Attention Commuters

Did you know the City is planning on closing the York Mills commuter parking lot (the north-west corner of Yonge Street and Wilson Avenue) – and replacing it with a building with no commuter parking, even though the building would be directly connected to the subway and the lot is owned by the TTC.

And the proposed building would have no pick-up / drop-off loop.

This building has already been approved by the North York Community Council, so to ensure that the needs of the community are met will require a huge public response – you must e-mail city councillors today Monday July 11, as this will be debated at the City Council meeting Tuesday July 12, 2011 (use this link, or the e-mail addresses below).


Detail

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), which is owned by the City of Toronto, owns the commuter parking lot at the north-west corner of Yonge Street and Wilson Avenue. The lot has been turned over to Build Toronto (also owned by the City of Toronto) who are proposing a 7-storey office building, which would have a street address of 4050 Yonge Street.

While this proposed building would be on a TTC-owned lot and be directly connected to the Yonge Street subway line, the building would have no weekday commuter parking (all parking spaces would be needed by the people working in the building). And this while eliminating all the 260 commuter parking spaces currently on that lot and the nearby Jolly Miller parking lot will soon be reduced in size by an additional 130 parking spaces.

Carefully reading the 211-page Transportation Study (it is over 20 Mbytes) completed for Build Toronto shows that the proposed alternatives suggested are unworkable. Some detailed critique is here.

Other concerns are:

  1. The very popular passenger pick-up / drop-off loop at this site would be eliminated, and the alternatives suggested are unworkable. How can the city be claiming to support transit use if they don’t facilitate access to the subway. The elderly, late-night transit users, those with packages, and the disabled need this.

  2. The City often requires payments (called "Section 37 funds") from developments which do not meet city zoning reqirements such as exceeding allowed building heights or not providing required parkland (both of which this development would require). In this case, $1.5M would be provided by the "developer" – which is the City. That is, the City would be paying itself to not meet its own zoning requirements. Firstly, this is bizarre that the City is paying itself. Secondly, this would set a terrible precedent that the city cannot even abide by its own rules, and yet they claim to be trying to better handle the many developers requesting zoning variances.

  3. There are no tenants for the proposed building, there is currently surplus office space in the area, and there has been no independent information that there is demand for office space in the area.

If you have any questions, e-mail us through Editor@NeighboursNews.ca


Please send an e-mail

A full listing of City Councillors is here, but you can copy-and-paste the e-mail addresses for area Councillors from this:

Mayor_Ford@toronto.ca; councillor_parker@toronto.ca; councillor_robinson@toronto.ca; councillor_carroll@toronto.ca; councillor_colle@toronto.ca; councillor_filion@toronto.ca; councillor_dford@toronto.ca; councillor_layton@toronto.ca; councillor_matlow@toronto.ca; councillor_milczyn@toronto.ca; councillor_mcconnell@toronto.ca; councillor_minnan-wong@toronto.ca; councillor_shiner@toronto.ca; councillor_stintz@toronto.ca; councillor_wongtam@toronto.ca

You may want to say something like:

Dear Councillor:
I too am shocked that the city would approve a building on the subway line which has no room for weekday commuter parking, even though this would be on TTC-owned land. The city should be facilitating transit use, both to support those that need to drive to the subway, or those that need to be picked-up / dropped-off at the York Mills subway station. The proposed solutions are all unrealistic. Please insist that the community be involved to be sure that the proposed building would work.