Atwood, neighbours pen a great NIMBY story
Last month, I honestly believed I had encountered the NIMBY (not in my backyard) story to top all NIMBY stories. I wrote about a group of angry residents in Toronto’s eastend Beach neighbourhood who opposed a water sports rental kiosk on the public beach adjacent to their homes because it obstructed their view of Lake Ontario. It doesn’t get more crotchety or entitled than this, I thought to myself, as I sized up the “eyesore” where kids rented paddleboards and kayaks, an obstruction about as offensive as an ice cream truck on a tree-lined suburban street. Boy, was I wrong. Enter the true NIMBY story to top all NIMBY stories: Canada’s literary/grocery store elites vs. one midrise condominium.
According to an article published in the Star this week, a group of high-profile Toronto residents are fighting the construction of a proposed midrise condo development in their Annex neighbourhood because, if built, they worry the eight-storey condominium at 321 Davenport Rd. will be “a hulking presence” that may do great damage to the neighbourhood’s vibe and the residents therein.
Those opposed to the development include novelist Margaret Atwood; photographer Scott McFarland, his wife, Cleophee Eaton (of the department store Eatons); and, ironically, a CEO whose company produces ready-to-eat rotisserie chickens that are a weeknight staple in the diet of probably every condo dweller in the city: Galen Weston Jr., chairman and president of Loblaw Cos. Ltd.
In fact, here’s Weston and his wife, Alexandra, writing about the proposed condo development like it’s a proposed apocalypse, in a June email to Toronto city councillor Joe Cressy: The development, “designed as is, will change the neighbourhood in such a negative capacity and 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. This building is an invasion on our privacy, our community and an environmental assault on our neighbourhood.”
That bit about “invasion on our privacy” is, I suspect, a reference to the proposed condominium’s balconies; the fear being, presumably, that condo residents might be able to peer into the backyards of Canada’s rich and famous.
As someone who lives in a condo roughly the size of a shoebox that has no balcony to speak of and looks out onto a brick wall and a dumpster, I can’t say I am sympathetic to the Annex residents’ plight. I’m not complaining.
I own my condo and am, thus, extremely fortunate, crappy view and all. But a condo is, at this rate, all I will ever own because despite having a pretty decent job (I am getting paid right now, can you believe it?) my buying a house in this city is a goal not unlike purchasing a yacht or winning the lottery. In other words, home ownership in Toronto is for the very rich or the very lucky, à la Weston, Atwood et al.
This is probably why the Annex residents are taking such heat on social media right now for their pleas to halt the Davenport development; a development proposal, it’s worth noting, for a boutique building of 16 luxury condos. Can you imagine what their reaction might be to a proposal for a highrise packed full of units? Yeah, probably not so great. But for many Torontonians who don’t own homes, it’s difficult to accept that there are people so obliviously entitled, that rather than throw a block party celebrating the fact that they own houses with backyards in the fourth largest city on the continent, they’ve chosen to make a stink about the possibility that someday down the line, someone standing on a balcony will be able to peer into their yards and see them barbecuing corn.
What makes this story doubly infuriating is the fact that it’s unfolding not in a quiet corner of the city, but in a central neighbourhood accessible by subway and within walking distance to a major university. Beachers, for all their entitlement, do live a ways away from the downtown core and getting to the Beach is a mission for many Torontonians. It’s easy then, to see how Beach residents might be able to trick themselves into thinking they live on a private island. But the same simply cannot be said about some Annexers who live in the middle of a bustling metropolis, yet demand private island treatment.
I say if they want private island treatment, they should go ahead and establish a private island. In fact, I have a development proposal of my own: I propose that in the spirit of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (in which religious fanatics establish a theocratic state called the Republic of Gilead in the former United States), the Annexers opposed to urban development establish their own little republic right here in Toronto: the Republic of NIMBYISM. A Republic where low density is the law! A Republic free of condominiums, both midrise and high! And most importantly, a Republic free of spies perched on balconies! Praise Be.