I chair the Residents'…

I chair the Residents' Association at the northwest corner of Yonge and Eglinton. Our catchment is the nine square blocks between Eglinton Park and Yonge. As RAs go, we are small but feisty. We were deep in both cycles of Midtown in Focus, the first all about public realm, and the second far more comprehensive, with an eye to built form and to what activities go on in the form that does get built. It was an exhaustive and exhausting process, with many meetings and consultations, and deep involvement by many many of us citizens. To our eyes, the results are really good. Thoughtful, thorough, and keenly needed. At the end of the political process a debate broke out, about height limits in the northeast quadrant, and some developers may be caught with stranded assets, having bought a plot from which they cannot expect a gain. That fact, we suspect, has stirred up opposition to the whole larger vision, and pressure to block OPA 405. If that happened, we would be in a terrible spot, as, by the time a new version came about, the genii of development would have spent so long out of the bottle that a lot of what OPA 405 aims for would have become impossible or really hard. Down to now, the rules at Yonge and Eglinton have been too lax, so that the scale of construction and the rise of population threaten to overwhelm all services: transportation, parks, schools, sewer lines, sidewalk space, and so on. And the push to residential only has led to an unhealthy imbalance: we need an urban zone that provides jobs as well as bedrooms, the better to cash in on the coming Crosstown line. To make this vital Midtown intersection into a hub, there must be a fair, clear-eyed plan and a set of guidelines that help developers to make good choices that pay off in the long run. In sum, EPRA are keen to see OPA 405 made official. If there are quirks that need adjustment, adjust them at the Provincial level. But please don't kill it or send it back. The intense work over the past five years will have gone to naught, and a second go-round will be painful, slow, and risky.