The city’s zoning bylaws permit only buildings of certain heights and densities, most below what even city staff would agree is reasonable. That forces developers to apply to the city to build above those limits.

The Ontario Railway and Municipal Board was created in 1906 to oversee municipal finances and the expanding railway systems between and within cities. The “railway” title was dropped in 1932.

There are also neighbourhood-specific studies and detailed guidelines for things like tall buildings — how far apart towers should be separated, how set back from the street and so on.

Get the backstory What is the OMB?

What is the Ontario Municipal Board? The OMB was the province’s first tribunal, according to the board’s website, and has retained most of the powers it was given in 1906. Today, the OMB is “the most powerful board of its kind in North America,” according to comprehensive research by University of Winnipeg assistant professor Aaron Moore, who wrote “Planning Politics in Toronto: The Ontario Municipal Board and Urban Development.” As a quasi-judicial body, the OMB is responsible to the attorney general’s office, which also oversees the province’s court system. The OMB is largely governed by the provincial Planning Act, though it receives authority from a vast range of legislation. As Moore writes, it essentially has “the same power, rights and privileges as the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.” In 1971, a royal commission examining civil rights reviewed the powers of the OMB and found even members had little understanding of the board’s scope, noting its authority came from some 30 different statutes. “The situation cannot be permitted to continue where even the board does not know the extent of its own jurisdiction,” the commission found. The OMB has the ability to conduct hearings across the province, but it is based in an office tower on Bay St. in downtown Toronto, just north of City Hall, where small hearing rooms contain wooden benches for members to sit behind and a stand for evidence to be given by experts, giving the appearance of criminal courtrooms though it is planning decisions that are on trial. There are more than 30 members appointed to the OMB by the province, who typically sit in single or two-member panels to make decisions. For a $300 fee, an individual, association or company can submit an appeal on issues ranging from amendments to official plans, to applications for rezoning, to the additions to that monster home down the street. Decisions of the OMB can be challenged in court, though it is rare. Typically the OMB has the final say.

The vast majority of new applications are recommended for approval by staff and ultimately get the green light at council.

But the 99 Broadway application did not conform to the city’s plans.

City staff expected, in keeping with city policies, that development would be scaled back in both height and density from the Yonge-Eglinton intersection.

To put it in context, just after the application for 99 Broadway was submitted, city staff backed a 30-storey development on Eglinton Ave. at Redpath Ave., and later a 58-storey condo on the northeast corner of the Yonge-Eglinton intersection with support from the community and in keeping with city plans for where the tallest and densest towers should be built.

But by approving two towers at 34-storeys at 99 Broadway, the OMB allowed city plans — many of which required years of study and were signed off on by the province and the OMB — to be ignored.

Local Councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22 St. Paul’s) said it set an untenable precedent in the neighbourhood.

“Now they’ve given a signal to developers who want to build anything,” Matlow said, pointing out the influx of new proposals for redevelopment as he toured a reporter through the area.

“We should be building communities and neighbourhoods that support a great quality of life rather than a focus on just building condos. And then you break through the whole rhetorical debate between, ‘Are you pro-condos or anti-condos?’ . . . That’s been leading the discussion for far too long,” he said. “It’s about, how do condos fit into the plan to build a community?’ rather than, how does the community deal with the fact that there’s more condos?’”

The city’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, told council in December that staff are more frequently having to push back against new applications in the Yonge-Eglinton area because of unresolved concerns about the infrastructure required to accommodate that kind of density.

Of the dozen schools in the surrounding vicinity of the Yonge Eglinton Centre, within both the Toronto District School Board and Toronto Catholic District School Board, nearly every single one is over capacity, some at more than 120 per cent, with the number of families with children moving into the area steadily increasing.

Already, prospective condo buyers in the Yonge-Eglinton area have been greeted with signs posted by the Toronto District School Board that warn: “Due to residential growth, sufficient accommodation may not be available for all students.”

Outside condos for sale in the Yonge-Eglinton area, new and potential residents are warned of schools being already over capacity with signs like this one posted in 2016.

There are similar pressures on child-care spaces, with little to no vacancies in the area, as well as strains on community and open space.

The North Toronto Memorial Community Centre, the only facility of its kind in the area, is scheduled to temporarily close for needed maintenance this fall until the end of 2018.

The OMB has typically been unmoved by these issues.

The board is ultimately guided by the province’s Growth Plan — a binding 2006 document that was meant to prevent urban sprawl, protect green space and mandate intensification in urban growth centres.

The Growth Plan originally set targets for the number of people and jobs the city should accommodate by 2031, and was recently updated with 2041 targets.

The most recent city data shows of the 400,000 new units anticipated by 2041, almost 200,000 had already been built in the 14-year period between 2001 and 2015.

While city staff say based on 2016 census data the city is on track to meet updated population targets for 2041, density in some specific areas have far exceeded the targets set out by the province.

Though the plan set a density target of 400 people and jobs per hectare (or 10,000 square metres) in the Yonge-Eglinton and other centres by 2031, Yonge-Eglinton surpassed that mark in 2006 — the year the Growth Plan came into force.

But the plan does not set out a maximum density, or ceiling on that growth. Whatever density is achieved above and beyond the current target is considered the new floor — a reality specifically cited by Lee, the OMB member, in approving the 99 Broadway application.

Matlow, who as an environmental activist fought to protect the Oak Ridges Moraine, said he strongly supports the intentions of the Growth Plan to prevent sprawl and protect green space.

“But you can’t then go to the other extreme where you’re basically sprawling upward without supporting the quality of life on the ground,” he said. The councillor pushed for the city’s “Midtown in Focus” study that is underway to look at available infrastructure.

“What this is all about is trying to change the narrative from always reacting to condo proposals to having substantive data in front of us as to what kind of infrastructure priorities we have . . . When will the toilets not flush anymore? When will the lights go out? What kind of transit do we need?”