National Post (National Edition)
Drake’s Bridle Path plans on track
HIP HOP ICON’S RENO CLEARS COMMITTEE HURDLE
For several minutes Thursday, at an old municipal building in the former suburb of North York, all of Toronto’s dankest obsessions emerged. It was a grotesque spectacle, a dark vision of celebrity and compromise and polite accommodation to minor change.
Disgusting, really. But that’s the city, awful as it so often is.
At issue was a matter of minor variance, a request by a numbered company to make zoning changes to a lot in the Bridle Path, Toronto’s fanciest neighbourhood, where the super rich, including Gordon Lightfoot and, for the moment, Conrad Black, live in giant houses on massive lots.
The company in question bought the two-acre lot, and the mid-century bungalow currently on it, in 2015 for $6.7 million. The owner now wants to tear down the house and build something considerably larger in its place.
According to plans filed with the city, the new home, at 21 Park Circle Lane, would contain 21,000 square feet. It would have a full-sized basketball court, a jersey museum, an artifacts room and a bar with separate chambers for “chilled wine” and “chilled champagne.”
As for who the owner is, well, no one can say for sure. But everyone has a pretty good guess.
The numbered company that owns the property is registered in Halifax, N.S. Corporate records there list one Adel Nur as president. Nur, who also goes by the name Future the Prince, is a DJ and manager for Drake, the Toronto born hip hop artist, basketball aficionado and public champion of the city from which he comes. The records also list, as secretary and treasurer, a man with the same business address as NKSFB, the L.A.- based money management firm home to Drake adviser David Bolno.
The proposed mega-house that’ s probably Drake’ s would stretch city zoning rules in several ways. The driveway, at 34 metres, would be too wide, and the roof — almost 17m at its peak — too high. To get around that, the owner asked the city for a series of minor variances, exceptions to the rules, essentially, that would allow construction to go ahead.
On Thursday, the North York panel of the committee of adjustment met to consider those requests, along with several dozen others.
Drake, not surprisingly, did not attend. In his place, or in place of whomever the owner actually is, was Michael Goldberg, principal of Goldberg Group, a land-use and consultation firm in Toronto.
Goldberg presented the committee with several updates to the original plan, made, he said, to accommodate the concerns of neighbours and city staff. The new proposal would reduce the height of the home slightly and ensure the driveway was a more modest width from the street before opening up into a wider courtyard directly in front of the home.
Goldberg also filed letters of support with the committee from adjacent property owners. He called the pro- posed mansion “tailor-made” for the site in question and “very much in keeping with the neighbourhood.”
Maureen Wright, president of the Edwards Gardens Neighbourhood Association, addressed the committee next. She called the Bridle Path a “fairly tight-knit community.” She also pointed out that most of the 1950s-era bungalows in the area had long ago been torn down. Based on the revised proposals filed Thursday, she said, she had no objection to the plans.
Another neighbour, who had also been planning to address the committee, backed out when he saw the changes. Minutes later, the committee voted unanimously to approve the plans.
Goldberg wouldn’t comment afterward. Wright said she didn’t know who owned the lot. Asked if her organization had any issues with a possible celebrity, moving in next door, she pointed out that Prince once lived on the Bridal Path, too. “This is not unusual,” she said. “It’s not an anomaly.”
It’s just Toronto, where celebrity dreams go to be fairly considered and sometimes approved.