Mizrahi: meeting and Urban Design Review Panel comments

Thanks to the roughly 100 people who came out to our meeting on Thursday night to hear Mizrahi's plans for re-worked architecture at the 1451 Wellington West site. The new plan will go to Planning Committee on October 27, where we'll vote on how to direct our lawyers in the OMB process. It will presumably go to Council the next day. Council will need to decide whether we direct our lawyers to stand pat at the nine-storey limit described by the area secondary plan, or whether the architecture is "landmark" enough to settle the issue at the Board. There were several questions at the meeting about the opportunity for public input. Since this is going back to Council, the public can write to me or to the City with feedback ahead of the October 27 Planning Committee meeting, and make an in-person presentation at that meeting. As usual, there is really no opportunity to provide public input at the OMB since that is not a political, but rather a quasi-judicial, process.

At this point, I do not consider that the architecture is landmark enough to warrant going higher than the secondary plan allows, and will be seeking the support of my colleagues in that position.

At our public meeting to review the new Mizrahi plans, we heard about the Urban Design Review Panel's (UDRP) comments on the plans so far. The City is still waiting for final comments, and hope those will be available this week. In the meantime, staff have sent me the comments stemming from two previous meetings with the UDRP, attached as two .pdfs below. What is the UDRP? Click here to read more.