Item - 2024.PH10.3

The Planning and Housing Committee:

1. Requested the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning to undertake broad public and stakeholder consultation on the proposed policy directions (Attachment 1) in the report (February 12, 2024) from the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning and report back with recommended Official Plan Amendments in the fourth quarter of 2024.

2. Requested the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning, to explore the proposed policy direction and mapping changes for certain City-owned sites adjacent to existing Avenues with potential to support the delivery of housing, from among those identified in Confidential Attachment 1 to the report - 2023.EX9.3 (dated November 8, 2023).

3. Requested the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning to consider redesignation of lands identified as areas of transition from Neighbourhoods to Mixed-Use to better facilitate mid-rise development on Avenues.

The Project Manager, Official Plan and Legislation, City Planning and the Project Coordinator, City Planning gave a presentation on Housing Action Plan: Avenues Policy Review.

For decades, Toronto’s major transportation thoroughfares have been an important part of the City’s strategy to manage growth and accommodate intensification. Through the Housing Action Plan (HAP) 2022-2026, Council directed City Planning to review the City’s Official Plan to ensure that it aligns with the need for more housing in areas of the City that can accommodate more residential opportunities. As part of the Housing Action Plan Work Plan, the Avenues Policy Review examines opportunities to enable more housing by looking at four areas of focus: update the vision and policy direction for how Avenues will develop, extend and potentially introduce new Avenues, explore opportunities to streamline study requirements for new development along Avenues, and consider opportunities to create areas of transition between Avenues and Neighbourhoods to enable more housing.

This report recommends that staff undertake public and stakeholder consultation on the proposed policy directions (Attachment 1) and report back with recommended Official Plan Amendments and mapping in the fourth quarter of 2024. This report also provides emerging policy directions related to areas of transition that support the delivery of housing on certain City-owned sites adjacent to existing Avenues, and seeks direction to advance the review and evaluation of potential built form outcomes that can inform future policy direction.

The Official Plan policy framework for the Avenues has enabled and attracted growth. The City’s latest Development Pipeline bulletin (January 2017 - June 2022) reported that Avenues contained the most proposed projects of any of the Official Plan’s growth management areas. These 637 projects account for over 160,000 residential units and over 1 million square metres of non-residential gross floor area representing 23 percent of the city’s proposed units and 8 percent of its proposed non-residential gross floor area.

With the Avenues increasingly becoming a more important part of the Official Plan’s Urban Structure, partly due to continued public transit investment, the City is presented with an opportunity to update the Avenues policy framework and geography.

This report draws on the twenty years of experience applying the Avenues policies and lessons learnt from studying approximately 80 km of Avenues to both advance the objectives of the Housing Action Plan and several important city-building goals, including:

• increasing housing supply;
• introducing more housing options in existing communities;
• making better use of existing hard infrastructure;
• supporting and enhancing transit in existing communities;
• building more inclusive and complete communities by supporting new community services and facilities (i.e., libraries, parks, schools, childcare centres, etc.) and new local retail and service uses varying in type and scale;
• enhancing the public realm by creating an attractive, safe, and comfortable pedestrian environment that encourages walking; and
• facilitating the development of complete streets.

The Avenues Policy Review is only one of several action items in the Housing Action Plan that supports the objective of enabling additional housing supply across Toronto’s Major Streets and Avenues. Other related action items include: the Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods (EHON) Major Streets Study, Updates to Mid-rise Rear Transition Performance Standards Urban Design Guidelines, as-of-right Zoning for Mid-rise Buildings on Avenues, and Expanding Mixed Use Areas and Commercial Residential Zoning for new Mixed Use Areas. City Planning is actively working to advance these action items in a comprehensive and integrated manner.