High Park Toronto
& the High Park Condo

This Toronto website is about the proposed condominium by Daniels HR Corporation and WJ Properties plus the players, rookie city councillor Sarah Doucette and the High Park Residents Association.

Of course the ones who are being ignored and disempowered in all of this are us local residents of the area and the friends of High Park. We consider this a public crime against our community.

This page is about the issues for residents. For information on the players visit the following pages:

• City of Toronto
• Sarah Doucette
• WJ Properties
• Daniels HR Corporation

This morning, Tuesday, May 15, 2012, at the Etobicoke York Community Council, city councillor Sarah Doucette was ready to fight against the local residents who are overwhelmingly against this monster High Park condo. She brought in 4 dead ringers as speakers to praise the condo developement: Tina Leslie, Secretary of the Junction Residents association, Craig White, Gerald Miller and Arthur Noack, three of whom don't live anywhere near the proposed development. If any of these people attend a meeting you are at, you will know Doucette is stacking the meeting with her blind followers. Also interesting is that these 4 talked about being on Doucettes "Working Group" to work with Daniels Corp. the developer and they had nothing but praise in their deputations for the builder. It is common to create these fake community working groups to co-op people and waste their time to falsely indicate there is community support and cooperation.

Also notable is that there will not be any daycare as part of the project which was why Toronto city councillor Sarah Doucette said she supported building it in the first place. In fact in several aspects the city's Community Planning department is supporting further changes to make some aspects even bigger, though it will remain at 378 units (up from the original 346). See http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012/ey/bgrd/backgroundfile-46696.pdf

Sarah Doucette also refuses to divulge how or who will get selected to get the "13 affordable rental units" in the condo, but you can bet it won't be anybody who didn't support her!

The Ontario Municipal Board hearings on the building will be on their case number PL120190, for June 21, 2012, starting at 10 a.m., at the OMB, 16th Floor, 655 Bay Street, Toronto, M5G 1E5. The OMB contact is Planner, Sandara Chan (416) 326-6776.

This proposed condominium is on the north side of Bloor facing Toronto's world famous park, High Park. The building spans the whole block of Bloor Street West, from Oakmount Road to Pacfic Avenue, including the addresses of 1844, 1846, 1848, 1850, 1852 and 1854 Bloor Street West, 8, 8, 10, 12, 14, part of 18 and 18A Oakmount Road, plus 35 and 37 Pacific Avenue.

At 378 condo units this would make it the largest building both by number of apartments and footprint of any building in the highpark area. This in a small area of Toronto Ward 13 that already has an extremely high density the area comprised of Oakmount Road to the east, Quebec Avenue to the west, Glenlake Avenue as the north boundary and Bloor Street West as the southern boundary.

This was an increase on the already huge size of 346 units and was very subtly introduced at the November 9, 2011 community meeting which was not well publicized or attended. From the description at that meeting people thought the size had been decreased and not increased by 32 condominium apartments.

With there being 378 condo apartments but only 274 parking spots for residents and some needing more than one, who will clearly want to park on Oakmount Road or Pacific Avenue as will many of their visitors on these streets already very short of parking.

To make matters much worse there are only 8 ground level parking spots in total for the two retail business location and the 48 child daycare centre. When parents come to pick up their 48 children with only 8 parking spots that already have to be shared with the two businesses, it will be havoc on the streets.

If you mistakenly think Daniels Corp is providing the daycare centre out of the goodness of their hearts, they aren't. It is their way to buy a bigger building above the city's Offical Plan's 8 story height limit and increased density as per section 37 of the Planning Act, Statutes of Ontario. The building will be 14 stories and 52 metres or 170 feet high. The more condo apartments you can build on a piece of land to sell the more profit you can make! With a 378 condo units, near and many overlooking High Park, and assuming they sell for an average of $300,000 each, that makes this an over $100 MILLION development. Big money is at issue here.

With this increase in density, the area traffic is bound to increase on Pacific Avenue, Oakmount Road and Glenlake Avenue. With these roads already poorly maintained by the City of Toronto, the roads can only be expected to deteriorate further if maintenance is not improved by the city at a further cost to taxpayers.

The High Park area is a mix of mostly 50 to 90 year old brick and stone buildings.

This condominium development is a huge glass facade building that does not fit in with a residential Bloor Street section in appearance, building materials or in its disproportionate size.

The shape of this building is like a big scoop facing south to the park. When warm or hot winds from the south blow northwards they will be scooped by the two side sections along Pacific Avenue and Oakmount Road, up the back section producing a large negative pressure likely to pop out the glass windows and glass balcony panels out of their frames, something Daniels Corp. has already had problems with elsewhere.

With the huge number of birds who use High Park there is likely going to be a huge problem with birds flying into a mostly glass building. For more information visit or contact Fatal Light Awareness Program.

The city never studied what effect this building and the paving over of all these properties will have on High Park. As one speaker at the community council pointed out there is already a lot of water runoff during storms from this property and what happens when all the trees, grass and soil are paved over so the water will have no where to go?

A pattern that has been repeated throughout this process is that both the City Councillor and the city's Community Planner, tell those people who dissent against the condominium to speak with them privately. When you speak with either of them privately, each will falsely claim that you are 1 of one 3 people who have ever complained to them and that the other 2 are lunatics who you don't want to get lumped in with. Or they say that the community fully supports this and that you don't want to look like a selfish NIMBY. Of course it has come out that both have received a lot of complaints and that these are manipulative tactics to misinform you and get you to silence yourself.

This was the first meeting I could not attend but did have 2 people report on it to me. The most telling thing about this "public meeting" was that right at the beginning Toronto Community Planning manager Phil Carvalino, stopped the meeting to complain about someone at the back of the meeting who was video taping it. Mr. Carvalino, stated that if anybody taperecorded or took a video recording of the meeting that the meeting would be called off.

Neil Pattison from Daniels Corp told the people there they could not stop the building as they took it to the OMB, but that he was willing to get community input as to the landscaping for the tiny bit of property the building isn't paving over and to choose some of the facade materials they might use. Councillor Doucette encouraged people to sign up for the Working Group telling them it was the only input they would get into the project.

Philip Carvalio warned that if the residents opposed the building at the OMB hearings he would be there to defend his report in support of the out of place oversized 378 apartment block long building. You have to wonder if that is Phil's wide lot home in the million dollar range on Francesca Court in Woodbridge. It would certainly explain why he has so little regard for High Park in Toronto.

We received an email from a High Park resident on Monday, March 19, 2012, talking about the demolition of the houses.

She noticed from the open north side fence, that they were ripping up lots of pipes covered in asbestos insulation and dumping it into open waste disposal bins. She called Sarah Doucette's office 416-392-4072 and was told by her assistance that "asbestos is not a safety concern as long as you don't live in the building".

Asbestos is a severe health concern, causing Mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer that can take 30 to 40 years to develop to this stage from the original lung scarring from the asbestos fibres.

It appears that Daniels Corporation may not have done the necessary site remediation that would involving sealing and special disposal of any asbestos to save money. If this is true, they have endangered the health of anybody in any area where breezes may have blown these dangerous asbestos fibres.

We advise anybody who witnesses any asbestos being thrown (unsealed) in waste bins should call the media to catch it on camera, and also contact: Ontario Ministy of Labour, Occupational Health & Safety (toll free) 877-202-0008, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, 416-325-3377, and the Canadian Environmental Law Association 416-960-2284. We can only hope this will be investigated something the city should be doing.

With a mostly glass facade this building is designed very cheaply, will have high heating costs and due to leaking windows will have only a 10 to 15 year lifespan before a huge and costly refurishment will be necessary. See the CBC expose of these cheap glass Toronto condo buildings Throw-away buildings: Toronto's glass condos

The residents of 20 Gothic Avenue, living above High Park subway station were falsely told about how the community fully supported that development to find as they have told me that they daily face outright hostility from the neighbourhood even 3 years later.

As many people have been warning, even the city reports talk about other "soft sites" they would like to promote for development, there are at this moment (Feb 2012) two more being pushed forward: 1990 Bloor Street West on the northwest corner of Bloor and Parkview Gardens also across from High Park, to be 12 stories, and another just west of the park at 2114 Bloor Street West on the northwest corner of Bloor and Kennedy Park Road.

As City Toronto Councillor Doucette said, "there is a potential for a lot more development on Bloor from Clendenan to Keele".

There is also the 34-50 Southport Street condo against the wishes of residents in what Sarah refered to as "Gawd awful South Swansea". For more see Sarah Doucette

It seems that Daniels Corp got a sweet deal in the $1 billion redevelopment in Regent Park. They were awarded the last 5 phases of the development without any tenders and coincidentally, the local city council ended up with an unusually huge luxury condo suite and two of the head bureaucrats at Toronto Community Housing involved in the negotiations bought investment properties in the project to rent out for incomes. In addition to the city putting up this huge piece of land and $100 million in local investments there is another $100 million in public funding to sweeten the already extravagant deal given to Daniels Corp on a silver platter.

The scandal does not end there, additionally, Daniels Corp president Mitch Cohen's niece bought a unit with a publicly subsidized second mortgage and it appears a second relative Samuel Cohen also bought in, but the deal over this huge piece of public land is demeeded "confidential" and therefore not open to any public scrutiny.

Piece of Toronto history about to be demolished, Toronto Star, May 16, 2010
More community consultation for controversial High Park Condo, Bloor West Villager, January 19, 2012
What’s too high for High Park?, NOW Magazine March 8, 2012

If you have additional information for this website please contact High Park Resident.