suggested … except that wouldn’t address any of the complaints enumerated above. At the low point of the evening, she insinuated journalist Shawn Micallef might be working for the condo developers.
It was all entertaining to watch — not least the apparent surprise with which some discovered Atwood might defend her back yard just like any other NIMBY. Once people get on the real estate ladder, many are capable of heroic logical gymnastics to justify opposing things they might support otherwise — a restaurant patio, a homeless shelter, a mid-rise condo development. It happens everywhere, but it happens spectacularly in Toronto’s unholy mess of a housing debate.
It’s understandable those trying to get a hold of that ladder would take umbrage at the Admiral Road uprising, even if they could never hope to buy one of those new condos. Those are the people the media has focused on most: there must have been 500 “Toronto millennials can’t afford the home they grew up in” stories by now.
I always think how out of touch it must seem to the great many people who grew up perfectly happy, healthy and middle class in rental apartments — which themselves are in terribly short supply in Toronto, and very expensive. If adding nine luxury condo units to a luxury neighbourhood can be such a battle, it’s no wonder Toronto’s larger housing war is one of attrition.