“The proposed construction at the subject site will require applications to remove 25 city owned trees and 6 privately owned trees. “ Arborist report to Westbank development Honest Ed’s project June 26, 2015.

In clinical language, an arborist outlines the front end impact of a huge property development. That describes the start. What will be the finish?

We would like to imagine the creation of a thriving element in our urban forest between Bathurst, Bloor, Markham and Lennox, in concert with the massive Westbank property development.

You think it is impossible?

We don’t.

The Westbank Honest Ed’s project is easily the most complex property development proposal our part of the City has ever seen.

It has been the most promoted project in our history.

It has 2000-2500- plus new residents, with businesses and startups and a market—and no green space. Indeed, the community will lose the trees that it presently has. Thirty-one would have to be sacrificed to this development, including two large silver maples that have been studied for their contribution to migratory bird biodiversity.

Without a completed application, residents and City officials and Councillors cannot be sure of the details of the proposal. However, the broad outlines have remained consistent, and raise general concerns and challenges for us all.

Already City Planning and the City’s Design Review Panel have stated major concerns about the complete lack of greenspace on the development plans.

  • In all meetings, Markham Street has been a hard surfaced landscape for social events, movies, pub seating and the like.
  • A Westbank arborist report precisely identifies 31 trees on the property that will have to be cut down.

With a site so large, so dense, and requiring massive excavation and protective hoarding onsite for lengthy periods of time, the future of any green on the development is in question unless its restoration and enhancement becomes part of the plans. It is especially critical, because the neighbourhoods immediately around the project are already short of parks and open spaces.

We know from the experience of the south end of Ward 20, that if left to site by site planning rules, an entire new neighbourhood can spring up with no green infrastructure. We hope it is time for Westbank not only to sit down with its neighbouring communities to actually plan the site to meet some of our needs, but also to build on work we are already doing.

With Councillor Joe Cressy, Harbord Village is working on a Green Master Plan for our neighbourhood, including possible parkspace, street and lane plantings. Of all the adjacent neighbourhood associations, we are the most deficient in greenspace, particularly with the loss of community access to the grassy field at Central Tech (our erstwhile informal ‘park’). We are looking at a nooks and crannies opportunity for planting, to facilitate biodiversity, to reduce heat island and to improve the downtown record on climate change. We are hoping to reclaim the urban forest, one little site at a time.

So imagine the possibilities of the Honest Ed’s development.

What can we save? What trees might be moved?

What can we lose?

What can we regenerate?

What plants and trees do we need for species diversity?

What wood could be salvaged for craftsmen?

Where do we want our kids to play?

Where is the park to support the population?

Harbord Village would like to change the channel and to begin talking not about Westbank’s proposals, but about the community’s opportunities the proposal, or one based on it, would provide to future renters, visitors to its businesses and its neighbours.

Is it not possible to design a site that both responds to housing, entertainment and business needs and also to the identified needs of people for open space, trees, plants and a healthy ecosystem?

Let’s plan things differently in the City. We need replace a mentality of either/or, with both/and.

We need to change a potential loss to the community to a win for our neighbourhoods and for biodiversity.

We are ready to talk. Is Westbank ready to enter into this conversation?