A NIMBY’s tale
In recent years, the Star has often found itself on the same page as the great Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood. Her defence of Toronto’s libraries, for instance, and her campaign for a gender-neutral national anthem were both worthy causes we also fully supported.
But on the question of a proposed condo on Davenport Rd. in the Annex, the author has it wrong.
She, her husband, novelist Graeme Gibson, and Galen Weston Jr., the president of Loblaw, have joined with their neighbours in a campaign of over-the-top NIMBYism to block a proposal to build a modest eight-storey, 16-unit condo at 321Davenport Rd., though this is precisely the sort of building of which the city needs more.
According to a letter by Gibson, the plans “hover close to a brutal and arrogant assault on a community that has been here since the 19th century.” Laying it on even thicker, Weston contends that the “building is an invasion on our privacy, our community and an environmental assault on our neighbourhood.” Predictably, the question of property values was also raised.
The planned location, which is just south of Dupont, is on public transit routes, within walking distance of Bloor Street, Yorkville and the University of Toronto, and within biking distance of much more. The condo would not take the place of some historic building but of a two-storey commercial unit.
In other words, this seems the perfect place to do what planners and environmentalists alike have long been encouraging cities to do: intensify development within existing neighbourhoods to prevent urban sprawl and the attendant increase in pollution and traffic congestion, not to mention the destruction of farm fields, forests and wetlands.
City planners predict Toronto’s population will have grown by about 700,000 people between 2011 and 2041. That’s an increase of roughly 25 per cent.
If these newcomers don’t go into infill housing in the city centre, they will move to new housing being built on its edges, contributing to the real “environmental assault” on our cities: urban sprawl.
The Annex is a beautiful neighbourhood and it is well worth protecting its special qualities. But the proposed development is hardly a "brutal and arrogant" assault on these. Rather, it is a means of providing necessary densification without erecting the sort of glass tower that too often clashes with the character of downtown neighbourhoods.
If Atwood and Weston et al. can’t handle the coming densification, they could always sell their valuable Annex homes and move to the country. As Toronto grows, so-called midrise condos of the sort now in dispute will be essential to ensuring ours becomes a more inclusive, easily navigable and vibrant city.
The Annex is and ought to be home to a rich mix of housing. So what’s with the NIMBYism?