A Bit More Detail

An unprecedented development — an 80-storey Toronto condo tower that will be second in height only to the CN Tower — sets a new standard for density at a crucial downtown intersection. Those extremes have created schisms at city hall over more than a year, during a planning process that has left key questions lingering: How much is too much? And who decides?

What occurred with this tower, which Yorkville developer Sam Mizrahi has dubbed “The One,” does not reflect how all building applications are dealt with in this city. But it is an example of how, some councillors say, the city is being built higher and higher, under duress.

As real estate wars see developers buying smaller and smaller parcels of land at rising prices, they are increasingly building skyward to cover their costs.

That’s been noticed at city hall. City councillors and staff say developers are applying more frequently to build well above the prescribed height and density for a neighbourhood. Councillors say there is little recourse to accommodating exceptions, with a provincially legislated appeals body capable of overturning council’s planning choices.

With the province in the midst of a review of that powerful body, the Ontario Municipal Board, city advocates say it’s finally time to get serious about removing Toronto from its grasp.

In the absence of reform, this is how one very tall, very dense building got the green light at council.

The richer Toronto grows, the poorer it feels. The most recent reminder came with the death of Avrom Isaacs, long one of the two or three most important art dealers in Canada.

For several decades his gallery on Yonge St. just north of Bloor was Ground Zero for anyone interested in contemporary Canadian art. Just doors away was Carmen Lamanna, the other legendary Toronto gallerist, not so much Isaacs’ rival as a fellow traveller. A few blocks west in Yorkville, Walter Moos opened his gallery in 1962, a year after Isaacs moved to Yonge

Eventually, the Village, as it was then called, was enshrined as Toronto’s designated art district. At its height, there must have been more than a dozen art galleries in Yorkville, not all of them worthy, but part of the scene nevertheless.

Today, little remains. A few dealers have hung on, but even before Lamanna and Isaacs died, both had been forced to relocate, victims of rising rents and land values that they did as much as anyone to increase.

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By the turn of the century, however, this stretch of the city’s main street had become a series of restaurants and after the demise of the Fiesta, none of them particularly noteworthy. Lamanna’s old place even did time as a massage parlour.

Pretty soon the three-storey mid-19th century buildings that comprise the streetscape will be part of a 58-floor condo tower that has also displaced the venerable Cookbook Store that stood at the corner of Yonge and Cumberland for 31 years.

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• Internationally, CBC reported on the police attack on a gay pride march in Istanbul.

Soon after the library cleared away the scaffolding last fall, it asked longtime collaborator the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) to fill it with their take on a library gift shop — obviously with a comic book bent.

(TCAF has been around since 2003 and since ’09 has run its two-day festival at the Reference Library. This year’s festival runs May 9-10.)

While a full-time store was a larger project than the annual festival organization — which runs under the guidance of a volunteer board and just one employee — had ever undertaken, the answer was an instant Yes.

“You can’t beat being at Yonge and Bloor,” says Miles Baker, who was that sole employee at the time. He’s the managing director of TCAF and now the manager of the newly named Page & Panel too (and he’s got a handful of retail staff helping him out now).

The shop first opened in December as a pop-up. The goal was to set up in time for the Christmas rush, but to put off fine-tuning its brand. With sales solid and a busy schedule of signings, speakers and other events underway, TCAF announced earlier in March that the space would be a permanent fixture.