PMT
Senior Member
Site Plan Approval application filed on August 21: http://app.toronto.ca/DevelopmentAp...3736452&isCofASearch=false&isTlabSearch=false
[120] The City, through both its planning witnesses and through counsel, argued strenuously that to allow the Appellant’s proposed building to cast shadow in the policy prohibited period would set an extraordinarily unfortunate and difficult precedent, which would simply open the door to countless other applications for approval that did not respect this prohibition.
[121] The Tribunal is not impressed with that argument as it takes absolutely no account of the reasons that inform this decision about the context and facts here and the matter of properly interpreting OP policy. There may well be other applications where, in the interest of achieving worthy and necessary OP goals some reconciliation of this policy will be required and some minimal shadow permitted. The world will turn and the sun will shine
love me a good OMB ruling with some sass.
Essentially the city admitted that the proposal was great other than a pesky shadow - and therefor was completely unacceptable. They offered an alternative design that completely ignored all other urban design guidelines (tall buildings, heritage setbacks, etc.) that significantly reduced the shadow on Allen Gardens.
The board found that the OP is designed to have its policies weighed against each other to find the best outcome. Completely ignoring most of the OP in terms of desirable urban design in order to minimize shadow on a park through an existing OP policy that is tenable at best as to whether no net new shadow is even falls under existing OP policy is unacceptable. The Board member then said this with quite a bit of snark, and approved the development.