04-09-2024, 02:05 PM
Councillor Ioannidis was absolutely pissed about this last night, he wasn't mad about the height or anything in particular but he was mainly mad about the lease between GRR and the developer, which isn't in the control of council let alone within the jurisdiction of planning staff. He went on for a long enough time that you could tell staff were starting to get annoyed with him. He was basically of the view that it should out right be rejected even if it goes against staff and that it should be deferred to a later date, a deferral has the potential to require the city to return OPA/ZBA fees and potentially the project going to the OLT where the city would inevitably lose.
Chapman had her usually height shenanigans since its 40 floors that's so much higher than is allowed in the official plan/zoning bylaw, staff use to this at this point came back to her and effectively said we know that's not what it says but when the official plan and zoning bylaw were passed we had bonusing provisions in place for developers to exceed the as of right zoning meaning the property was intended to have more density however under Bill 23 the province removed that thus it has to get a OPA/ZBA.
After effectively no debate this has been deferred to a new special council meeting sometime next week meaning it is still within the 120 days of the planning act so the fees will not be returned unless council wants to defer it again. Between the planning meeting and the council meeting the developer agreed that construction won't start for at least 5 years allowing GRR to at least make some money (we already know this is gonna be an up zone and flip situation), and committed 32 affordable housing units (3%), they also made agreements to have talks about potentially including GRR in the podium, this was to the satisfaction of Singh, Davey, Schnider, and Owodunni who wanted to have further debate and pass the ZBA/OPA yesterday, however to everyone else around the horse shoe it wasn't sufficient so it got deferred.
Chapman had her usually height shenanigans since its 40 floors that's so much higher than is allowed in the official plan/zoning bylaw, staff use to this at this point came back to her and effectively said we know that's not what it says but when the official plan and zoning bylaw were passed we had bonusing provisions in place for developers to exceed the as of right zoning meaning the property was intended to have more density however under Bill 23 the province removed that thus it has to get a OPA/ZBA.
After effectively no debate this has been deferred to a new special council meeting sometime next week meaning it is still within the 120 days of the planning act so the fees will not be returned unless council wants to defer it again. Between the planning meeting and the council meeting the developer agreed that construction won't start for at least 5 years allowing GRR to at least make some money (we already know this is gonna be an up zone and flip situation), and committed 32 affordable housing units (3%), they also made agreements to have talks about potentially including GRR in the podium, this was to the satisfaction of Singh, Davey, Schnider, and Owodunni who wanted to have further debate and pass the ZBA/OPA yesterday, however to everyone else around the horse shoe it wasn't sufficient so it got deferred.