STRIKE
• Toronto strike now one month old [ CBC ]
• The skinny on the stinky mess in city parks [ Toronto Star ]
• What David Miller is doing with his trash [ National Post ]
• Walkout jeopardizes U of T Scarborough expansion [ National Post ]
• Union eyes filing complaint over bargaining tactics [ Toronto Sun ]
• ‘No plan’ to dump on CNE [ Toronto Sun ]
• Park fans trash dump-free CNE [ Toronto Sun ]
• Strike sparks rat baby boom [ Toronto Sun ]
• Dumpster-diving for mayor’s chair [ Toronto Sun ]
• Trash talk obscuring strike’s real toll [ Toronto Star ]
• Pick up pace in strike talks [ Toronto Star ]
• Don’t just blame Miller, blame the union too [ National Post ]
• David Miller warns of possible layoffs if union doesn’t bend [ National Post ]
• Let’s hire the unemployed [ Toronto Sun ]
OTHER NEWS
• Yorkville rallies against condo tower [ National Post ]
• Scaled-back plan could save Yonge-Bloor tower [ Toronto Star ]
• This muddy eyesore is a hole lot better [ Toronto Star ]
• Condo’s ill wind city’s salvation [ Toronto Star ]
• Bazis fends off receivership, for now, for 1 Bloor tower [ National Post ]
• Residents want train derailed [ Toronto Sun ]
15 comments
While a public square at Yonge & Bloor would be ideal in a fantasy world, we can’t pass up the location for some sort of high density project. Hume is usually on the mark, but i’ll have to disagree this time.
Once the DRL is complete, the location will have the capacity to absorb the numbers.
It is interesting in the story about Metrolinx that their spokesman Brian Peltier exhibits the kind of trained PR speak that has been driving west enders crazy.
He keeps talking about things not being practical or possible when they are in other jurisdictions like Vancouver and New York City. “It wouldn’t make any sense to electrify this corridor if Union Station wasn’t electrified, for example.” Its practical in New York city where diesel trains have been banned for over 100 years.
“It’s not practical to electrify this corridor immediately,” said Brian Peltier but the definition of “practical” is hard to pin down considering building electric once will be cleaner and cheaper in the long run. What exactly does practical mean? Does practical mean its ok to concentrate pollution that is more toxic than car fumes. Is damage my lungs and the soil in my yard “practical”? They are building an electric line from scratch in Vancouver, that sounds practical to me.
“Metrolinx has studied the effect of increased diesel traffic on air quality for residents and is confident it won’t be a health hazard.(He told the Sun)”. Its amazing that the know all this and the EA is not done yet. Its amazing that the Toronto Board of health doesn’t believe this and nobody else does either. Metrolinx is the only organization I can find that thinks toxic diesel fumes are acceptable. If this project was on private land instead of rail land (where the rules are different) it would never get built unless it was electric.
Metrolinx cloud the issue by creating the impression that electrifying the Georgetown line is one of the most challenging technical projects ever devised when it fact its pretty straight up. The complicated part is the political part where Metrolinx is a giant freighter set in its ways that cant turn around even though most of it engineers and tech experts agree privately that electric is the way to go.
People will live with over 25 years of toxic needless pollution because of what somebody thinks is “practical”. Will anybody at Metrlinx ever have the moral courage to say lets build this right ?
I, for one, don’t think a so-called “public” square at Bloor/Yonge is ideal. We have 2 other public squares within a half hour walk of Bloor/Yonge, both highly TTC accessible.
This location’s proximity to the subway hub, its general accessibility for people with disabilities, and its proximity to a multitude of daily conveniences/necessities makes it a prime location for…AFFORDABLE HOUSING.
If economic diversity is supposed to revitalize neighbourhoods, then how about adding some affordable housing to Yorkville to revitalize this derelict part of the city?!
melissa: I like that idea muchly. Good luck on it happening, of course…
I’m all for affordable housing but Yonge and Bloor ain’t the spot for it. I’d be much happier if TCHC was able to keep up on the maintainence of their current exisiting stock before adding any more.
And I don’t think Yorkville needs revitalizing: its been revitalized out the wazoo. What it needs is some people space that isn’t isolated form the rest of the city, and I think a square would be good here (or on any of these corners). I don’t mind the proposed 1 Bloor East but getting into bed with developers loaded to the gills (and subsequently cash poor) Khazak oil money was a bad idea.
There is affordable housing at Yonge & Charles in the form of U of T’s student & family housing towers, which actually used to be a public housing development.
“Proximity to daily conveniences/necessities”?
Yes, but …. where would you go grocery shopping? Whole Foods, Pusateri’s? Others – hair cuts: Overpriced chi-chi salons. Affordable familing clothing: Holt Renfrew. Playground for children: Parking garage on Hayden St.
Re building an electric line from scratch in Vancouver – much easier than electrifying one corridor which also has to have a terminal heavily and expensively modified, plus have dedicated different equipment. If you’re going to electrify one line, you should do at least two others to get economies of scale on the terminal modifications and motive power.
Park is great idea but not at one east because rezoning and approval is alredy done and any developer would buy out a bankrupt and be eligible for compensation on lost profit if City expropriated. Much better to expropriate one west where Stollerys sites and doesw nothing for the intersection and is a clasic example of ‘underdevoped’ site. This would be repeating Dundas Square redevelpment.
Re Melissa,
The idea for TCHC on the site is simply counter productive. I moved out of Bay Bloor area 10 years ago because the area was already too expensive for my liking. The other issue is that Housing advocates have become irrational in there desire to emphasis integrating areas as opposed to housing those in need, let alone repairing the stock they already own. With the money from selling one unit at Bloor and Youge you could build three units of affordable housing on any of hundreds of locations a block away from the subway. The same applies to the redevelopment of Regent Park where the units there should be sold to provide at least double the units somewhere else on the subway lines.
Rob L, There’s a ValuMart or something in the Manulife complex for groceries and a Wieners or Losers (aka Winners) and other low-end clothing retailers on Bloor, House of Lords for hair.
Just a few points for the naysayers:
There are just as many places to buy groceries–if not more–in the Bloor/Yonge area (the Valu Mart that was mentioned, a Food Basics further east, a Sobey’s south on Yonge, to name a few) as there are in places like St. Jamestown. Chew on that one for a bit.
If the land is too expensive for affordable housing, why is not too expensive for a public square? The city still needs to buy the land, doesn’t it? If they put in a mixed income development (condos + affordable housing + ground level retail/other use–say underground parking garage), it would probably generate more income than mere naming rights than a public square would.
At last count there were 65,000 households on the waiting list for affordable housing in Toronto. That number is now likely considerably higher thanks to the recession and are now struggling to get by. TCHC’s 10 year revitalization plan has TCHC investing millions of dollars in knocking down existing housing in 13 neighbourhoods across the city (and displacing residents to other TCHC units) and replacing those units with the same number of units. Not a single unit of additional housing will be built as part of this plan. In fact, the number of affordable housing units will be reduced during the 10 years because so much housing will be in the demolished-reconstruction phase.
So then, what do we do about the serious affordable housing shortage we’re experiencing in the city? Is sitting on our hands and saying “let’s not do anything until TCHC fixes its current stock” a responsible position?
uh-huh
Maybe that’s because rich people aren’t as rich as you think and are cutting back. Let alone poor people.
This is my concept for Yonge & Bloor – four towers (one on each corner) consisting of stacked boxes of varying proportion joined at the top to form a four-sided arch.
[IMG]http://i31.tinypic.com/2qkpfv9.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i32.tinypic.com/2ro2nnl.jpg[/IMG]
Needless to say, I could use some help with the rendering.
Love it? Hate it?
Picture the sun setting down Bloor through the arches.
d’oh.
http://i31.tinypic.com/2qkpfv9.jpg
http://i32.tinypic.com/2ro2nnl.jpg
FR,
Only chance for this one is we get our own 7/11 and someone blows up the HB Centre. Hope not.
The print edition of the Star included a list of all the open, closed, and potential future dump sites, along with their estimated capacity. (This doesn’t appear to be replicated in their online version, but they link to a [leaked?] City PDF that appears to show essentially the same thing.)
One thing that is striking is the size of some of the sites. The media focus at the start of the strike was almost exclusively on Christie Pits, but that was one of the smaller-capacity sites (just under 500 tonnes). Recently-closed Ted Reeve Arena had a capacity of 1,250 tonnes, and Moss Park downtown has an estimated capacity of more than 3,500 tonnes!!