By Al Ruggero
Last week, the City’s Planning and Housing Committee potentially safeguarded the future viability of our business districts by enhancing legal protections that grandfather many current businesses. These businesses face reclassification under a new category that could restrict their operations in future dealings with the city.
Just as recent rainfall highlighted deficiencies in our underground sewer and sanitation infrastructure, there is a growing awareness of our planning infrastructure that dictates the built form and land use in our city neighbourhoods and business districts.
The storm gathering in the City’s Planning Policy unfolded with the introduction of Bill 97 by the provincial government, known as the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, 2023. This legislation amends Toronto’s land use permissions in Employment Areas, expanding Core Employment areas to include the General Employment category. As a result, it restricts commercial activities in many pockets within Employment Areas across the city.
The Emery Village BIA, Duke Heights BIA, and Lawrence-Ingram-Dufferin BIA are identified as Areas of Employment, encompassing both General and Core Employment properties. Core Employment is limited to three types of business operations: manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and their ancillary operations like office space and limited retail. Without city input, the legislation would eliminate several categories of use, including retail, services, institutional, and office, despite their current legal establishment under prevailing planning provisions.
The City’s Planning department was tasked with responding to this challenge by proposing Official Plan Amendments to comply and transition the city’s policies and protections to accommodate existing legal businesses in General Employment areas. Within Emery’s catchment boundaries, retail, commercial, and institutional establishments are to be found along our major arterial roads and intersections, where they serve residents and other businesses. Most of these commercial properties are not suitable for conversion to other uses.
In response to the potential impacts on our collective businesses—over 54% of establishments and 196,838 jobs in all Employment Areas according to a Staff Planning report—the three BIAs joined forces to identify common interests. They alerted the City’s Planning and Housing Committee to the need for stronger provisions to protect our businesses now and in the future. In a joint submission to the City’s Planning and Housing Committee on July 11, 2024, the BIAs, supported by councillors Anthony Perruzza, David Pasternak, and Francis Nunziata, urged the committee to include a provision for “As a Right” in the grandfathering clause, ensuring continuity of use for commercial enterprises within the General Employment definition encompassed under the City’s Official Plan Amendments, 668 and 680. The motion to include ‘As of Right’ passed the committee and is to go before City council for approval later this year.
Our thanks to our sister BIAs and to the councillors and Committee for the better path chosen to protect our employment lands.
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