As the city ramps up efforts to take back our streets, building industry representatives say blocked sidewalks and traffic lanes will continue to be an unpopular but unavoidable part of Toronto’s building boom.

“We certainly sense and appreciate the frustration for what I’ll call a short-term byproduct of building a great city,” says Steve Deveaux, chairman of the Building Industry and Land Development Association.

But, in most cases especially in the congested downtown core, “there are truly very few options to safely and efficiently get material and product to the job site.”

Mayor John Tory this week warned the city will no longer “rubber stamp” applications from developers who want to close streets and sidewalks for construction projects for “unacceptably” long periods of time.

“It is time we started to place a much greater emphasis on the broader public interest when it comes to these kinds of decisions,” Tory told reporters standing near a giant condo construction site at the corner of Bathurst and Front Streets.

Last week, at Tory’s request, council ignored a Toronto and East York Community Council recommendation and put on hold three applications from developers to close various public right-of-ways.

Council told the developers to work with city staff to come up with an alternative plan that “eliminates or reduces the duration of the arterial lane closures.” Council will reconsider the applications at next month’s council meeting.

Hiking closure permit fees in 2014 – from $5.77 per square metre, per month to $26.35 and $105.41 – has done little to discourage developers from using lanes for construction, Tory said, adding they “seem to represent nothing more than the cost of doing business.”

Deveaux said the price increase did force builders “to be a little more creative and sensitive to how long they sat on those spaces,” but “we don’t think raising the prices it is going to diminish the need to occupy portions of the right-away for certain portions of construction.”

Tory also opened the door to an outright ban on developers blocking lanes of traffic, something he incorrectly said was the case in New York City. “I think we have to head in the same direction so that no closure or very short closures become the rule rather than the exception,” he said.

A ban on developers occupying traffic lanes would be “hugely problematic” and raises safety issues, said Deveaux, vice-president of development at Tribute Communities.

“If there’s no protected area, how do you get thousands of pounds of concrete, construction material from the curb lane to the site, when the sidewalk is potentially crowded with pedestrians?”

But Tory had an example ready this week that council pushback can yield results.

Developer Minto, building two condo towers at Bathurst and Front, wanted to block the east sidewalk and curb lane on Bathurst for two years. But when faced with a month delay for approval, Minto modified its request to take up only a “small part of a curb lane” that “will still allow two lanes of traffic to be operating in this area,” Tory said.

A few blocks away, however, Tory was “not happy” that despite council’s deferral, hoarding was already up Tuesday at 604-618 Richmond Street West, partially blocking the curb lane, north sidewalk and cycle track.

Condo developer Brad Lamb said workers began putting up the barriers on Richmond last Thursday, after city staff assured approval for a two-year lane closure was coming. This week, Lamb was forced to shutdown the jobsite and lay off workers, “a $200,000 waste.” His company is building the 14-storey condo at 604-618 Richmond Street West called The Harlowe.

The city granted the building permit “fully knowing how we had to build it,” he said, adding, that because it is a mid-block site, “it is impossible to build this building without a lane closure.”

Finding other options to blocking public sidewalks and streets might be possible at some large scale sites, but it’s not at the “infill properties of the nature that I’m building,” Lamb said.

“There is an alternative. We can employ 20 helicopters, and we can hold the heavy equipment over the site. Or I can develop some kind of magic and learn how to levitate concrete trucks and heavy machinery and equipment,” he said sarcastically.

Some councillors have suggested developers set up their staging areas within their own footprint, rather than occupying public space.

Deveaux said municipalities make that difficult, because they want buildings “right up to the streetline because it makes for a very urban, pedestrian friendly environment, so if you’re going to build your building right up to the street edge, you really don’t have, in most cases, opportunities to stage on your own lands.”

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Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who represents downtown Ward 27, the epicentre for development in the city, told council last week that trying to keep the public right of way clear is a challenge “on these very tight sites.”

“This is a symptom of what is happening because of the planning process and because of the urban design approach to the city.”

Nevertheless, she believes some developers are “lazy” and have a sense of “entitlement,” needlessly using the roadway to store materials and equipment.