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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.
Increasing rent prices in the city’s luxury shopping district are forcing music retailer HMV to shut its 50 Bloor Street store at the end of March.
The closure leaves five HMV locations in Toronto: the flagship store at 333 Yonge Street, the store at Eglinton and Laird and stores in the Eaton Centre, Dufferin Mall and Sherway.
“It comes down to economics. We’ve been desperately trying to find a way through with the landlord,” Nick Williams, HMV’s president and CEO, told NOW. “As you would expect the rent price on Bloor Street is prohibitive for most. We’ll look at what opportunities will become available elsewhere in that area but we just couldn’t make it work in that particular unit.”
[. . .]
In 2011, HMV Canada was acquired by Re:Capital, a subsidiary of London-based restructuring firm Hilco Capital (the company also acquired HMV's former UK parent two years later), which expanded the store's products from CDs and DVDs to include an e-commerce platform, vinyl records, headphones and accessories, apparel, and gifts and collectibles related to music and film.
Vinyl is a particular growth area. Records are now available in 65 of HMV’s Canadian stores and heavily represented on shelves in its flagship locations in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton. Williams says vinyl represents 20 per centof HMV’s overall sales so this year he plans to expand vinyl sections in smaller stores as well.
“[The market] is not as ever changing as it has been previously,” he explains, adding that CD sales have flattened out. “You have a consumer settling in and buying CDs and buy a lot of them, and you have those that are now buying and exploring, for the first time, vinyl.”
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.
[. . .]
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.
The Church of Scientology of Toronto, which owns 696 Yonge St., owes more than $61,000 in property taxes and penalties for 2014, out of a total of just under $112,000. The organization made only partial payments of its 2014 property taxes, according to Supervisor of Collections Stephen Franceschini.
It also owes $57,348.15 in taxes and penalties on the interim 2015 property tax bill, according to Franceschini.
Property owners receive an interim tax bill near the beginning of each year, and typically a final bill in May. Payments on the 2015 interim bill were due March 2, April 1 and May 1, according to the city’s website.
“We have contacted the local Church in Toronto and they intend to get this paid forthwith,” Scientology spokesperson Linda Wieland said in an email.
The news comes as the organization says it still plans to convert the Yonge St. building into one of Scientology’s “Ideal Orgs,” which it first announced in early 2013. Scientology describes these facilities as “cathedrals” in desirable locations, “intended to meet increasing demand worldwide for Scientology services and initiatives.”
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