Longtime Parkdale resident Jack Gibney considers himself pro-development and someone who is “all for intensification” — but he doesn’t want to see huge condo or office towers on Queen Street West.

The stretch of Queen West from Bathurst Street to Roncesvalles Avenue is where the City of Toronto wants to restrict the heights of any new buildings to six storeys, including those with new additions.

The city also wants to turn this section of the street, which includes Parkdale and West Queen West, into heritage conservation districts where, for example, architectural features dating back to the 19th century would be protected.

In the coming weeks the proposals are set to come to Toronto’s community council and later city council — but they’re raising some eyebrows.

The city says it wants to encourage growth — six storeys is roughly double the height of most buildings in the area — while maintaining the character of the street. But one prominent Toronto developer says the restriction hinders growth, arguing the street should take some newer, taller buildings that could help address the city’s critical housing shortage.

Gibney, 70, who has a background in developing and managing property, advised a city working group that has provided input for the new proposals for Queen West. He sees no problem with the proposed height limits for the street, one that’s appealing, he says, because it’s very walkable.

“We shouldn’t be building tiny houses on every single piece of wilderness and farmland in Ontario. So, we should intensify. I’m all for intensification. But the best place to build residential in my opinion, is in residential areas — not on our main corridors,” Gibney argues.

Brad Lamb, a Toronto real estate broker and developer, says the city is effectively trying to “shut down” development along corridors such as Queen West, because the height limitations make it unprofitable for any developer to come in and make changes to buildings on the street.

“The city says ‘we’ll let you build four storeys on an existing 2.5 or three-storey building.’ Who is going to buy a building, knock it down and build an additional storey on top of the three (storeys)? Who is going to do that? Nobody,” Lamb said in an interview.

“They are setting up this neighbourhood for no new density. They’re going to say ‘oh no, you can do all these wonderful things and increase the amount of density,’ but economically you can’t because the numbers don’t work for development and they know this,” Lamb adds.

“There is a massive housing shortage. Does it make sense to be restricting development even more? No it doesn’t make any sense,” he adds.

Senior city officials say growth is happening, but it doesn’t happen in the same way in all parts of the city.

Along an avenue such as Queen Street West, where you have a different scale, a different association with neighbourhoods, the growth tends to be more spread out and linear — rather than upward, says Gregg Lintern, Toronto’s chief planner.

Though buildings on the street range in height from one to nine storeys, most are one to three storeys, the city says, heights that reflect the 19th and 20th century architectural look that includes Georgian and Romanesque Revival.

Many of the buildings on Queen West are now home to residential and commercial uses, with commercial on the lower floor — banks, restaurants, bars, clothing stores, salons, etc. — and apartment units above.

The street is home to well-known shops and services including Queen West Barbers, the popular Drake Hotel, Butter Chicken Roti near Dovercourt Avenue, the Dollarama near Dunn Avenue, and the Parkdale Library.

City planners say growth is happening in Toronto in the areas targeted in the city’s growth strategy.

Those areas are urban growth centres identified by the province such as downtown Toronto, Yonge and Eglinton, Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke Centre and other large mixed-use areas such as Humber-Bay Shores.

Growth points also include avenues along the city’s main streets — 140 kilometres of avenues such as College Street, Dundas Street, Wilson Avenue Lake Shore Boulevard and Queen Street. The city’s growth strategy is embedded in Toronto’s official plan, planners say.

“With the centres you tend to get taller buildings, while on avenues you tend to get the midrises,” says Lintern, the chief planner.

Lintern points out that the city has seen nearly 510 development proposals over the last five years along the city’s avenues including Queen Street West, accounting for about 35,000 housing units.

“So we are getting a good lift out of development interests along our avenues,” he says.

“When you look at the (510) proposals they tend to be in midrise developments between five and 11 storeys. That’s our midrise guideline,” Lintern adds.

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He later added: “We’re getting the (housing) units, understanding we don’t default to the idea of tall buildings being the only solution for density and intensification in the city. We work closely with communities, where admittedly a lot of them don’t want any change, to get them to a place where … (they are) accepting a fair degree of change or evolution.”

On Queen West, in addition to the fact there is an opportunity for growth and new housing, there are a significant number of culturally significant heritage buildings, says Graig Uens, a senior city planner.

The development of properties along the section of Queen from Bathurst to Roncesvalles began around 1847. Just over 50 properties on the street are included on the city’s heritage register, and another 342 properties have been identified as having heritage potential, the city says.

The city came up with the recent proposals for Queen Street West after creating a working group years ago that included local business owners, people involved in the community and residents.

“We were clear from the outset that we wanted to try to achieve policies that balance the opportunities for growth,” Uens says.

The planning department’s objective, Uens says, is trying to create a policy for the Queen West area that will allow individuals and business interests to come in and build new buildings, new housing, new commercial operations on Queen, while reusing and incorporating as much of the existing building fabric as possible.

“Because that is a really important part of the character of what’s there. The identity of Queen is very well-established. The object of (proposals) like this is there is pressure for change. We know Queen will change, but we want to manage that change in a way that acknowledges those important points of the identity on Queen,” Uens says.

Aside from proposing the new height rules, city planning is also looking at reducing parking requirements, with the intention of making it easier to construct new buildings or add to new buildings on Queen West.

“If you look at what’s currently on Queen and what we’re proposing to allow on Queen going forward, we’re more than doubling the (height) of what’s there. So, measured over the extent of that roughly 3.5 kilometres of street, we’re supporting a fairly significant number of additional housing units that could be built in a form that balances the other objectives I talked about — commercial space, street character, cultural heritage. That’s the balancing act we have to do,” Uens says.

But Lamb, the Toronto developer, says the city and its planning department need to think beyond their guidelines for avenues and heritage designations if they want to seriously tackle the city’s critical housing shortage.

“I’m not suggesting there aren’t parts of Queen West from Bathurst to Roncesvalles that should be retained, but there are tons of parts that should have additional heights and density,” he says.

“We need to have a very large review from outside individuals looking at our city and telling us what makes sense. Everyone here is too close to this and we’re making bad decisions,” he adds.

Gord Perks, city councillor for Parkdale-High Park, says height limits and heritage protection on Queen West have nothing to do with the city’s housing shortage.

“The two things don’t relate to each other in any way,” Perks argues.

“We have enough developable land to last 20 years at least in the city of Toronto. We are building faster here than any (other city) has built in North American history, as far as I am aware,” he adds.

Anna Bartula, executive director of the Parkdale Village BIA, says the debate — maintaining the character and heritage attributes of Queen Street West, versus intensification is “complex.”

“We have BIA members who don’t want the height at all, and other members who do want the height,” she says.

She goes on to say: “Development is hard to stop in a city like Toronto — our community is gentrifying from all corners, so the question is how do we go about doing that in the right way. Heritage is also important. We have such a great history in our community and you want to preserve that history.”