A redevelopment proposal sparks the opposite of NIMBYism
Plans to upscale the grimy Palace Arms upset the neighbours. What would become of the people who had lived there for years?
The owner of an aging rooming house at King Street West and Strachan Avenue slated for redevelopment has agreed to replace the square footage of the 90 original dwellings to provide affordable housing in the new building.
The property owner, Intentional Capital, wants to turn the Palace Arms into townhouse units, as well as market and affordable rental apartments. A total of 190 new units are planned.
Initially there were no plans to include affordable units in that mix.
But after pressure from the local community and city councillor the landowner is now pledging to create 15,000 square feet —3,000 more than what was there originally — that could, depending on city money, provide space for 60 bachelor units, up from the 31 affordable units proposed by the landowner earlier in February.
The units would be affordable for 40 years with help from city of Toronto funding and will be rent geared to income during that period.
The original 90 rooming house units are in a state of disrepair and about four tenants currently rent a handful of them.
But a group of local homeowners and renters were upset by the proposal when it called for 31 units and fewer, claiming those numbers fell far short of the original 90 units.
“We’re losing affordable units. They’re not being replaced,” Amy Miranda said in a telephone interview earlier this month.
“We bought property in an area with a lot of affordable housing,” says Miranda, adding “that’s exactly what we’re asking for.”
But at this week’s meeting of the Toronto and East York Community Council, an amended proposal by Intentional Capital upped the space for affordable units.
The proposal, approved unanimously by the community council, goes before city council next month.
Joe Cressy, the city councillor for the area, calls the company’s latest proposal a “significant improvement” from what was originally on the table.
Intentional Capital says it wants to maintain the south and west walls of the Palace Arms, and build retail and live/ work townhouse units at ground level. The market and affordable rental apartments would be built into the heritage building and above.
Residents continue to also complain about the height — 14 floors — and proposed look of the new building.
“I think it (the design) is ugly and will be an eyesore when it’s finished,” says Carol Martin, one of the local residents.
“The addition doesn’t work at all with the existing Victorian building and disrespects the architecture of one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city.”
”If you were listening to us, you would know that the buildings in nearby blocks are shorter than 14 floors and you still approve this construction,” one local resident Roselby Rodriguez said in a letter Wednesday afternoon to Cressy after the community council meeting.
Intentional Capital and the architect Sweeny and Co Architects did not respond to interview requests for this story. But in planning documents Intentional Capital argues the proposal will fit in well with the surrounding area.
Eddie, who asked that his real name not be used, pays $600 a month rent in the Palace Arms, a large three-storey building on the northeast corner.
The 63-year-old has lived there for nearly 30 years and was a resident of the rooming house when it was a bustling hive and most of its 90 rooms were occupied.
“Some people rented for a week, others rented long term. We were all of the same cut — one step away from real disaster,” he recalls.
Formerly drug- and alcoholdependent, Eddie now lives on ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) due to his mental health issues.
His one room on the third floor includes his bed, easy chair and television. There are two shared bathroom/showers on the floor. He cooks with a microwave oven and electric fry pan.
Over time, residents left of their own volition. According to reports in other media, some were forced out by previous owners.
Eddie doesn’t want to move. “I don’t mind it here in the least,” he says.
Amy Miranda, the local homeowner, worried that people like Eddie won’t be able to afford the new units.
“A lot of these people don’t have the resources to maintain a larger unit,” she says.
But Cressy says the fact the new units will be rent geared to income should allay those concerns.
The Palace Arms, now in a bad state of repair, sits in a neighbourhood featuring condos, small auto repair shops, low-income housing, as well as row houses and 6,000-square-foot homes.
The original building was demolished in the 1880s and rebuilt 10 years later. It was a hotel and tavern before becoming a rooming house in the 1970s.
Before the site went on the market around 2016, the city only had a policy pertaining to the replacement of rental housing units — not dwelling rooms like those at the Palace Arms, with shared facilities like washrooms or shared living and dining areas.
The rental replacement policy says a developer looking to redevelop a building with six or more apartment units is required to replace all of those rental units at the same rents.
But before 2019 there was no city policy for the replacement of dwelling rooms, licensed or unlicensed. (The Palace Arms isn’t licensed, the city of Toronto says.)
Cressy says that around the time the Palace Arms was going up for sale, he and other councillors including Mike Layton, then the representative for the ward, city planning staff and housing advocates worked together to initiate a policy that includes dwelling rooms.
“Dwelling housing serves as a critically important piece in the spectrum of affordable housing,” Cressy says.
“In the years leading up the Palace Arms sale we had lost in the city all sorts of affordablehousing dwelling rooms that were much needed. Like the old Waverly Hotel. They were not apartment buildings, but they were used as housing.
“But the law didn’t (require) them to be replaced,” Cressy says.
According to city planning department data, between 2014 and 2016, 266 affordable dwelling rooms were lost to redevelopment. Only 16 were replaced.
City council adopted the new, formal policy on dwelling house replacement in 2019. An official plan amendment was adopted unanimously by council. But then came a hitch. The new policy has been appealed to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT) — the quasi-judicial body that has the last say in land planning disputes — by a small number of landowners, including owners of existing rooming houses.
They’re objecting because in the event their land is redeveloped, they would be required under the city’s new policy to replace lost dwelling rooms and
provide tenant assistance to affected tenants.
That assistance would enable dislodged tenants to pay the same rent in their new residence as their former, and the ability to return, post-construction, to their former residence at the same rent.
Or as Cressy puts it, “more affordable housing means less profits for developers.”
So for now, legally speaking, the dwelling house policy can’t be enforced by the city and the landlord of Palace Arms isn’t required to replace rooming houses lost to redevelopment.
But Cressy says the issue didn’t end there, as far as he was concerned.
He says that at the Palace Arms there was 12,000 square feet of housing provided, so the policy, if in force, would have required the exact replacement in dwelling rooms or bachelors.
“As the local councillor who ultimately has a say over which developments get approved or not, if you want my support, (the minimum 12,000-squarefeet replacement) is required. That is what I told the applicant, what I’ve told staff and I’ve told the community.”
Last October, a revised application for Palace Arms proposed 4,500 square feet of affordable housing, but with a separate entrance from the market units — a source of contention for Cressy and locals in the community.
In December 2020, the firm brought forward a new application, this time with 8,000 square feet of affordable housing integrated in the building and no separate entrances.
The 15,000 in the final proposal was agreed on recently.
The city will be providing just under $8 million for the space, including through the waiving of fees to the developer. The final rent geared to income amounts the city will contribute will vary year to year, Cressy says.
City money would go toward securing the space for cheaper rent and construction capital, with the funds coming from incentives including savings to the landowner in waived development fees, property tax relief and capital contributions from the city, Cressy says.
In terms of the particulars of the layout of the new affordable units — how large, self-contained units or simply dwelling rooms, etc. — these are issues pertaining to the design and operating model of the units that “we will undertake with the city’s housing office and nonprofit housing partners,” Cressy adds.
Meanwhile, residents in the area are also worried about the proposed 14-storey height in terms of shadows, additional parking and congestion.
“It definitely needs to be lower in height, a design more sympathetic to the original (building) in some way,” says Carol Martin. “I guess it was never built with the idea of putting another building on top of it.”
In its planning documents, the landowner argues that the property represents a “significant underutilization of land and infrastructure,” and goes on to say the proposal would be located on an avenue where “growth is anticipated in the form of mixed-use development, with an emphasis on residential growth.”
The relationship of the proposed building to its surroundings is in keeping with that of other buildings along King Street West, the property owner argues.
Once the city green lights the project, the remaining few residents at the Palace Arms, including Eddie, would be relocated.
A tenant relocation and assistance plan that is part of the proposal would give the remaining handful of tenants benefits including the right to:
Return to one of the new affordable rental dwelling units in the new 14-storey building;
Receive a monthly rent-gap payment from the date they provide vacant possession until the new affordable bachelor rental dwelling units are made ready for occupancy.
So it looks like the tenants, including Eddie, may soon be on the move.
“I like it here,” Eddie says. “My doctors, dentist, everything is nearby. The problem is where are they going to send me? Out to the boonies?”