Medallion nears GO (tm), poised to collect $200

If so, please return it.

--Amanda

I don’t
normally respond to these kinds of screeds on local blogs but, given the
thoughtful nature of most of the participants here on the London Commons and
the fact that many of you are my neighbours, I thought I should at least try.

Mr. Packowski
characterizes the presentation of Medallion Properties proposed brownfield
redevelopment here in Old East Village to Planning Committee on Monday, June
16, 2008 as a sort of mise-en-scene,
with the requisite “fawning” and “gushing” that one might expect from such a
set-piece. He likens it to a “small town
greeting the arrival of the circus”. He
comes to the conclusion that the proposed development is “...on balance, a good
idea” yet criticizes it for a lack of consultation with the community and an
unseemly haste to rush this project into the air.

I shouldn’t
have to explain to most readers of this blog the challenges involved in
re-creating our cities to align more closely with the changing realities of an
oil-dependent culture and the need for creative models of urban sustainability. Mr. Packowski confuses me. Not knowing him personally, I’m hesitant to
suggest that perhaps he really would be more comfortable housing these 1,500
people on greenfields north of Masonville to save the bother of trying to
decide how, and if, cars might enter or exit the new development onto King
Street or Dundas Street. Further, his
concern that the new residents will not connect to the neighbourhood and will
continue to get into their cars to drive to Masonville to shop is speculative,
to put it charitably, but also demonstrably false, as would have been clear to
him had he listened to the planner describe the 200 or so parking spots for a
500-unit building, or had he bothered to attend any of the public meetings held
in the neighbourhood prior to the development proposal being placed on the
Planning Committee agenda. Those of us
who did go to the bother understand that this is a development aimed at driving
people not to Masonville to shop but to public transit and/or a walkable
community model.

If one is
truly concerned with urban sustainability, then one must also (In my opinion)
accept the need for residential intensification and infill development in the
core of our cities, even if this development has some sharp edges that need
attention. I said during my submission
that the residents of Old East (and I suspect the same is true for the business
owners) were, on the whole, not NIMBYs but YIMBYs. And I said that with some pride for most of
my neighbours spend most of their waking hours ahead of the herd, where the
grass is greener and the forage sweeter.
Apart from the contribution that this development makes to establishing
the proper context for carefully-considered and well-designed core residential
intensification projects, why else am I such a “gushing” and “fawning”
supporter of this particular project?

This is a great development.
Medallion Properties is widely-considered to be one of the most
progressive property developers in the country.
They have been terrifically successful at identifying core areas
experiencing social and/or economic challenge and then taking the lead in
investing in high-quality projects.
Inevitably this leads to further development, which is generally good
for the neighbourhood, and good profits, which is good for the company. See, Mr Packowski, a virtuous circle.

You don’t
have to take my word for this. They have
done this time after time, predominantly in Toronto, but not exclusively. Look at the projects they have done on Queen
Street West, well before it was popular to do so, and the work they are doing
with the Toronto Housing Corporation in developing mixed-income housing.

They also
consulted extensively and exhaustively with City staff, including the city’s
urban designer, and with community representatives, including myself. The result of this consultation was
significant redesigns of the building to solve community concerns about how the
building would present to the street, how it would relate to the surrounding
neighbourhood and how it would connect with the commercial corridor. The work wasn’t completed in a vacuum, as Mr.
Packowski would have us believe. It was
this consultation process, for example, that led to the ultimate decision to
feature “needle-towers” – precisely so that shadowing would be minimized for
properties to the north of the building, such as the Unity Project. To deal with shadowing concerns, the
developer also agreed to have shadowing impact studies completed. I could continue, but won’t...

Old East Village deserves this
project. Community activists in this neighbourhood
have been working for years to change the unthinking negative stereotyping of
our neighbourhood and to challenge the wide-reaching belief, apparently shared
by Mr. Packowski, that the raison d’etre
of Old East is to act as host for the city’s social service agencies and a flourishing
street level drug- and sex-trade. The
Medallion Properties’ project is the first project to go fully through the new
urban design process, to resemble something other than a “concrete box on box”
design, to purposefully challenge the required parking space per unit
calculation used by the city, to show how these types of developments might be
integrated into existing neighbourhoods while minimizing the impacts, to have a
developer and the community and the city collaborating with mutual respect on
the final design of a private realm building, to have public conversations
about public spaces... Here, too, the
list could go on and on, but I won’t.
You either get this stuff, or you are like Mr. Packowski and don’t.

Mr. Packowski’s
personal agenda is quite apparent from his polemic. He is concerned first and foremost with the
effect, however insignificant, this project might have on the social service
agencies operating in the Old East Village.
“During construction”, he asks at one point, “how will local bodies like
the unity project and the st. joseph’s soup kitchen (sic) continue to offer
their services? after that, how do these
groups continue to function inside a vastly-changed (arguably for the better)
local community?” Nowhere is he willing
to recognize that the challenges faced during the construction are shared by
the greater community. Nothing about the
positive effects for local business owners.
Nothing about the positive effects of introducing 1,500 new residents
into the neighbourhood with the increased economies of scale that will
accompany them.

Both the
Unity Project and the St. Joseph’s Hospitality Centre are valued membes of our
community but their needs do not, and should not, trump, ipso facto, the legitimate needs of the other 5,000 or so people
who live here. We should all be grateful
(and I certainly am) that the needs of some of our of most disadvantaged fellow
citizens are being met by these two local social service agencies. Having said that (and I have said exactly
that many times before, and will again in the future), we ought not to forget that
it is the agencies themselves and not the people they serve who are the
full-time residents of the community.
The Unity Project offers emergency and transitional shelter beds, not
permanent accommodation. The Hospitality
Centre feeds people, but doesn’t provide shelter. So, when we speak of construction impacts,
which clearly exercise Mr. Packowski’s sense of right and wrong, what we are
really talking about are the impacts on the corporate structure and not on the
individual lives of its always temporary clients. I suspect that these clients are concerned
with far more important things than shadowing from a building at the rear, or
dust and noise from construction, or whether cars will be allowed to enter/exit
off King Street and, in any event, these are impacts that will be shared by all
of us. The burden does not fall
disproportionately on the backs of the Unity Project and Hospitality Centre. Again, this either makes sense, or it doesn’t.

What I
really wanted to take issue with, however, was the statement that really shows
just how little regard Mr. Packowski has for this neighbourhood and the people
who inhabit it: “...and finally, in a part of town in desperate need, where is any talk
of affordable (or rent-geared-to-income) housing?

John Packowski,
are you shittin’ me? Push your belly
back from the juice bar and take a look at this community. We already provide a disproportionate share
of the city’s affordable housing units in our residential neighbourhood and
commercial corridor. The B.I.A. has been
a leader in the province on live-work zoning changes, Convert-to-Rent
initiatives, and creative collaborations with Canada Mortgage & Housing on other
affordable housing initiatives.

However, I
suspect what you are really saying is that Old East ought to be nothing but
affordable housing. I can tell you that
if we were to give in to the pressures for gentrification here in Old East and
drive out the non-resident landlords, or actively encourage prospective buyers
of our homes to convert them back to single-family dwellings, the city’s stock
of affordable housing units would drop through the floor.
Chew on that one for a while, Mr. Packowski.

If you are
also taking a page from the Unity Project playbook – or, more accurately, from
the limousine liberals who sit on its Board – and saying that this particular
developer ought to be forced to provide an affordable housing component, then I
would say to you “Why this one, and no other?”
I might have missed it but I didn’t see your name or hear your voice
when the downtown towers where being put up, or the towers up near Masonville,
or anything else recently constructed.
Your absence was also noted over the last several months of the Official
Plan Review as members of the London Housing Advisory Committee and the Urban
League of London pushed vigorously, and ultimately unsuccessfully, for an
affordable housing strategy, including a mandated 20% affordable component on
all new builds (and not just ones here in Old East), to be included in the updated Official Plan for the City of London.

I apologize
for the long post and the opinions expressed herein are mine alone. I also apologize for the faulty formatting.

"approved" by silvia langer?? hunh??

-r.