TO:                  Chair and Members of Development Services Committee

C.                    CAO

FROM:           Jim Baird, Commissioner of Development Services Committee

DATE:            May 11, 2010

Re:                  Request by 1691126 Ontario Ltd. (Liberty Development Inc.)

for Town to release the portion of the “No Pre-Sale

Agreement” Applying to Tower A2 proposed at the north

east corner of Yonge Street and Meadowview Avenue

7171 Yonge Street

File SC 08 106782

RECOMMENDATIONS:

1)         That the memo entitled “Request by 1691126 Ontario Ltd. (Liberty Development Inc.) for Town to release the portion of the “No Pre-Sale Agreement” applying to Tower A2, proposed at the north east corner of Yonge Street and Meadowview Avenue, 7171 Yonge Street (File SC 08 106782)”, be received;

2)         That staff be directed to revise the existing “No Pre-Sale Agreement” to delete the requirements of Clause 1 relating to restrictions on the sale of units within Tower A2.

BACKGROUND:

In May 2009, the Ontario Municipal Board approved Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendments to permit development of a high-density mixed use residential, office, hotel and retail centre at the north east corner of Yonge Street and Meadowview Avenue.

The Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendments established detailed phasing policies for the development, which have been implemented in the Zoning By-law through a series of Holding provisions.

Broadly, the development is to be phased in the following sequence:

1)         Excavation of the full site and construction of the underground parking garage;

2)         Construction of the retail component in the north east portion of the site, the  office/hotel tower (Tower C, Figure 1) and first residential Tower (Tower A1, Figure 1).  This first residential tower has received 2011 allocation;

3)         Construction of the second residential tower (Tower A2, Figure 1) pending confirmation of 2013 allocation;

4)         Construction of residential Towers B1 and B2 (See Figure 1), at some future date.

To implement the above phasing plan, the Zoning By-law established a three stage Hold removal process.  Hold Provision 1, which is still in effect on the site and applies to the portions of the development set out in Item 2 above, cannot be lifted until a number of conditions have been met, including execution of a “No Pre-sale Agreement” applying to residential Towers A2, B1 and B2 (i.e. all residential towers that did not receive 2011 servicing allocation).  This agreement was executed in June 2009.

As it applies to Tower A2, the agreement stipulates that the owner will not sell any units in Tower A2 above the 9 storey podium level, until the following conditions have been met:

a)         The Town has assigned water and sewer capacity;

b)         The Town has lifted the Hold (H2) provisions applying to Tower A2;

c)         The Town has released this agreement in connection with Tower A2

The agreement also sets out the following criteria for releasing the above restrictions on the sale of units in Tower A2:

a)         The Council of the Town has allocated adequate available water supply and sewage servicing capacity to the subject development;

b)         The Council of the Town approves servicing allocation to the Lands that are not dependant upon the construction of Regional infrastructure;

c)         The Regional Commissioner of Environmental Services confirms servicing capacity for this development by a suitable alternative method and the Town allocates the capacity to this development.

The owner has requested the Town to release the agreement as it applies to Tower A2.  The no pre-sale agreement would continue to apply to Towers B1 and B2.

DISCUSSION

Staff are of the opinion that the owner’s request is reasonable at this time, for the following reasons:

·                     Conditional 2013 servicing allocation has been made available to the Town by the Region;

·                     Town Staff are in the process of preparing a draft distribution of this conditional 2013 allocation and are targeting a presentation to Development services Committee in June 2010.  Tower A2 is scheduled to receive sufficient conditional 2013 allocation for full build-out, in keeping with the terms of the 2009 OMB settlement;

·                     Tower A2 is part of the endorsed site plan for the development;

·                     The Zoning By-law continues to apply a hold provision specific to Tower A2.  This hold provision will not be lifted except in accordance with the conditions set out in the Zoning By-law, including removal of the H1 provisions applying to the first phase of development; submission of an updated transportation impact/monitoring study; and availability of servicing capacity to provide for the number of dwelling units proposed;

·                     In addition, the holding provision will not be lifted except in accordance with Regional and Town policies pertaining to the timing of issuance of building permits for high density development, relative to the scheduled availability of 2013 conditional servicing allocation.  This time frame was previously 18 months, but the Region and the Town are now considering up to 30 months or longer for large scale, complex high rise projects with multiple levels of underground parking.

CONCLUSION:

Staff recommend that the “No Pre-sale Agreement” be amended by deleting Clause 1, to remove the restrictions on the sale of units in Tower A2.

Q:\Development\Planning\APPL\SITEPLAN\08 106782  Liberty Yonge & Meadowview\release of Tower A2 from no-presale agreement.doc