Revitalizing the Regent Theatre
May 18, 2024
Rachel Van Fraassen, Chief of Staff
Councillor’s Office, Ward 15
Rachel.VanFraassen@toronto.ca
Dear Rachel Van Fraassen,
Eglinton Park Residents’ Association (EPRA) has been following the plans for a revitalized Regent Theatre with great interest. To us it has seemed a bold and very welcome project, bringing live theatre and good facilities to Midtown/North Toronto, an ever-growing part of our city where cultural life, the artistic sort especially, remains rather stunted.
Accordingly, the EPRA board were sorry to see the matter go to court, at the request of local residents who felt that their peaceful evenings would be disrupted.
We do hope that their concerns can be accommodated or soothed without derailing what seems to us an excellent project.
We know that SEDRA has been a champion of the theatre’s revival and that, for this case, they have Participant status at the OLT. They are an excellent ally in urban matters; we have long collaborated, at Canada Square especially. EPRA wrote offering our support and they suggested that we write you stating our formal backing for the theatre’s renewal.
Best wishes,
Tom Cohen
EPRA Chair
cc EPRA board, Jane Auster (SEDRA,) John Hyddema (SEDRA), Sharon Mourer (SEDRA), Maureen Kapral (LPRO), Geoff Kettel (FoNTRA)
Canada Square April 2021
Dear Mayor Tory and City Councillors
Your agenda item MM31.27, a motion brought by councillors Matlow and Wong-Tam, is a matter of urgent concern to the members of Eglinton Park Residents’ Association. Our own turf is small, the nine square blocks of Toronto in the northwest corner where Yonge meets Eglinton. We are houses and towers, owners and renters, tucked between Eglinton Park and Yonge. Our small piece of the city will soon have six or more new towers, and the wards to the east and south-east of us have many more.
Yonge and Eglinton has seen extraordinary population grown. Meanwhile, jobs and services are stagnant, and local schools, parks, and community facilities are ever more overladen. To our eye, the big piece of city land, the old TTC bus barns and surface station, is the only place where we can provide those crucial spaces, services, and facilities in ever shorter supply. And the location, the hub, where line 5 will cross line 1, is the perfect spot to build an economic and cultural magnet, not a transfer point.
So it is crucial to step back, think well, consult widely, and gather good advice while things are still fluid. Built form and social function need to fit well.
EPRA, over the past months, has been part of a solid coalition of seven local groups in three wards, six of them RAs, one a condo community. In our alliance, agreement, on this matter is unanimous, and enthusiastic. We are keen to see swift, creative discussion, to make best use of these lands to serve both our very local 9-block residents, and our bustling Midtown, a critical economic, cultural, and social space vital to our whole big city.
Accordingly, we urge you to vote for this motion.
Sincerely,
Tom Cohen
Chair, EPRA
50-60-90 Eglinton West and 17-19 Henning
March 11, 2021
Jason Brander, Planning Department
Dear Jason Brander
EPRA opposes the application. It argues that, at 24 and 32 storeys, the projected towers for Eglinton between Duplex and Henning are already tall enough. They should go no higher. Taller towers would cast longer shadows, loom even higher over adjacent housing, and burden infrastructure. And they would set a precedent, inviting imitation.
Our reasons, laid out in full, address both the history of our engagement in the planning process and the material and social consequences of taller towers.
On March 2, 2021, members of ERPA’s board attended the WebEx public meeting concerning 50-60-90 Eglinton West and 17-19 Henning. And then, on March 8, 2021, the EPRA board, at its monthly meeting, the board discussed our response to Madison’s proposal. As not everyone had managed to attend, often for technical reasons, you sent us a helpful link to a film version of the meeting, and we made sure that all members of the board received it.
EPRA – Eglinton Park Residents’ Association, speaks for the nine square blocks between Eglinton Park and Yonge Street, with Roselawn our northern boundary, and Eglinton our southern limit. We are entirely in Ward 8.
Our association has been deeply involved from the very start in the discussion about the evolving proposal for new buildings on the stretch of Eglinton between Duplex and Henning. In the beginning, only 90 Eglinton West was in question. We had extensive discussions with councillor Christine Carmichael Greb as the project evolved, and we went to the OMB to argue against it, as a building too big, too close, too abrupt, and too far across the Duplex boundary for high-rise buildings.
More or less at the same time as the OMB hearing, we learned that Madison had acquired the Toronto Hydro lands and that it was revising the design in the light of its larger footprint, aiming for two towers on a single podium.
In 2016 or 2017, Councillor Carmichael Greb invited EPRA to a meeting, held in a committee room at North York city hall. Madison sent representatives, and the councillor brought her chief of staff. Al Rezosky came for Toronto Planning. Tom Cohen and Gordon Floyd were there for EPRA. The councillor asked EPRA if it would be willing to accept Madison’s proposal, without protest. Those towers, at 24 and 32, were too tall, we said. Could we push them lower. Al Resozky, the city’s planner told us that the city and Madison had worked extremely hard on the design, with the city pushing for concessions that made the towers thinner, and thus further apart. Those changes, he told us, permitted a shift in the position of the eastern tower to reduce its impact on Henning and the houses to the north. Moreover, the planner told us, a single podium, a single excavation, and east-west passage, a single traffic entrance off that passage, a fine outdoor space on the roof, the widening of the Duplex sidewalk, the clever use of the heritage property: all these things were concessions, made by the developer, marking hard-won gains by the city.
EPRA, in light of those arguments, agreed. And we and Madison could look forward to a continued conversation about good design at ground level.
Then came the election of 2018, resulting in a Progressive Conservative Provincial government, with its pro-development stance, and, in 2019, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housings Steve Clark’s energetic revision of Toronto’s Midtown-in-Focus plan, as adopted by Toronto’s city council. His revisions to OPA405 brought us a new secondary plan for Midtown, with much higher limits for towers. And then, in the summer of 2020, Madison called us to tell EPRA that they would be asking, for financial reasons, to add seven stories to the east tower and ten to the west tower, bringing them to 39 and 34 stories.
EPRA opposes this change adamantly.
1. First off, we had an agreement at a formal meeting: the original heights, the original design.
2. Second: precedent. Every proposed tower argues from a tower near at hand. At the March 2 meeting, the developer argued from the 65-storey 40 Eglinton East, a building not even approved. So taller buildings east of Henning will be a “camel’s nose” for arguments about buildings west of Henning, across to Edith. We could find our neighbourhood behind a Great Wall of China all along Eglinton.
3. Shadow, and loss of sky, not only for the single-family dwellers west of Henning, but also for the residents of the apartment buildings along Duplex, 411 especially, and in the Stanley Knowles Co-op tower, and for the office workers at RioCan. We note that shadow studies always confine themselves to discussing sunlight. Sky itself is enlivening; it is particularly important to apartment dwellers; an expansive view of the natural world is vital for emotional well-being if one’s interior space is small.
4. Morning shadow on Eglinton Park, not on 21 March, but in the winter months, when shadow will fall, especially on the playground immediately to the north of the parking lot. Children play there all year long, even when temperatures drop below freezing.
5. Transition to the residential streets to the north, Henning first off, and then Edith and Orchard View as well. That old orchard is, of course, long gone. The present view is growing ever shorter. Henning will be walled in and heavily shadowed.
6. Burden on services: EPRA is alert to how a rapidly growing population is stressing services of every sort, from water to parks to community facilities and to transit, which, post-pandemic, will once again be sorely stressed to accommodate the many thousands of new North Toronto neighbours as the many towers now under construction or permitted or projected fill up with people. Toronto may need to build more housing, but Midtown itself needs to stop, and to adjust to what housing is now arriving.
Given all those considerations: past agreements, design problems, and social consequences, EPRA opposes adding further storeys to these two towers.
Best wishes,
Tom Cohen for the EPRA board
cc Councillor Mike Colle
Mural support letter Feb 2021
February 8, 2021
Dear Daly McCarten and the Uptown Yonge BIA:
Eglinton Park Residents’ Association (EPRA) represents the neighbourhood on the west side of Yonge Street from Eglinton to Roselawn Avenue. Uptown Yonge is home to many local businesses as well as a few larger stores. Through our friend Tom Worrall, we have learned of a plan to install murals on several buildings along Yonge Street.
Artwork in the City is refreshing. It often enhances neighbourhoods, telling stories and making the area more vibrant. We especially support the idea of murals with Indigenous themes at the St Clements Parkette as well as on Albertus and the Clap Studio. This project provides for community engagement and a sense of pride for those living in North Toronto. It also offers an opportunity to attract visitors to this part of the city. A more attractive Yonge Street will also help to support local businesses and keep our main street vital.
We are happy to support this initiative and look forward to seeing it evolve.
Sincerely,
Tom Cohen Chair, EPRA
Toronto, Ward 8
95 Orchard View Blvd, Toronto, Ontario M4R 1C1
eglintonpark@gmail.com
Re: The Proposed Tower at 36 Eglinton West
To: North York Community Council
From: EPRA
Re: NY 22.4: the proposed tower at 36 Eglinton West
Date: 21 February, 2021
Eglinton Park Residents’ Association (EPRA) took part in the 2020 public consultation about the proposed 65-storey tower for 36 Eglinton West, proposed by Lifetime Developments. After that date, City Planning issued a report refusing approval. The developer then resubmitted and the matter and it is coming before NYCC as NY 22.4 in February 2021. The letter below reaffirms our opposition to this development proposal.
EPRA represents the residents of the nine square blocks north of Eglinton, west of Yonge, and east of Eglinton Park, with Roselawn our northern boundary. We have been deeply engaged in all planning exercises and development proposals on small territory, where the pressures are intense.
At the public meeting, EPRA learned that, in everything that is to their advantage, the new owners are hewing closely to the 2013 settlement at the OMB. The one element of the OMB settlement they have discarded is the 39-storey height. It confines them, so they ask for 65.
Thus it is that the proposed building has almost no office replacement. Thank the OMB for that!
And, again thanks to the OMB, instead of a separation of 25 metres from the western RioCan tower, the plans show a separation of 9 metres, so that office workers and residents will be all but sharing one another’s lives. Moreover, if the two towers are so close, it will mean that, from almost everywhere except the north-south axis, we will see no sky at all between them.
At the street level, this proposal offers pedestrians no real amenity at all.
What troubles us most is the proposed height. At 65 storeys, this building is taller than the two current towers at Yonge and Eglinton, both of which have 59. The proposed 1 Eglinton East is just a little taller. The tallest tower on the Canada Square lands, only newly discussed, would also be taller, but discussions there are still unfolding.
The height would produce shadow on Eglinton Park and on the neighbourhoods to the west and north.
And it would bring wind, as the building’s podium, given the small site, is necessarily modest. Indeed, even the developer’s own wind-tunnel study points out a zone at the northwest corner where conditions would be unsafe for pedestrians. EPRA’s own experience with local winds is that things often turn out worse than the experts have predicted, witness the frequent high winds at the intersection of Orchard View and Duplex, dire in winter.
When asked, at the public meeting, what this building offers us residents, the developer’s planner was refreshingly honest. It offers you nothing at all, he told us. It just takes, we remark: it battens off local services, and local amenities. The planner was quite right: anything so tall is imposing on the physical neighbourhood and its public resources like parks, schools, transportation, and infrastructure, and giving nothing at all back, except one good thing, consumers for our local merchants.
When asked about replacing the lost offices, the developer cited a lack of elevators. Perhaps. But the developer of 1 Eglinton East has promised to replace the eight storeys of offices, below his condominium tower. If he can do this trick, why cannot Lifetime do the same?
In sum, EPRA wants to see a more modest proposal, one in better proportion to the small piece of land on which it aims to stand. And one that replaces the lost work-space.
cc: Jason Brander, Toronto Planning, Mike Colle City Councillor
MTZOs January 2021
Eglinton Park Residents’ Association (EPRA), located in midtown Toronto, between Yonge Street and Eglinton Park, desires the Province to respect wherever possible the autonomy of local planning bodies over local lands. We acknowledge that, sometimes, a Provincial intervention might make things go faster, but we are troubled by several recent cases, for instance the Pickering wetlands to be filled in for a warehouse, the Dominion Foundry Complex heritage properties being demolished for housing where, with more careful attention, they might be conserved in ways compatible with providing homes.
EPRA has, over the past three years, seen instances where the Province has leaned very hard on local planning, upsetting processes and undoing work in which we citizens and city planners collaborated. Most notable is bill 405, which revised in radical ways a local plan on which EPRA and its members, and other local organizations and residents collaborated with Toronto Planning over six or so years of consultation. The Province’s changes in that bill have had a radical effect on the height and mass of buildings projected in our very crowded, under-serviced part of the city.
No MZO was involved in the Province’s intervention, but the pattern, of over-riding local control, troubles us, as it imposes a model of governance that undermines the vitality of democracy. The Province might reply, “Are we too not elected?” Indeed, our legislature is elected, but it is our experience as a citizens’ advocacy group that the Province, its officials, and our elected officials are almost altogether out of reach. Dialogue has proven pretty well impossible.
EPRA has read the submission from the Federation or Urban Neighbourhoods, which worries that on many points the proposed legislation is vague. It seems to us especially important to write in a very explicit requirement that, whenever the province does apply in MZO, it then consult carefully with local government and with all relevant stake-holders in the project in question, planners and citizens especially.
Please consider submitting a response from your RA to the public consultation regarding the use of MZO’s to the ERO. The link to the ERO web site for this consultation (ERO 019-2811) is as follows:
https://ero.ontario.ca/index.php/notice/019-2811.
Or you can write your own letter to the Minsister.
(Either way you may for example be able to take some of the bullet points from our letter.)
Please note that the deadline for submision of comments is 1159 on Saturday January 30 2021.
Thanks for those RAs that have already submitted a response.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Traffic Study Nov 2020
Dear Councillors Mike Colle, Josh Matlow and Jaye Robinson
The EPRA board is very aware of the heavy, and often aggressive, car traffic that the mid-town area has experienced in these past years of LRT construction. Drivers have been using residential streets to avoid choke points on major arteries. As a consequence, many drivers are treating residential streets as if they were arterial roads, speeding, honking, and making pedestrians unsafe.
Such actions are hard on neighbourhoods; they degrade the civility of urban life. They are particularly dangerous in an area that is host to many schools, and is home to high levels of school-related pedestrian traffic.
Meanwhile, the pandemic has shown us the opportunities to use shared streets for pedestrians, cyclists, and people traveling by scooter and skateboard. In a very crowded, park-short part of Toronto, the streets are a precious public space, but one that is contested, and sometimes dangerous.
Clearly, we need devices, changes in street architecture, and in the rules, and their enforcement, to calm and reclaim the streets for residents.
But we cannot do so without a good understanding of the future shape of traffic flow.
At the moment, between the pandemic and the LRT construction, traffic flows are not in a normal state. So long as downtown offices are shut, commuters are shying from transit, and consumers are opting for curbside pick-up, the flows and bottlenecks are different.
What we need for Midtown is a study and plan for what traffic should look like two or three years from now. How can we tame the motorists who pass through this rapidly changing, and fast-growing urban node while serving the city’s transportation needs? We have in mind is a plan covering the mid-town area defined by Avenue Road and Mount Pleasant, from Lawrence to Davisville, And we envision a plan that focuses on the needs of pedestrians and cyclists, as well as transit, trucks and cars, and that looks to the vitality of the main-street businesses.
To our eye, this should be a city project, linked with the goals of Mid-town in Focus, and championed by the three local councillors whose interests converge here.
Best wishes,
Tom Cohen
Chair, EPRA
cc SERRA, RRA, QUORRA, Oriole Park RA, LPRO, SKC, ARECA, and EPRA board
Request to get Bike Lanes Along Yonge Street
September 25th 2020
To: Mayor John Tory
Re: IE15.11: Request to get Bike Lanes in Midtown along Yonge Street
Dear Mayor Tory:
We wrote in July (letter attached to the this email) when COVID-19 was fairly quiet. Now we write in September, as the disease is returning ever faster, and the City of Toronto needs to continue to ensure the safety of its citizens. We are very pleased at how the ActiveTO initiative has worked, as part of it was implemented on Duplex Avenue in Midtown; the street was truly shared by pedestrians, cyclists and motor vehicles, and brought some calming and sanity to an otherwise vehicle-heavy street in a residential neighbourhood.
Eglinton Park Residents’ Association, by way of this letter, reaffirms its support for a bikeway along Yonge Street in Midtown.
Sincerely
Carla Lutchman Vice-Chair, EPRA
156 Montgomery Avenue, Toronto ON M4R 1E2
Toronto, Ward 8 eglintonpark@gmail.com
2400 Yonge EPRA Position July 2020
Applicant: Roselawn & Main Urban Properties
Party: Eglinton Park Residents’ Association
Mediation scheduled for 20-22 July, 2020
| SUBMISSION OF THE EGLINTON PARK RESIDENTS’ ASSOCIATION |
| July 7, 2020 |
These are the goals of the Eglinton Park Residents’ Association (the “EPRA”) with respect to the proposed property development on the properties municipally known as 2400-2444 Yonge Street.
Address: 95 Orchard View Blvd. Toronto, M4R 1C1
Appearing at the mediation
Shari Lash, member of the board
211-2 Edith Drive
Toronto M4R 2H7
shari.lash@gmail.com
Thomas Cohen, chair of EPRA
95 Orchard View Blvd.
Toronto M4R 1C1
tcohen@yorku.ca
The EPRA (incorporated 2008) represents the residents of the nine square blocks in the Yonge-Eglinton area, the boundaries of which are the following: Roselawn Ave. to the north, Eglinton Ave. to the south, Yonge St. to the east, and Eglinton Park to the west. The proposed development on 2400-2444 Yonge Street is slated for the northeast corner of the EPRA’s boundaries, at Yonge Street and Roselawn Ave.
CONCERNS WITH THE PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT
The EPRA has followed the discussion of this project from the start. It was active in the unsuccessful campaign to defend the Bank of Montreal building from its hasty destruction. It noted the rejection, in November 2017, of the earlier proposal for two towers on the site. And it has attended closely to changes in the present proposal. First, there has been a change in owners and in architects, producing a new design that is subtler, more varied, and more granular as it meets the street. Second, some of the planning rules have shifted. Ontario’s Bill 405 of June, 2019, rewrote the Yonge-Eglinton Secondary Plan and weakened some provisions of the Midtown in Focus study, most pertinently those that limited the heights of towers. Third, Ontario’s Bill 107 puts a premium on density near transit stops. And, fourth, there is public interest in building abundant housing, to counter the rapid rise in rents and prices. Fifth, the current pandemic has alerted citizens and planners to many issues of building configuration, like the need for ample room for private work and living, and for safe, agreeable public realm. Accordingly, we argue not for midrise, but for a high rise a bit less high, a podium less tall, a complex more in fitting with its immediate surroundings, and a public square on Yonge Street.
First, Good fit with heritage. This project abuts the Montgomery Square neighbourhood and character area recognized by Bill 405, with its the three historic buildings: the old police station, the current fire hall, and the restored Station K post office, all core civic monuments of North Toronto and also the site of Montgomery’s Tavern and the 1837 rebellion. As proposed, the project is too massive and too close to heritage buildings.
Second, we wish to see a scaling down from the Yonge-Eglinton intersection, as endorsed by Bill 405. Towers should gradually step down, the farther they are from the main intersection.
This downward sequencing is already established in the Yonge-Eglinton neighborhood. We now have 31 storeys (107.2 metres) at Whitehaus, to 27 storeys (84 metres) at Montgomery Square, and then, two blocks north, to a projected 14 storeys (50 metres) at the Capitol Theatre site. Meanwhile, the proposed towers for 2400-2444 Yonge Street step back up, with the 27 storey tower, at 97.2 metres, some four storeys, or 13 metres, taller than Montgomery Square (84 metres), immediately to its south.
Development should decrease in height, density and scale going away from Yonge/Eglinton crossing.
Third, we wish to address the floor plate of the two towers. In the revised design the floor plate has increased far beyond the model 750 square metres, to 844.37 (south tower) and 860.09 (north tower) square metres. That change in floor plate will make for less separation between the towers and more shadow on both Yonge Street and the neighbourhoods to the west and north. We aim for one tower, or, if two towers, slim ones.
Fourth, the podium. The new proposal raises the podium from nine storeys (2017) to twelve. In the earlier project, at nine stories, the podium already brought objections from city planning. We aim to bring it lower. Six would be good.
Fifth, the proposed project does not transition well to the less densely built avenue to the north.
Sixth: We wish to move the proposed park from the northwest corner of the property to the northeast, where Roselawn meets Yonge Street. The intersection of Yonge and Roselawn was one of several that the Midtown in Focus plan singled out as appropriate for a Yonge Street plaza. We want to see the public space moved to the intersection, and made more generous than the 412 square metres currently envisioned.
Finally, we wish to align this project with good urban planning principles:
- (a) The proposed units are not conducive to the growing and diverse family units in North Toronto. Towers in our area are increasingly housing families with one or more children, which requires at least two bedrooms per unit. Despite this, the proposed suites are generally very small and mostly one-bedroom units.
- (b) The design for the Yonge St. frontage, although more articulated and lively than its 2017 predecessor, offers nothing for the public. There is no space to retreat from the street, no place to sit, nor any place for public art. In that, this plan is far less successful as a public place-maker than The Montgomery (25 Montgomery Ave.), to its south. The current project ought to contribute more to enlivening Yonge Street as a “public place”.
- (c) Despite being on the historic Yonge Street, the project adds nothing to the neighbourhood’s sense of collective history. This contrasts with The Montgomery, which commemorates its location as the site of famous Montgomery’s Tavern. Further, the Capitol Theatre, two blocks north, is keeping its facade and movie marquee while undergoing redevelopment. The developers, through art and imagination, ought to join in the celebration of Yonge Street’s long, eventful history.
Eglinton Park Residents' Association 