Thursday, June 1 @ 7 p.m.

MEDIA RELEASE

Live at OCAD University, 60 residents associations will host a public meeting to introduce leading mayoral candidates to the people of Toronto. With an outreach to 900,000 residents, this unique event could be a gamechanger in the municipal election.

The Federation of North Toronto Residents Associations (FoNTRA) and the Federation of South Toronto Residents Associations (FoSTRA) have worked together to organize this historic opportunity, along with the generous support of OCAD University. Major media is expected to cover the resident-led meeting. Questions from residents will put leading candidates to the test.

Nicole Swerhun of Third-Party Public will moderate the exchange with invited candidates:

Ana Bailao, Brad Bradford, Chloe Brown, Olivia Chow, Mitzie Hunter, and Josh Matlow

Thursday, June 1 at 7:00 p.m.

OCAD University Auditorium 100 McCaul Street

Free virtual access will be available on OCAD U’s YouTube channel: www.ocadu.ca/live

and FoSTRA Facebook page: www.facebook.com/groups/fostrato

For additional information, please contact:

Geoff Kettel, Co-chair of the Meet Mayoral Candidates event for FoNTRAat: debate@fontra.ca

Don Young, Co-chair of the Meet Mayoral Candidates event for FoSTRA at: debate@fostrato.ca

Mark your calendars: Wednesday, June 7, from 6 to 8 PM.

As you already know, a huge development is planned at Canada Square – the land around and including the old bus barn site at the southwest corner of Yonge and Eglinton. Since our last public meeting in November, Toronto has been refining its plan for this ambitious project. The last meeting raised many issues:

·      The nature and feel of the open square

·      The future uses of the two present towers

·      The virtue of adding a park atop the subway trench

·      The debated presence of a school

·      The future use, animation, and administration of the public indoor spaces, including day care, meeting spaces, an art gallery, or a theatre.

This next meeting will help us residents track the evolution of the design and to volunteer our reactions and proposals.

We have to register to log on at this link. That opens a page with a table of meetings. Scroll to “2180-2210 Yonge Street, 15 Eglinton Avenue West, 20 and 46 Berwick” and a planner named David Driedger. You may find this on the front page. If not, click onto a second page.

You can also go straight to the sign-up page.

We look forward to seeing and hearing you there (remotely).

2400 Yonge (between Roselawn and Montgomery) is a big, long project and we
want to keep it smooth.

EPRA, the Uptown BIA, the city, and the developer have set up a HUB group to handle problems.

Problems like noise vibration, dust, fumes, parking, easy walking on the streets. Whatever your concern.

We neighbours can help make things better.
Any suggestions, remarks, alerts, complaints? Just write to us at eglintonpark@gmail.com and we will bring them to the HUB for good solutions.

The LRT work, above ground and below, in March.

Useful maps, interesting photos.

From: Tom Cohen, chair of Eglinton Park Residents’ Association

Date: 4 January, 2022

Dear members of the NYCC

I hope that you are well and that, in this difficult month, you and your families remain so.

I will speak very briefly at NYCC on January 6 concerning item 29.6. I wish to recount the following brief history of EPRA’s involvement in the history of this site.

Eglinton Park Residents’ Association is based on the nine square blocks east of Eglinton Park and northwest of the Yonge-Eglinton intersection. We have in our zone a very mixed population, with renters and owners in the seven current apartment towers and the one tall co-op, and in two midrise apartments, and in single-family houses, both modest and substantial. Our own board has always had members from a great mix of races, religions, and nationalities, coming from every continent except, so far Australia and of course Antarctica. We are both owners and renters, We strive to represent everybody in our crowded small piece of the city, a microcosm of Toronto.

Some ten years ago, a developer proposed 48 storeys at 36-44 Eglinton West. EPRA was alarmed: the proposed building, on its small site, was twice the height of the tower next door, at 411 Duplex. Accordingly, we appeared before the OMB, as did other citizens’ groups. We, and the city, wanted 25 storeys. In the end, the tribunal almost split the difference, awarding the owner 39 (up 14, down 9). Not the best, but a compromise we could live with.

And then, for years, nothing happened, and we, and others, mused that the developer, then in his eighties, had desired to secure permission for a substantial tower, the better to sell the parcel at a good price. so we waited, and watched, for almost a decade.

When Midtown in Focus, the long and careful study, was done, our RA took energetic part, as did so many other citizens, as individuals or members of local organizations. That plan set up good ground rules for orderly development in midtown. And then, in 2018, the present provincial government rewrote that plan, lifting the upper limits and otherwise loosening the controls on countless sites in midtown, this one included, which suddenly went from 39 to 65.

Out the window went the original court decision, and out went all the careful planning. We know, as a citizens’ group, that the province has tied our hands, but we still feel indignant at the carelessness here, both with process and with good sense: a super-tall building on a tiny plot, one that, as we heard at the public hearing from the developer’s own hired planner, takes a great deal, in sky and light and services, and gives back nothing whatsoever to the public and its realm.

Tom Cohen, chair of EPRA

Dear, Neighbours

All of us won a splendid victory at City Council on Friday, July 16. Councillor Josh Matlow’s motion to pause the Canada Square proposal passed unanimously. This means that before Toronto signs off on Oxford’s intentions for the bus-lands, the city will cost out our plans for parkland, a school, spaces for arts and culture, and perhaps post-secondary education.

Now there will be time for all of us to discuss the shape of what gets built there. It will be our chance to build the town centre Midtown so badly needs.

All three local councillors (Matlow, Colle and Robinson) spoke with eloquence and passion. And, at last count, an extraordinary 1200 letters poured into City Council and the Mayor’s office in response to our call for action.

To listen to debates in council, you can go to https://youtu.be/znl8koCxwjw. The best twenty minutes run from 6:33 to 6:53.

Your voices were crucial here and they made a difference. Gratitude and celebration all around!

EPRA