NTAs ‘by another method’ activist says of city ruling on Eglinton plan

The majority of community fears surrounding the Eglinton Connects Planning Study being implemented to coincide with the Eglinton Crosstown LRT have now been put to rest.

City council voted on Aug. 27 not to institute neighbourhood transition areas in any future reports, aside from the one near Eglinton and Caledonia Road that has already been approved.

But community group director Patrick Smyth, who in June expressed his concerns about NTAs to the Town Crier, says he is not convinced the latest development has changed anything.

While he said he acknowledges the city did away with NTAs, the director for the Avenue Road Eglinton Community Association said he believes residents are being “hoodwinked” and that through rezoning approved in July the city can still effectively do the same thing NTAs would have done.

“They’ve done it by another method,” he declared on Aug. 28. “There are other areas where rezoning and re-designation will, in effect, do the same over time.”

In June Smyth alleged the city allowing NTAs would open the door to homes within 30–39 metres of Eglinton Avenue being demolished to provide the required depth for a midrise development. He also worried that it would pave the way for developers to buy and demolish homes and that adjacent homeowners would not have the right to fight it.

At its August meeting council voted to ensure any laneways built as a part of a development on Eglinton Avenue would have to be on part of the developer’s property and not built through expropriation of homes or adjacent properties.

As well, those laneways will be meant as service routes or for local access only, and not as thoroughfares as some community activists had feared.