Toronto moves to build the missing middle

Almost a decade ago, Toronto developer Montcrest Asset Management (then known as NYX) bought and rezoned a corner lot on Bayview Avenue, north of Sheppard Avenue, with the intention of replacing a mid-century bungalow with 11 townhouses, as had become common along that stretch. Montcrest stickhandled the application through an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board, then sold the site in 2017 to a builder that got tangled up in the city’s site plan approvals process.

Though exceedingly modest for a major arterial, the project stalled and remains unbuilt.

Planner Tim Jessop, Montcrest’s vice-president of development, recalls the reaction of the company’s owners: “They said, ‘We never want to do that again, because it was so painful.’” Instead, Montcrest pursued much larger residential projects as well as several industrial and self-storage ventures. It was all about economies of scale, he explains. “You’re spending a similar amount of time getting the approvals and the similar amount of money doing all the studies and reports for 11 units, versus a significantly bigger scale project.”