Toronto 365 Church Condos | 102.1m | 31s | Menkes | Wallman Architects

greenleaf said:
Total bullshit. No s37? That's ice cold.
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From the decision:

"The use of section 37 must be grounded in fair, clear, transparent, predictable and specific requirements that are set out in the Official Plan and that are not arbitrary in their application. The Board is adamant that the Applicant has a right to know how the figure is derived in sufficient detail. While the City’s counsel submitted that City staff reviewed other section 37 benefits related to similar and larger development in the area, it does not appear to have been part of any detailed assessment. On this basis, the Board was concerned that the City simply took the median range of the benefits provided in other cases and planted the subject application squarely therein. The Board is not persuaded that this was a particularly helpful exercise in helping it to understand why a certain amount was decided upon. Other than the formulaic calculations, there is nothing substantive in its request for the benefit that justifies the amount sought.
The Board determines that the City has not assessed sufficiently the requirement for a section 37 benefit from the Applicant nor established a nexus between the amount of money sought and the subject site. Accordingly, the Board will not assign to the Applicant a payment of a section 37 benefit in this case."
 
Bayer said:
From the decision:

"The use of section 37 must be grounded in fair, clear, transparent, predictable and specific requirements that are set out in the Official Plan and that are not arbitrary in their application. The Board is adamant that the Applicant has a right to know how the figure is derived in sufficient detail. While the City’s counsel submitted that City staff reviewed other section 37 benefits related to similar and larger development in the area, it does not appear to have been part of any detailed assessment. On this basis, the Board was concerned that the City simply took the median range of the benefits provided in other cases and planted the subject application squarely therein. The Board is not persuaded that this was a particularly helpful exercise in helping it to understand why a certain amount was decided upon. Other than the formulaic calculations, there is nothing substantive in its request for the benefit that justifies the amount sought.
The Board determines that the City has not assessed sufficiently the requirement for a section 37 benefit from the Applicant nor established a nexus between the amount of money sought and the subject site. Accordingly, the Board will not assign to the Applicant a payment of a section 37 benefit in this case."
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Yes. I read the OMB decision. I know what it says and it is extraordinarily petty.
 
not when that money goes to comunity improvements.

the way that rubbed of on me is "so.. you haven't decided what to do with the section 37 funds yet? well then the developers shouldn't give you any." This is despite the fact that Section 37 funds regularly go into a big pot to be used on large projects such as the Wellesley and Yonge park.
 
Xray_Crystal_Junkie said:
I think the OMB is necessary to save us from populist Councillors, but they make themselves hard to defend when they pull crap like that.
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Wait-- so to make the process more democratic, you think we should take it out of public politics' hands and let the OMB make a decision? I don't get it.

Councillors are voted in. It's not good enough though, we need MORE democracy aka public involvement in neighbourhood planning, which is quite the opposite of something like the OMB.

The OMB doesn't "save" anyone from "populist councillors".
 
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Where did I say I wanted the process more democratic? In fact I think the opposite is true in most cases. If you left the fate of most projects solely in the hands of those that already live there you would never get anything done.

Councillors usually, though not always, will yell and scream about the evils of any proposal because they think it will get them votes, not what's best for the community for the long term (that includes both current and future residents). That was my implication with the use of the word populist. Community involvement is great but it's often not constructive, which I think is the primary reason the OMB needs to persist.

Sure the OMB could use some reform but to abolish or opt out would be a mistake.
 
Well then we approach these issues from very different points of view. The OMB needs to go. It's asinine to have some sort of court or board structure that approves developments instead of having them go through the normal planning process that any proper project goes through. It makes absolutely no sense.
 
Your failure to see the sense the OMB makes stems from a rather fundamental misunderstanding what constitutes 'the normal planning process' (as evidenced by your use of the term 'proper project').
 
It's an unnecessarily nasty decision by the OMB, and a possible bad precedent for the street.

Despite the fact that the building is clearly pushing or outside the city's planning envelope for the area, the OMB ruled negatively against ANY section 37 funds. This is extraordinarily mean-spirited and a hard, petty little disgrace. I don't know what scores were being settled, or if the OMB was having a particularly bad anti-downtown Toronto day, but it would have been just as easy for them to ask for a detailed report to be returned quickly, or enact an allowable reasonable minimum return, than squashing the funds completely, without proper data.

So now what? Can every building that wants to outrage height, bulk, aesthetic or shadow considerations on Church Street point to 365 and say, "well, if they got it for nothing extra...?"
 
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I'd also like to clarify that while I'm pro-OMB, the Sec. 37 skulduggery here is pretty pitiful (though from a legal standpoint the argument is pretty tight). Not sure why the city didn't use the traditional 1% figure or if they did why that was insufficient in this case.
 
SP!RE said:
Seriously, the OMB needs to disappear. They epitomize the weaknesses of capitalism, with its "development/growth/profit-before-anything-else" prioritizing.

Instead of putting the building through a process in which it could be improved and developed to suit the neighbourhood better, the OMB simply approves it (as they do 99% of projects that come before their counsel) AND in this case took the Section 37 benefits out of the picture. What a slap in the face.
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FFS, did you actually read the decision? The powers of the OMB are prescribed by the province and its job is to apply the relevant planning instruments and legislation. It's actually a well reasoned, thoughtful decision that takes very seriously the overarching goal of intensification. And for the avoidance of doubt here, the Board’s job is to decide appeals, not to postpone a decision in order to begin some sort of fuzzy process of design consultation. The Board's reason for not ordering payment of s.37 funds appears to have been because it was incumbent upon the City to justify any such amount and the Board was of the clear and unequivocal view that the City had failed to do so. The Board also appeared to have been less than impressed by the overly narrow application of planning guidelines by the City, and what it seems to have felt was tendentious and over-stated evidence given by the City's planning witness.

If you want to be mad at anyone, be mad at the City. Its own guidelines said that the area was appropriate for buildings between 15-25 stories. The proposed building was 29. Yet here it was trying to take an overly narrow view of the site's context. And it looks to me like it was all downhill from that point for the City since the immediate neighbourhood of the site has buildings with many more stories than what was proposed here, and the City gve no evidence that any of these had harmed the neighbourhood -- IIRC it conceded either directly or indirectly that the opposite was true.

The City, I think, has a lot to learn from this decision, perhaps especially with regard to how it ran its case. Given that the building was only 4s above what the City itself had felt was suitable -- and there were other tall buildings in the neighbourhood of even greater heights which added to the character of the neighbourhood -- it is difficult for me to see why this application was opposed at all.

innsertnamehere said:
The OMB then said to build whatever you want. The City messed up by telling the developer to go screw themselves, and the OMB screwed up by letting the developer build whatever they wanted.
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You had me agreeing with you up to this point. The OMB most certainly did not say "build whatever you want". The OMB found that the building was permissible within the relevant legislation and policy instruments, and allowed the appeal. Key to this decision was the care taken by the developer to design a building that met the goal of intensification without disrupting the lowrise neighbourhood. IIRC, the situation of the tower close to Church St and the setbacks towards the east (at the City's request) played a significant role in helping the Board reach this conclusion.

In any event, I agree that the City was wrong not to negotiate with Menkes here -- although realiatically, if they were only 4s apart, it's tough to see $1.25m s.37 concessions being extracted. But after what happened to Ann Johnston, I wonder if the default position of most Councillors is to side with any local NIMBYs, and encourage staff to do the same.
 
A controversial 30-storey condo tower that was rejected by the city has won approval from the Ontario Municipal Board, which overruled the city’s decision in a judgment handed down Oct 12. The developer, Menkes, now has the go-ahead to build the 100-metre-tall building on land that is currently a parking lot on the east side of Church Street between McGill and Granby.

The decision could set a precedent to eliminate the city’s prohibition on tall buildings in the Church-Wellesley Village.
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This buildings is not even located at Church-Wellesley Village, which doesn't start before Alexander.
 
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