Asher Green­berg – Globe and Mail

A major devel­oper, the city, res­i­dents and Nestlé are squab­bling over what to do with a patch of indus­trial land in the city’s west end.

Castle­point Realty is propos­ing to build a mixed-use res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment next to the choco­late fac­tory on Ster­ling Road – 45 new town­homes with live-work spaces, new office tow­ers com­plete with urban agri­cul­ture rooftops, a pub­lic square, and revi­tal­iza­tion of the her­itage Tower Auto­mo­tive building.

But Nestlé is not on board. In a let­ter to Toronto’s plan­ning office, it expressed con­cerns over the intro­duc­tion of res­i­den­tial units so close to its plant. Res­i­dents, how­ever, gen­er­ally sup­port the bid by the devel­oper to revi­tal­ize the des­o­late stretch of land.

You wouldn’t know there was any­thing worth argu­ing about by just pass­ing through on Bloor Street. Rubble-strewn brown­fields, dark alleys and for­mer indus­trial build­ings stretch a few square kilo­me­tres in Toronto’s South Junc­tion Tri­an­gle neigh­bour­hood, sand­wiched between Bloor and Dun­das, and sealed by GO train tracks on either side.

But there is life as well. A walk down one of those dark pot-holed alleys reveals par­ents pick­ing up chil­dren from an aer­ial dance class, artists paint­ing ceiling-high can­vasses, and a man spray-painting a table for use in a cabaret num­ber. Live-work lofts inter­min­gle with fam­ily town­homes, auto-body shops lie a few blocks from the chic Zocalo bistro, and the smell of choco­late wafts from the giant Nestlé plant.

The site in dis­pute was home to Alcan – orig­i­nally North­ern Alu­minum Co. – for more than 80 years. When it was con­structed in 1919, the 10-storey build­ing was among the tallest in Canada, and one of the first with an ele­va­tor. The city declared it a her­itage site in 2005 shortly before then owner, Tower Auto­mo­tive, went into bankruptcy.

Castle­point pur­chased the plot in 2007 and part­nered with Rio Tinto Alcan to clean up the prop­erty. The envi­ron­men­tal reme­di­a­tion was “a great favour to the com­mu­nity,” said local busi­ness owner Heather Braaten. When plans for the con­struc­tion of movie stu­dios on the land fell through, the devel­op­ers instead pro­posed a mixed-use site.

The trou­ble is Nestlé is con­cerned the fac­tory that oper­ates 24/7, with its noises, truck­ing, and smells, could become a source of fric­tion with the new res­i­dents, said Sarah Phipps, the city plan­ner han­dling this project. The “thought­less jux­ta­po­si­tion of indus­trial and res­i­den­tial uses inevitably leads to com­plaints by the res­i­den­tial occu­pants,” Nestlé told the city, “in such a sce­nario, it is always the indus­trial user who suf­fers to a greater or lesser degree.”

At the last com­mu­nity meet­ing, in Octo­ber, some res­i­dents coun­tered that Ward 18’s other choco­late fac­tory, Cad­bury, has peace­ably co-existed with its res­i­den­tial neigh­bours just across the street for many years.

The other prob­lem is that Castlepoint’s devel­op­ment would mean the city loses more indus­trial employ­ment land. Because of an over­lap­ping study on this prob­lem, the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers may have to wait up to a year for the plan­ning depart­ment to con­clude its report. “The city has a ten­dency to plan things to death,” said John C. O’Keefe Jr., a senior part­ner at Castlepoint.

Mr. O’Keefe said that Castle­point has made an effort to hear the community’s con­cerns, host­ing five or six meet­ings before sub­mit­ting the appli­ca­tion. At the recent meet­ing, Castle­point chief exec­u­tive offi­cer Alfred Romano unex­pect­edly com­mit­ted 10 per cent of the new res­i­den­tial units to social housing.

Castle­point is nego­ti­at­ing this month with Artscape, a non-profit devel­oper that sub­si­dizes res­i­den­tial and work spaces for artists. The com­pany has con­tributed below-market lofts to the re-development of the Dis­tillery Dis­trict, Lib­erty Vil­lage, and West Queen West, among other sites. Typ­i­cally, Artscape medi­ates between pri­vate devel­op­ers, artists and the wider com­mu­nity “to find a win-win-win sce­nario,” said CEO Tim Jones. Mr. Jones would not com­ment specif­i­cally on 158 Ster­ling, cit­ing con­cerns over cre­at­ing expec­ta­tions too early in the nego­ti­a­tion process.

Whether the plan­ning depart­ment ulti­mately rec­om­mends the project, in the end it will come down to a vote at City Hall late next year. The Ward’s Coun­cil­lor, Ana Bailao, has not made a firm com­mit­ment regard­ing which way she’ll vote. This project “is going to be very inter­est­ing,” said Ms. Bailao’s con­stituency assis­tant, Anna Kral. “Because from what I’ve expe­ri­enced, they are very hes­i­tant about the res­i­den­tial. So you have to make a choice. Do we keep Nestlé or do we build up the community?”

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Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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