Downsview plan concerns residents
Compromise between city, developer sets stage for live-work-play hub
A compromise between the city of Toronto and two major landowners is set to unlock 520 acres for a massive — and controversial — urban transformation of Downsview.
Toronto’s chief planner, city councillors and the owners of the to-be-decommissioned Bombardier plant and adjacent lands say the stage is set for new transit-rich, live-work-play, walkable neighbourhoods on the site that include affordable housing.
Some residents, wary of broken promises over neighbouring Downsview Park and the quality of neighbourhoods already built, fear an existing plan and safeguards are being torn up to appease and enrich wellconnected, deep-pocketed interests.
The project now almost free to unfold — in districts, over decades, after community consultation and a raft of city hall approvals — is one of North America’s largest urban development sites, as big as Toronto’s downtown core.
City councillors voted 24-0 in favour of a city staff recommendation to settle a zoning fight with Canada Lands, the federal Crown agency that manages Downsview Park plus 150 acres of developable land now zoned non-residential.
They agreed to a negotiated settlement with Canada Lands and Northcrest Developments — a development firm created by the public pension plan that bought the 370-acre Bombardier site in 2018 for $816 million. The agreement covers their combined 520 acres north of Highway 401 and west of Allen Road — but not Downsview Park itself.
Canada Lands has for years been at a provincial planning tribunal fighting the city’s “employment lands” designation, used by the city to keep jobs in Toronto, after developers transformed manufacturing sites into more profitable condos. Both sides say they will ask the tribunal at a March 4 hearing to declare the issue settled.
Gregg Lintern, Toronto’s chief planner, told council the city was able to agree with the landowners on a framework setting the stage for some home-building, but only after they meet thresholds for creation of commercial space with jobs.
In exchange for giving up the “employment lands” designation, Lintern said the city and residents get controlled growth with a net increase in jobs, plus parks and so-called “15-minute communities” where residents can walk between work, shops and schools.
The framework sets out a process to ensure adequate roads, sewers and other services including parks, schools and daycares, are built into the communities.
Fees attached to development will help pay those costs, but city councillors acknowledged that a community centre strongly desired by residents, with an estimated $65-million price tag, will likely require provincial or federal funds.
The framework “offers a good package of city-building initiatives that we’ll advance into the secondary plan process,” Lintern said, referring to the local land-use blueprint that must be rewritten, with community consultation, before any homes can be built.
What the legal framework does not do is set out what types of homes can be built or many other details, which will be hammered out in the city’s new secondary plan and then separate district plans requiring city approval.
“We don’t know how many housing units will be there, the built form, how high they will go, how many one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms,” said James Pasternak, the local councillor who supports the redevelopment.
“Any reasonable residential (development) will be a combination of housing options that will respect the local community, provide affordable options, but not over-intensify” the area, said the Ward 6 York Centre representative.
Pasternak said he and other city officials feared Toronto could “lose badly” at the tribunal and be stuck with dense residential development without guarantees of accompanying parks and services.
That’s partly because the sparsely populated area is unusually well served by transit — three subway stops plus a GO station — and the Ontario government is on record wanting to fast-track new housing stocks near transit stations.
Pasternak said Downsview residents want jobs but not heavy industry, which is banned in the framework. The land uses that are allowed include light manufacturing, research and development, media, “vertical agriculture,” offices and retail.
The framework requires at least 12 million square feet of non-residential development, which officials say could host 20,000 to 30,000 jobs over a build-out expected to span decades.
There are about 4,000 jobs on the site now, mostly at Bombardier, which is moving airplane production to a site at Pearson airport by late 2023.
For development, the gamechanger is the scrapping of an on-site airport and 2.25-kilometre runway. Air traffic meant strict restrictions for building heights.
Pasternak said he’ll push Canada Lands to add to Downsview Park greenspace to get it closer to a once-promised 320 acres. The framework calls for a network of parks through the new communities to connect with Downsview Park.
“The dilemma is you’re not going to get a community centre and you’re not going to get a daycare or more parkland if it remains all employment lands,” because fees from lucrative residential development defrays city costs, he said. “This can be a new deal for Downsview. It will not be rushed, every voice will be heard.”
But there is deep distrust in a community that was long promised Downsview Park would be akin to High Park or better, and where the spectre of homes amid industry recalls the deadly Sunrise Propane explosion of 2008.
“That’s part of the problem — there is no trust in how this land gets developed,” said Paul Di Prospero, a resident and project co-ordinator for the Wilson Village BIA merchants’ association.
Park promises unfulfilled by Canada Lands and its Stanley Greene neighbourhood — “long consultation and then stacked townhouses surrounded by mud for years, with no access to walk to anything” — left many frustrated, he said.
Word that Canada Lands and Northcrest were “getting into bed together” followed by talk of a confidential settlement with the city — details became public several days after the recent council vote — has heightened distrust, Di Prospero said.
“The community feels left out,” and Wilson Avenue business owners who rely on trade from Bombardier workers are worried, Di Prospero said.
But Elizabeth Jassem, an architect and founder of a seniors’ group who lives on the east side of Allen, calls the plan “good human-centred development.”
“Even if they build towers, I don’t mind — they have to make a profit and we will keep them accountable to provide space for seniors to meet, daycares.”
Maria Augimeri, who long represented the area on council before losing to Pasternak in 2018, when the Ford government cut the number of wards, called the city-landowner agreement disastrous.
She brands it “1950s piecemeal planning” with “factories next to kitchen windows” and accused Downsview leaders of “selling out” to big-money interests.
Augimeri told the Star she had plans in motion to make Downsview Park “like Central Park, á la New York, on both sides of the CN tracks” that run through the centre of the site. “I’m heartbroken — it’s all lost.”
Canada Lands said two neighbourhoods, William Baker for which a seniors’ village is proposed, and the nearby Allen District, are “undergoing separate (development) processes” and are not part of the 520-acre development site.
Chris Eby, who in 2018 left his job as Mayor John Tory’s chief of staff to become Northcrest’s executive vice-president of public and corporate affairs, said he understands the concerns, but they are unfounded.
“We’re committed to the longterm, we’re not in this for a quick land sale or a quick flip — we’re long-term investors and long-term landowners,” he said.
“We see our relationship with the communities around us as really important and we’re going to be working with them.”
Homes will be built on the huge site, he said, but responsibly, noting ongoing community consultations and that the city framework requires the landowners to hit commercial development thresholds to expand residential.
Northcrest expects within weeks to start announcing new businesses for the site, Eby said. They could include film and TV studios in or near what will eventually become complete neighbourhoods.
“You won’t need a car — that’s a centrepiece of this plan and that’s what employers are telling us they want” — live-work neighbourhoods as opposed to isolated industrial parks, he said. “I think there’s going to be a range of housing options — lowrise, midrise, maybe some highrise but we’re not at that stage of detail.
“It will be a collaborative process with the community. We’re playing open-hand poker here and this is a 30- or 40-year build-out.”