Susan Pigg – Toronto Star

It used to be that there was just one door through which both the rich and reg­u­lar folk could enter the lobby of Toronto’s iconic Sut­ton Place Hotel.

Now there are two.

The one on the right takes poten­tial condo buy­ers to the for­mer lobby which was shut down last sum­mer, dressed up with a boat­load of mar­ble and turned into the sparkling show­room for The Britt condo devel­op­ment planned for the land­mark site.

The door to the left leads to ele­va­tors used by 23 long-time ten­ants who’ve rented apart­ments at the hotel for decades. They remain holed up in the old Bay and Welles­ley St. tower, pon­der­ing whether to launch legal action against their new land­lord, Lanterra Devel­op­ments, in a last-ditch effort to hang onto their homes.

The vet­eran among them, 102-year-old Syd­ney Bacon — who’s lived on the 23^rd floor for 40 years — will move to a retire­ment home by April 1, armed with a six-figure buy­out from Lanterra.

Oth­ers, like Lor­raine Lewis, 66, are hold­ing out as long as they can, know­ing they’re pow­er­less to push back for­ever against all the con­dos ris­ing out­side their windows.

Later this week, Lanterra will announce plans for another condo tower in the Bay-Wellesley area after reach­ing a $65 mil­lion deal with the province for a sprawl­ing 2.14-acre site, once slated for an opera house, adja­cent to the for­mer Sut­ton Place.

“It’s a tragedy what the city has allowed to hap­pen here,” says Lewis, look­ing down at the empty lot where locals have been lob­by­ing for a park.

“I try not to think too much about what’s hap­pen­ing. I just want to enjoy every sin­gle day here that I have left.”

Lanterra and City of Toronto offi­cials have been nego­ti­at­ing for months now with the ten­ants who remain scat­tered over 18 empty floors although the hotel shut down last summer.

As required by law when reduc­ing or ren­o­vat­ing rental stock, Lanterra has offered the ten­ants finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion — thou­sands of dol­lars based on their years of ten­ancy — six months’ notice and tem­po­rary new homes in much smaller condo units it owns nearby.

Lanterra hopes to get city approval later this year to gut the 33-storey tower, add a big­ger base and nine more storeys which would add 200 units to the cur­rent 400 hotel rooms.

It’s pro­posed build­ing an eight-storey, 78-unit rental wing off The Britt and even­tu­ally move every­one back into what long-term ten­ant Robert Langevin calls “a bar­rack” of much smaller units and a frac­tion of the 161 apart­ments that once graced Sut­ton Place.

Lanterra’s offer, which includes dis­counted rents for exist­ing ten­ants for 20 years, is “con­sid­er­ably above and beyond” what’s required under the provin­cial Res­i­den­tial Ten­an­cies Act as well as the city’s Offi­cial Plan and rental hous­ing pro­tec­tion bylaw aimed at pro­tect­ing rental stock, says city plan­ner Deanna Chorney.

Lanterra chair­man Mark Man­del­baum says his com­pany is work­ing closely with the city to meet its legal oblig­a­tions to ten­ants like Lewis who has been there 23 years. Lanterra only made “spe­cial arrange­ments” for Syd­ney Bacon because, at 102, he was in need of nurs­ing care.

“The city has a very, very well-defined process. But a tenant’s tenure is not the same as own­er­ship. They did not put down money to buy or have the respon­si­bil­ity of own­er­ship so the rights of ten­ants are defined (by law),” said Mandelbaum.

“I think they are very well aware of what their legit­i­mate legal rights are.”

Langevin is con­cerned the ten­ants “could be sac­ri­ficed” as Lanterra seeks approvals for the Welles­ley site where com­mu­nity asso­ci­a­tions and city coun­cil­lor Kristyn Wong-Tam have been vocal in try­ing to get parkland.

The two projects will be treated sep­a­rately, she stresses, adding that Lanterra has proven itself to be respon­sive to com­mu­nity concerns.

“I’d like to see more park­land and com­mu­nity ameni­ties before we add more den­sity to the neigh­bour­hood,” says Wong-Tam. “But I think Lanterra is becom­ing more and more com­mu­nity minded and knows how impor­tant it is for area res­i­dents to have parks and day­care and other amenities.”

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

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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syd­ney bacon toronto

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