City envisions Main Street-style for stockyards community.
The city of Toronto is already in the midst of finalizing plans for the long term shift of the St. Clair West Avenue strip into a Main Street community.
Artwork/CITY OF TORONTO
While the former stockyards community along St. Clair Avenue West continues its transformation into big box and plaza retail, the City of Toronto is already in the midst of finalizing plans for the long term shift of the strip into a Main Street community.
Planning staff will soon begin preparing recommendations to adjust the city's official plan and zoning for the 2.6-kilometre stretch of St. Clair between Scarlett Road and Keele Street/Weston Road to accommodate a mixed-use community of buildings of up to 10 storeys, with residential units located above ground-level retail. The reports will go to council for approval after the municipal election in October, though there will be a public meeting beforehand.
What will be included in the staff report will be similar to what has already been presented to the community in recent public meetings, confirmed Paul Bain, the city's project manager for the St. Clair Avenue West (Keele/Weston to Scarlett) Land Use and Avenue Study.
"The residents are very supportive of the change," said Frances Nunziata, the councillor for York South-Weston.
"They want to see retail/residential along the main streets."
In recent years, between Jane and Runnymede, residents have seen a car dealership, a Wal-Mart and a retail plaza take over the southern side of St. Clair abutting the CP railway. Further east, the same commercialization has taken place on the south side of St. Clair between Mondovi Gate and Keele, spurred on by the big box stores of Home Depot, Canadian Tire and Rona. In December, Toronto council approved a power centre, anchored by a retail warehouse and including 1,800 parking spaces, to be built on a 19-acre property at the northwest corner of St. Clair and Weston.
With all that new commercial-only development coming onstream, Nunziata admitted the timing of the city's study of St. Clair is unusual.
However, she said the original big box stores were approved by the old city of Toronto before the 1998 amalgamation of the megacity.
She added that while the newer commercial chains might not want to immediately redevelop the sites they've only recently built, there are a number of smaller, independent operators of auto-body shops and used car lots that could be interested in redeveloping their properties once the city approves more flexible zoning.
Improvements to infrastructure will also encourage redevelopment, she said.
The city will be repaving a portion of St. Clair this year, and it will also be widening the road to four lanes between Cobalt Avenue and Mondovi Gate over the next year, according to Bain.
The city's capital plan forecasts the $19.3-million construction of a new railway bridge over Scarlett and overall improvements to the Scarlett-St. Clair intersection to be completed by 2013. The new bridge would allow for two lanes of traffic and protection for an exclusive transit right-of-way, in case the TTC wants to extend the St. Clair streetcar onto Dundas Street West.
However, the proposed extension of the St. Clair streetcar, which currently ends at Gunns Road just west of Keele/Weston, appears to be years away.
"They've (the TTC has) always been scheduled to look at Jane (proposed LRT) before the (St. Clair) LRT extension," said Bain.
The city is in the midst of an environmental assessment for the Jane LRT, one of the Transit City projects. However, while the provincial transportation agency Metrolinx includes the Jane LRT in its 15-year plan to 2023, it is not one of the 15 priority projects identified in the agency's The Big Move transportation plan of 2008. There is also no funding for the project beyond that available for the current study.
"I think the St. Clair streetcar will probably go before the Jane LRT to be honest," said Nunziata.
She believes the TTC might determine an intermediate extension of the line beyond Jane is warranted, though the streetcar might have to operated in mixed traffic rather than a dedicated right-of-way due to the width of the street.
The St. Clair Avenue study also envisions the possible construction of two pedestrian/bicycle bridges over the railway tracks connecting St. Clair to Dundas, one just west of Runnymede and one connecting Old Stockyards Road to Pacific Avenue, though locations are approximate.
"I support that 100 per cent," said Nunziata. "The whole issue is who's going to build it. It's always the cost that's the issue."
One thing she doesn't support though is a proposed branding of the area as The Stockyards. She said residents don't like the name either and would prefer something such as St. Clair West Village.