Domicile/Roosevelt update

On May 22 at Planning Committee, members debated a proposal by Domicile for a six-storey, mixed-use building at 398, 402 and 406 Roosevelt Avenue. After hearing multiple delegations and significant debate, Committee members including myself voted to accept a compromise motion that would reduce the allowable building height to five storeys, with setbacks above the fourth storey.

While this was not the outright rejection of the proposal that many would have sought, it was nonetheless an improvement over the original proposal. You can read my comments on the original proposal in the .pdf document attached below.

It’s become apparent that at Wednesday’s Council meeting we are likely to see a motion introduced that would restore the original staff recommendation and reintroduce the sixth storey.

At the same time, I have heard from Kitchissippi residents that they still consider the five-storey proposal to be unacceptable. I have considerable sympathy for this view since allowing even a five-storey, mixed-use building in the R3 zone will set a precedent for much of Westboro. While the Official Plan targets areas around transit stations for intensification, other intensification policies must be met. A key one by which residents expect the City will abide is that the interior of established residential neighbourhoods will be intensified as such, at a low-rise scale (OP 2.2.2 policy 15). These properties are not part of the secondary plan study area for Richmond Road mainstreet, and should be considered the interior of the neighbourhood in their full context including residences behind on Berkley.

To better meet the intent of this policy, I will be bringing a motion to further reduce the height of the building from that recommended by Planning Committee from five storeys to four, with fourth-storey stepbacks similar to those recommended for the fifth under the Planning Committee and staff recommendation.

Many of the Councillors sitting around the horseshoe will likely soon be experiencing intensification pressures similar to ours as LRT pushes further east, west and south. Ensuring that residential areas remain so in the absence of explicit plans to see those neighbourhoods evolve should be top of mind for us all.