Council sends neighbourhood biz proposal back to city planners

Article content

The renaissance of the neighbourhood corner store in Toronto will have to wait.

Late Wednesday night, city council voted 18-1 to refer back to the chief planner a zoning proposal that would allow small businesses to set up in neighbourhoods all over Toronto. (Councillor Josh Matlow was the lone vote in opposition.)

“This is a profound, profound change to planning in the city, and this changes the dynamic of our neighbourhoods in a way that’s never been done before,” Stephen Holyday, who put forward the motion to send the proposal back to planners for more work, told the council.

“In the strongest sense, I’m sounding the alarm right now that this is a proposal that is upsetting people all across the city, and I’m starting to hear about it more and more and more as the information gets out.”

“We are talking about the quality of life of people in quiet residential neighbourhoods that chose to live in these neighbourhoods because they are quiet,” Holyday added. “They did not choose them because of commercial activity, commercial activity that could happen any day of the week, into the evening and on to the weekend.”

The Sunreported last week on the changes, which would allow small businesses like cafes or pet groomers to set up more easily in Toronto neighbourhoods. Some of the issues raised at this month’s planning committee meeting, which first debated the proposal, included the cost of bylaw enforcement and the fear that bars and pot shops could pop up all over the city.

What may have sunk the idea at Wednesday’s council meeting was an apparent lack of consultation with the public. Holyday said referring the proposal back to planners would allow time for “a deeper conversation” with Torontonians.

“I am hearing from my residents as well that they don’t understand what it is that’s being proposed,” Anthony Perruzza – who, like Holyday, represents a suburban ward in the west of the city – told council. “The issue is that in the suburbs, there is a concern, a well-founded concern, that our planning department, while they want to move to a one-size-fits-all model across the city of Toronto, the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work well in some areas, and they want to better understand it.”

Gord Perks, who chairs the planning committee, had said earlier this month there were “20 or 30 important reasons why” the city should make the change. On Wednesday, he voted to refer.

“This is suboptimal,” he said, “but it does give us a chance to tease out the ways we might be able to do this well.”

Alejandra Bravo had sought to make a slate of amendments to salvage the proposal, including that council urge the provincial attorney general and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario to change its liquor and cannabis laws to give the city an effective veto over licences for alcohol and marijuana.

She told council she had worked with her fellow councillors for a week and a half on the proposal “to try to get to a place where we could get to yes.” Ultimately, she too voted to refer.

“We’re regularizing some activity that’s (already) taking place. We’re putting some guardrails around it,” she said in defence of the idea. “Unfortunately, it’s obvious that we don’t have the votes here.”

jholmes@postmedia.com