John Lorinc writes about Section 37 in yesterday’s Globe and Mail. The term refers to part of the Planning Act that allows the city and developers to trade increased height or density in buildings for local improvements such as money to improve parks, install public art, or build affordable housing.
The picture above shows the heights of buildings developers are proposing along Queen Street West (looking east from the Gladstone Hotel). According to Lorinc, residents in the area have suggested developers hand over money to fund arts-related community improvements.
Here’s a snippet of what Lorinc has to say on Section 37:
For a mechanism designed to make everybody happy — residents, developers and city councillors trying to please both — it has its fair share of critics on both sides. Some feel that city councillors have become hooked on Section 37 funds as theiy face a deluge of high-density development applications. In some quarters, in fact, the money has come to be referred to as the “crack cocaine of planning.”
Read the full article here.
Photo from Active 18 website.
4 comments
now a resident of the queen-abell triangle, my thoughts on this matter are much more complicated than they were before.
however, i am now calling the area TriBeQu (try-beckwa), which stands for the TRIangle BElow QUeen 😉
That is crazy and can only be the result of pure greed. Queen Street West is a precious lowrise gem in Toronto’s glass and concrete downtown. It might be the coolest stretch of any city in Canada and someone wants to change that? Go Figure!
Neath
A preposterous notion. I’m interested in moving into the neighbourhood, and therefore am the kind of person these developers ought to be trying to impress, but if this is the kind of development they want to build, then I want no part of it.
It seems to me that developers are bulking their proposals into outrageous travesties, then bartering their Section 37 give-aways to get what they actually wanted in the first place. It’s now “just a cost of doing business”, which is kind of missing the point, but they have no other way of seeing it.
Density and height have a place. This is pure bullshit.