Dealing with developers

JOHN LORINC
Special to The Globe and Mail
September 19, 2008

In April, 2007, Toronto launched a two-year pilot project to establish a "design review panel" to buff up the city's architecture standards, especially for large-scale towers that can radically alter streetscapes and the pedestrian realm.

The move was the city's response to growing concerns among neighbourhood groups that developers are building increasingly enormous condo towers with little regard to their look, especially at grade.

But the other source of inspiration was the City of Vancouver, which has relied for years on a design review panel, comprised of architects, engineers and planners, to vet development proposals. Projects that don't pass muster go back to the proverbial drawing board.

Vancouver's design panel is just one of a series of discretionary planning policies that sharply differentiate Toronto from the West Coast metropolis. Unlike in Ontario, Vancouver developers can't appeal planning decisions to a quasi-judicial body. City planners, in turn, encounter less interference from local councillors, meaning they can fast-track applications and increase site densities while demanding more from builders in terms of benefits to the public, such as day-care centres, arts facilities and landscaping.

"Things tend to go more predictably," Robert Freedman, Toronto's head of urban design, says of the Vancouver model. "It's less convoluted and not nearly as political."

There's an even more important dividend, however. Vancouver's approach, says that city's retired planning director, Larry Beasley, has created "a neighbourhood environment at high density that consumers find very attractive because it is not just housing they are purchasing but a complete residential/neighbourhood lifestyle. This has added huge value to private market projects."

Mr. Beasley says that developers, "after a period of watching the results on their bottom lines, have now generally become happy to make contributions ... to get through the Vancouver system."

The City of Toronto is not placid when dealing with developers who want to build above existing height or density limits. It levies fees, known as "Section 37" benefits, to help offset such projects.

Since 1998, the city has collected $48-million in Section 37 fees. The funds, another form of economic spinoff, go toward heritage protection, day care, public art and other community amenities.