Gentrification worries in Little Jamaica
Project applications pile up while city tries to save area’s Caribbean heritage
Developers are threatening to destroy some of the remaining bits of Little Jamaica’s cultural heritage even as the city starts moving on a plan to save it.
According to the city of Toronto, there are 116 development applications for the neighbourhood, some of which would be large, new developments. Of the total applications, 75 are smaller changes to existing buildings, such as adding a storey (minor variances), and 41 are planning applications.
The study that will ultimately lead to a formal plan for preserving Little Jamaica and the Eglinton West neighbourhood as a whole is in its initiation stage, but the timeline for how long it’s expected to take is undetermined.
As development projects are piled up in the area, urban planners question why the city can’t pause the development and what will even be left of the vibrant Caribbean enclave by the time the study is complete.
Keisha St. Louis-McBurnie, urban planner at Urban Strategies, is among those puzzled that the city will not press pause on development. She said the city should invoke the interim control bylaw, under Section 38 of the Planning Act.
“It’s something that happens all the time in smaller municipalities,” she said. In Toronto, though, it’s rare and Little Jamaica is far from alone in the neighbourhoods that need help.
“When we look at Chinatown, (the community) has been asking for similar permission while the city undertakes its own cultural heritage study, and the response has often been that it is not appropriate,” added St. Louis-McBurnie, who worked with Black Urbanism TO (BUTO) to analyze how planning practices in both Ontario and Toronto are responsible for gentrification and displacement in Little Jamaica.
A city spokesperson told the Star the bylaw is often raised and discussed with local communities and ward councillors, but noted there is no application form or formal request on file for the city to implement an interim control bylaw in Chinatown.
Gregg Lintern, the city’s director of community planning, said the city is taking measures to preserve Little Jamaica but using the interim control bylaw isn’t the answer.
The bylaw, he said, is designed to “fix something that’s broken” in the existing zoning of the area as it pertains to land use rather than stop development altogether.
For example, if an auto body shop has been approved for the area but residents are opposed because of noise or some other factor, the city would put a pause on all auto body shops while it surveys the area to see if that is appropriate land use for the community.
“That’s the intent of interim control — it puts a pause, by actually removing the permission on a temporary basis for a land use,” Lintern said.
In the case of Little Jamaica, that’s not appropriate, he added, because community residents are not opposed to the types of land use, like retail or residential, but rather opposed to the scale and nature of development.
The Little Jamaica and Eglinton West Neighbourhoods study started after two motions passed in September 2020 urgently called on the city for action amid rapid and massive change to the area resulting from years of neglect, ongoing development, the Eglinton LRT construction and the ensuing COVID-19 pandemic.
The study focuses on the area between the Allen Expressway and Keele Street along Eglinton Avenue West. Also being considered for inclusion are connecting streets like Oakwood Avenue and Caledonia Street and portions of surrounding neighbourhoods.
In the end, the study is expected to lead to a framework for designating the area a “cultural district,” supporting the area’s Black-owned businesses, celebrating the area’s culture and conducting a survey to find buildings or landscapes that could be protected under Ontario’s heritage conservation rules.
Nemoy Lewis, a Little Jamaica native and assistant professor at the school of urban and regional planning at Ryerson University, struggles to see the city’s opposition to using the interim control bylaw, especially since it was used in 2013 to stop a proposed RioCan development in Kensington Market.
RioCan submitted plans to the city to build a three-storey retail complex between 410 and 440 Bathurst St., with a Walmart on the top two floors. The interim control bylaw was invoked in unison with local residents banding together with protests and petitions.
Eventually, developers backed down from the plan.
“In the context (of Kensington Market), it was used to protect the character and the community’s place in the broader fabric of the city,” Lewis said. “And I’ve seen other municipalities invoke the use of the interim control bylaw.”
When asked about the use of the bylaw in Kensington, a city spokesperson told the Star it was initiated along the Bathurst Street corridor “in response to the as-of-right ‘retail warehouse’ permission in the Zoning Bylaw and the need to study it further,” adding, “that isolated issue is not the intent of the Little Jamaica initiative.”
The planning approach to Little Jamaica is reactionary instead of preventive, Lewis said.
“If you are doing research to understand some of the issues that are plaguing the community, how are you giving developers so much access to the community and if so, are (they) going to try and fix something after (they) realize it’s broken?”
The city, he said, “is not planning for the long-standing residents that are living in these communities, but instead they are planning for the people who want to live in these communities.”
He pointed to the “proliferation of non-traditional landlords,” which he described as asset management firms, private equity firms, hedge funds and public pension funds.
“They’ve taken advantage of the Eglinton Crosstown (LRT) as an upgrade or infrastructure investment,” Lewis said. “As a result, they turn multi-family buildings into profit generating assets, which exacerbate the affordability problems in the community, and in turn, push a lot of low-income and working class households out of the community and attract more higher income households. This further displaces longstanding residents in the community.”
Lintern said the city is being proactive in informing developers about its goals for preserving Little Jamaica’s cultural heritage.
Earlier this year, for example, approval for development of a nine-storey mixed-use building near Eglinton and Dufferin came with a mandate to contribute $150,000 to support the outcome of the Little Jamaica study.
To Lewis, the community benefit method is putting the cart before the horse. He said a moratorium should have been placed on development when the Eglinton Crosstown plan was first introduced in April 2009.
“How are you going to benefit when your culture and the heritage of the community itself is lost?” questioned Lewis, insinuating that with all the development that has, and will continue to, come into the area, it would be a lost cause to try and make things better when it could have been prevented.
“On top of this,” he added, “are the people going to be around to actually benefit from these investments?”
Community residents are not opposed to the types of land use, like retail or residential, but rather opposed to the scale and nature of development, the chief of community planning says