Item - 2021.TE28.62

The Toronto and East York Community Council:

1. Requested the Director, Transit and Transportation Planning, City Planning, in consultation with the Executive Director of Transit Expansion Office, and the Director, Community Planning, Toronto and East York District, to report to the Toronto and East York Community Council meeting on November 24, 2021, with:

a. preliminary planning comments, outstanding issues as well as opportunities to secure City priorities, and a summary of any public feedback received on each of the Transit Oriented Community proposals advanced by Infrastructure Ontario for the Ontario Line stations in the Toronto and East York District to date: Exhibition, King-Bathurst, Queen-Spadina, Corktown, and East Harbour; and

b. recommendations for a City-led public engagement process, in consultation with local ward councillors, in the Toronto and East York District, for the Transit Oriented Community proposals.

2. Requested the Director, Transit and Transportation Planning, City Planning, to report to Toronto and East York Community Council with preliminary planning comments as further Transit Oriented Community proposals are made in Toronto and East York District by Infrastructure Ontario.

Infrastructure Ontario, a Provincial crown agency, is currently advancing five Transit Oriented Community (TOC) proposals for mixed-use development on lands associated with the Ontario Line near planned stations at Exhibition, King-Bathurst, Queen-Spadina, Corktown, and East Harbour.

All of these TOC proposals are in rapidly-growing areas where communities, with local councillors and Planning staff, have extensive experience constructively managing change and growth to build complete neighbourhoods. In a number of critical instances there are also recently updated planning frameworks in place, or active City-building projects underway.

However, the TOC proposals are not going through the typical process of submitting a re-zoning application to the City for each site, and as a result the standard steps of consultation and review have not automatically been initiated.

That's why we are requesting City Planning staff bring forward an update, similar to a standard Preliminary Report on a re-zoning application, for each of these sites.