This morning, I attended a verbal update by City staff on the status of the Magee House. While there is no hard-and-fast date to demolish that building, I was encouraged to hear staff say that it is “a matter of when, not if.”

As of today, the owner has failed to demonstrate a viable plan for either preserving the building or demolishing it. That deadline was set on the basis of an expert engineering opinion this summer that winter would be seriously compromise the building and create a public safety hazard.

You may recall that EBC has recently submitted a Zoning By-Law Amendment application to permit a 20-storey building at 1950 Scott St in Westboro. We are hosting a community open house so that residents can review the details of this application further, and have the opportunity to ask question and provide input. 

The open house is Thursday, December 6 from 6:30-8:30pm at the Van Lang Field House. 

Attention all artists! This is happening! Details below...

I THE OPPORTUNITY

As you may be aware, there is a Site Plan Control application currently circulating for the properties at 16 - 20 Champagne Ave in the Civic Hospital / Little Italy area. The application is to demolish the existing two houses and detached garages to build a 3.5-storey apartment building with 15 to 18 rental units and no parking. In addition to the Site Plan Control application, they require three Minor Variances: 

1. to reduce the minimum number of parking spaces required to 0; whereas the By-law requires a minimum of 4 parking spaces for this site and number of units.

Cannabis is now legal in Canada, and one of the first issues with which the new Council will be seized very soon is whether or not to allow its sale in retail storefronts. Thanks to the ham-fisted approach taken to weed sales by the Doug Ford government at Queen’s Park, the question is less straightforward than it might seem.

Our office was very pleased to provide some financial support to the 5th annual Feminist Fair, happening this Sunday at Makerspace North. 

EBC - a construction firm - is making one of its forays into property development with a proposal at the corner of Scott/Clifton (the Buddhist temple lot) for a 20-storey tower. I have just recently been briefed on this and my office will be working over the next few days to set up a public consultation on the proposal. In the meantime, you can view the proposal details here.

When I was door-knocking over the past few months, I heard a lot about the blackout experienced in the west end of the city, including affecting virtually all of Kitchissippi ward. I’m actually a little taken aback at how useful residents found my tweets during that period. I was glad that I could get information to residents, help make some calls where particular problems were being experienced that I could help fix, and to help organize some mitigations. I wish I could have done more.

On October 25, residents had a chance to see how plans for the park have evolved since the first consultation round this summer. I'm very pleased at the degree to which planners have taken that first feedback into account as we prepare to build a new fieldhouse onsite, implement a Sens rink, replace the play equipment and do associated soil remediation. Thanks to everyone who attended - it was a great turnout and more than one person remarked that we're seeing a good cross-section of resident demographics becoming engaged. That's excellent.