June 12th, 2014

Ben Spurr

Now Magazine

June 11th, 2014

Shawn Star

Town Crier

Fans of Robert Bateman’s paintings might find it interesting to know that a large part of his inspiration came from being in the ravine behind his childhood home in Forest Hill.

The City of Toronto will decide on June 10 whether to pursue making the home at 287 Chaplin Cres. a heritage property.

Local councillor Josh Matlow says the heritage designation will ensure that an important piece of Toronto’s art history will be preserved. He brought the idea to Toronto and East York community council in May, where it was approved unanimously.

“Our community is very proud of the fact that Robert Bateman grew up on the beltline in midtown Toronto,” he said. “Given the fact that his childhood home on our beltline inspired so much of his work, I think there’s a very strong case for heritage designation.

“I have great confidence the preservation board will support my request.”

June 11th, 2014

Graham Slaughter

Toronto Star

The city is taking steps to buy a defunct lawn bowling club and transform it into a public park, a deal that could cost upwards of $5 million.

Council voted Wednesday to ask staff to evaluate the Glebe Manor Lawn Bowling Club and negotiate a price with its owners. The executive committee will vote on any potential deal in August.

The motion was tabled by Councillor Josh Matlow and passed with two opposition votes from councillors Karen Stintz and Mike Del Grande.

“I’m deeply appreciative of my colleagues’ strong support for our community interest in preserving green space,” Matlow said.

June 9th, 2014

Graham Slaughter

Toronto Star

There was an old-timey charm to the Glebe Manor Lawn Bowling Club, a 91-year-old greenway in Davisville Village.

“At night it had that soft white light, everyone dressed in white,” recalled Derek Tilley, 44, who lives across from the quaint clubhouse and its manicured lawn. “It looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.”

Those days are over. Dwindling membership in the leisurely sport forced the club to shutter last fall, spelling an end to the picturesque bowls.

Now a tug-of-war is being waged between a property developer and Councillor Josh Matlow over whether the multi-million-dollar property will become a public park or a row of new houses.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.