Growth comes to an urban backwater

For decades, Bayview Avenue between Lawrence Avenue and the Toronto city limits has been an arterial where both time and traffic seemed to stand still. Even though it is a very busy thoroughfare, there’s been scant redevelopment beyond some clumps of luxury townhouses and the ship-shaped condo that overlooks the Bayview Village mall – a legacy of anti-development councillors and anti-intensification zoning along what remains a largely residential street.

A somewhat unlikely partnership is aiming to alter that narrative with a newly green-lighted plan to significantly intensify 22 acres of the Tyndale University campus, which is situated off Bayview south of Steeles Avenue on a plot of land bounded by ravines that drift down one of the Don River tributaries.