Plans to build a Walmart next to Kensington Market have been put on hold for one year.
On Friday morning, with little fanfare or debate, city council passed a motion that prohibits all new retail and service developments on a 3-km stretch of Bathurst from Queen West to Dupont for 12 months. The vote was 36-1.
The ban, known as an interim control bylaw, was moved by Mike Layton and Adam Vaughan, two councillors whose wards lie on either side of Bathurst. Layton says the extraordinary measure was necessary to give the city a chance to review a recent string of big development proposals that he fears could wreck the character of one of downtown’s major streets.
“We’ve seen a pattern of development applications on Bathurst,” Layton says. “One of the major concerns that has been voiced by residents and businesses in the area has been the size of the retail. And with more developments coming, we need to get a better handle on it.”
He rejects the notion that the sweeping prohibition on new stores is heavy-handed. “I think it’s generally the purpose of government to make sure that the city develops in a way that allows everyone to have a high quality of life and to live in a prosperous society,” he says. “This is precisely the function of government.”
Layton says that the proposal from real estate giant RioCan to construct a 12,000-square-metre shopping centre at Bathurst and Nassau with Walmart as an anchor tenant was not the sole focus of his motion. But he concedes that the controversial plan, as well as news that beloved discount outlet Honest Ed’s is up for sale, was a factor in pushing for the retail ban. (Although the Honest Ed’s property has a large frontage on Bloor, it falls within the zone of the Bathurst interim control bylaw).
The RioCan application has provoked howls of protest from residents and a local business association, who fear that a Walmart would decimate small-time retailers in nearby Kensington Market. A petition against the development has garnered over 85,000 signatures, and a packed public consultation in June was dominated by vocal opposition to the big box store.
City staff were to complete a final report on RioCan’s application by the end of the year, but chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat says it will be halted while the bylaw is in effect.
According to planning staff, much of Bathurst is characterized by “fine grain” development a mix of single-family homes, small stores, and institutional uses like the Toronto Western Hospital. But under existing zoning bylaws, as-of-right permissions allow for large-scale retail on the street.
Keesmaat is concerned those rules are outdated and need to be changed. A study of zoning and design guidelines for Bathurst corridor has been underway since the spring and is expected to be completed in early 2014. The interim control bylaw effectively preserves the street as it is until after staff complete the study and recommend changes.
“It’s a really powerful planning tool, and it’s one that we use with the utmost discretion,” Keesmaat says of the ban. “We use it very carefully, and we use it on an area-wide basis when there’s a specific question that we need to better understand. And in this instance, the key question we need to understand is what scale of retail is in fact appropriate in this corridor.”
Told of the interim control bylaw, neighbourhood activist and member of the Kensington Business Improvement Association Shamez Amlani calls it “great news.”
He says it’s clear that public pushback against RioCan has worked. “I do think that the grassroots movement that raised awareness on this was great… I do think the petition got it on the radar,” he says.
But the ban only buys Walmart’s opponents time, he says, predicting that the development application will eventually end up before the Ontario Municipal Board, which has a history of overruling city decisions. He says that activists will spend the next year raising money to hire a lawyer to fight RioCan at the OMB.
“When the fight is back on again, we’ll be ready to punch hard,” he says.
RioCan did not return a request for comment Friday afternoon.
Under the provincial Planning Act, anyone objecting to an interim control bylaw has 60 days to appeal it to the OMB.
