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Town Crier: MATLOW: Taking steps to combat disruption
June 9th, 2014
Josh Matlow
Town Crier
Residents of Ward 22 are excited about the new Eglinton Crosstown LRT that will connect Toronto from Etobicoke to Scarborough.
In midtown, the new rapid transit line will be underground, with stations at Chaplin, Avenue, Yonge, Mount Pleasant and Bayview.
While the Crosstown will be a tremendous asset to our community, like any major construction project there will be challenges during construction. Most of the tunnel work will not affect at-grade activities, but there will be cuts to the street and temporary lane closures at intersections while the stations are built.
We all understand a certain amount of disruption is inevitable, but there are steps that I believe must be taken to protect our neighbourhoods, mitigate traffic impacts and support local businesses.
Town Crier: ‘Neighbourhood transition zones’ raise alarm
June 4th, 2014
Shawn Star
Town Crier
A midtown community group is accusing the city planning department of “acting like any other developer” for how it suggests rezoning areas along Eglinton Avenue to accommodate midrise developments as part of the streetscape plan connected to the Crosstown LRT.
Patrick Smyth, director of planning issues for the Avenue Road-Eglinton Community Association, says the plan to create neighbourhood transition areas, where homes within 30–39 metres of Eglinton could be demolished to have the required depth for a midrise development, will pave the way for developers to buy and demolish homes without giving adjacent homeowners the right to fight it.
Aside from homeowners not having grounds to fight the demolition of homes next door, the issue is the city not following “rules and regulations around official plan amendments and rezoning,” Smyth argued.
Inside Toronto: Relief Subway Line study to take two years, say city planners
June 3, 2014
Rahul Gupta
Inside Toronto
Yonge-Eglinton residents turned up this week to hear city officials discuss the progress of a study weighing options for a relief subway line.
The project has long been in demand as a way to ease congestion on the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line and would take at least eight to 10 years to build. That’s only after design and planning work is completed and the project receives the necessary environmental approvals from the province. There is also the matter of finding the necessary funding - last estimated at three billion dollars for the relief line’s first phase.
“We’re at the start of the process,” said the city’s transportation services director Tim Laspa who gave a presentation on the relief line study during Monday evening’s information session at North Toronto Collegiate which was organized by local city councillor Josh Matlow.
Post City: Midtown bus land back in use
June 2014
Neil Etienne
Post City
The Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) bus garage site at 24 Eglinton Ave. W. is bustling a little with life these days, but it’s still only a shadow of what Ward 22 councillor Josh Matlow envisions there for the future.
The property has been a bit of an eyesore in recent times, although it is now clad with Metrolinx panels, thanks to work by the councillor, to give temporary purpose to the land there. Behind those panels is the current staging grounds for the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit (LRT) line construction. Matlow says it is a decent use for the site, for the time being.
“It’s finally something better than a vacant, dirty lot. It looks like it has a purpose now,” Matlow said about the property being used as a staging ground. “But it’s not what it should be, and I will continue advocating for a great public space there because that’s what great cities do.”
Town Crier: Signs give a better view
May 26th, 2014
Shawn Star
Town Crier
The corner of Yonge and Eglinton has become a little less of an eyesore, as Eglinton Crosstown LRT construction continues.
New billboards were put up by Metrolinx in mid-April on the southwest corner, covering the abandoned TTC bus barns from public view at street level.
Metrolinx is the provincial transit body overseeing the Crosstown project, a 19-km LRT line with 25 stops running from Weston Road east to Kennedy subway station. Construction began in 2011 and is expected to be complete by 2020.
The Metrolinx boards were something Ward 22 councillor Josh Matlow had been pushing for since he was elected in 2010.
Town Crier: Holly St. proposal gets icy reception
May 26, 2014
Eric Emin Wood
Town Crier
A controversial midtown development that would see two five-storey condominium floors added to existing 14-storey apartment buildings — both with amenity spaces off-limits to existing tenants — will not be authorized by the city unless it’s changed, the city planner and local councillor Josh Matlow have vowed.
In addition to the five-storey additions to 33 Holly St. and 44 Dunfield Ave., the proposal by developer Compten Management Inc. includes two 24-and 32-storey condominium towers and a six-storey rental apartment building at 86 and 88 Soudan Ave. Community groups, including the South Eglinton Residents’ and Ratepayers’ Association, opposed the plan at a public meeting on April 29.
SERRA president Greg Russell said the project would increase the area’s intensification “beyond reasonable limits,” benefitting neither current nor future residents, given the neighbourhood’s high traffic and overcrowded transit.
