Item - 2020.EY18.13

Etobicoke York Community Council:

1.  Requested the Director, Community Planning, Etobicoke York District, to report to the Community Council by Q2 2021, on a jurisdictional scan on planning policies, by-laws and other measures put in place by municipalities to identify and protect residential estate lots (clusters of lots with wide frontages more than 66 feet) from being severed through consent applications, thereby changing the character of the area.

2. Requested the Director, Community Planning, Etobicoke York District, to report to the Community Council by Q2 2021, on options to protect estate lots in the Etobicoke York District.

Toronto is home to many unique and characteristic neighbourhoods. Over the decades planners and developers implemented deliberate and calculated visions to create places that we call home. Attributes which define our neighbourhoods include the pattern of lot subdivision, green and open spaces, size, massing and building setbacks. When visiting an adequately protected neighbourhood, the intended experience of the place designers is still felt today.

Etobicoke is home to very unique neighbourhoods which contain clusters of large wide lots (greater in width than one surveyor's chain - 66 feet) which could be called Estate Lots. When visiting these places, there is no doubt of the history and that the intent of the designers was deliberate in their quantity, pattern, organization and spacing of the lots and buildings. Residents choose to live in them because of these desirable attributes, and understandably support measures to maintain them.

Examples of Estate Lot neighbourhoods include Humber Heights, Lorraine Gardens, Eatonville, Kingsview Village, Humber Valley, Princess Anne Manor, Thorncrest and The Kingsway. A review of the City's zoning map easily discerns them from others with their minimum frontage zoning requirements of 21 metres or greater.

Despite the zoning standards, these neighbourhoods are constantly under threat by speculative developers who seek to sever the wide lots and make a profit in the buoyant real estate market. Our current planning policies make it difficult to distinguish a legitimate infill development of underutilized land from a direct attack on a neighbourhood's character. Unfortunately our system to permit consents allows for persistent attacks which erode Estate Lot clusters over time, and may eventually lead to their collapse.

Other municipalities in Ontario have taken steps to recognize the value of Estate Lot neighbourhoods and have implemented tools to preserve them, and help protect them from speculative development and the incremental loss of their integrity over time.

I am writing to request that the Etobicoke York Community Council ask City Planning to look into the tools implemented in other jurisdictions, and report the findings to this Committee.