Intensification & the OMB in Yonge-Eglinton

The Yonge and Eglinton neighbourhood is experiencing some of the most extreme intensification in the entire city – by 2030, between 24,000 and 28,000 new residents are expected to live in the area.

The Ontario Municipal Board has continued to approve development after development without considering whether there is the infrastructure capacity to handle such a huge increase of development and the impacts to the existing community.

The OMB-approved 35-storey building at 18-30 Erskine Avenue – right next to John Fisher Junior Public School – is the ultimate example of this irresponsible and narrow-focused provincial planning process. While I’m encouraged by the province’s recently announced reforms to the OMB, they’re unfortunately too late for already approved developments like the one at 18-30 Erskine and the overdevelopment of Yonge-Eglinton more generally.

In the meantime, the city is developing a new planning framework – called Midtown in Focus – to improve parks, open space and streetscape in the Yonge-Eglinton neighbourhood. In 2015, I moved to expand the scope of Midtown in Focus to include a review of the performance and capacity of city infrastructure, including transit, transportation networks, community services, water and energy.

Midtown in Focus will begin to come to fruition later this year when city staff bring forward draft recommendations for the updated Yonge Eglinton Secondary Plan. The new Secondary Plan is expected to be completed in mid-2018.