The Remington Group has applied to almost double the number of condos they’re hoping to build in the third phase of their Queensway project, and Councillor Peter Milczyn thinks there may be some problems.
"I’m sure residents will have a variety of concerns," he says, referring to the April 15 public hearing the city is hosting in Etobicoke. "The height, at 50 storeys, is too high. I think that’s not supportable given that there are no other tall buildings around there, that they’re not adjacent to a subway station and so on. The density itself? We’ll have to look at the traffic studies. I’m not so concerned about the number of units as I am about the built form, the height and the massing of the buildings."
Remington is proposing to up the unit count from 1,000 to 1,819.
Milczyn, a graduate of U of T’s architecture school and once head of his own design firm, worries that Richmond may be going for too much too quickly in a spot that has, up until now, been a one-side-of-the-street neighbourhood, with the industrial lands currently being built of having had no residents at all.
The land
IQ condos are being built on used to belong to
G. H. Wood, the corporation that was responsible, among other things, for public bathroom hand-dryers with their once ubiquitous motto, "Sanitation for the nation." After moving about 20 years ago, the land was held up for about a decade, the result of a protracted divorce between its new Chinese owners.
Milczyn has high hopes the Queensway, a road he says has been thought of for years as nothing more than "a six-lane bypass to the Gardiner Expressway." With people living on both sides of it, he is optimistic that it may become the centre of Etobicoke, a pedestrian-friendly zone with shops, cafes, and everything else Lakeshore Boulevard once had and is attempting to regenerate. He would like to work with
Artscape, he says, "to bring in some gallery space and maybe artists’ studios as part of this development to create a bit of an arts hub along the Queensway."
The public meeting will be held at Holy Angels Church at 65 Jutland Road, beginning with an open house at 6:30pm on April 15. The meeting will run from 7pm to 8pm.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Milczyn
CORRECTION: The first reference to the developer's name was misstated in the original version of this article.
Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].