The curious case of 233 Carlton

Andre Bermon, Publisher –

Freedom of information disclosures obtained by the bridge raise signifi­cant questions about transparency, decision-making and cost escalation in the city’s ongoing project to establish a 24-hour women’s drop-in centre in Cabbagetown.

233 Carlton Street, a three-storey commercial building, has undergone extensive renovations since January 2023. Work includes adding a new elevator, kitchen, showers, programming areas and a rooftop patio.

Staff at the city’s Corporate Real Estate Management department, which oversees the project, has pegged completion costs totalling $13.5 million, more than 3.5 times the original estimate of $3.7 million publis­hed in July 2019.

Senior city staff obtained approval for the initial reno cost and a $6 million lease for 15 years through a government mechanism known as delegated authority. Under a proscribed $10 million threshold, the project didn’t need council authorization.

233 Carlton is owned by Fred and Theresa Kielburger, parents of Marc and Craig Kielburger, founders of the scandal-ridden charity organization WE. Since the lease began on January 1, 2020, the city has paid them more than $2 million in rent.

Fred Victor, a social service organization in the Downtown East, was selected by the city to operate the women’s drop-in centre upon com­pletion sometime in August of this year. The facility is to replace the Adelaide Resource Centre for Women, still operating in a city-owned property at 67 Adelaide Street East.

With millions of public dollars spent over six years, not a single woman has been served at 233 Carlton. In a city grappling with deepe­ning social and economic crises, the disconnect is staggering.

The curious case of 233 Carlton

It all came to light with an apol­ogy letter. A month previously, 233 Carlton Street was familiar to only a handful of City Hall bureaucrats.

“The community should not have learned about this indirect­ly. For this I apologize,” wrote then-city manager Chris Mur­ray to the Cabbagetown South Residents Association, on Octo­ber 4, 2019.

The city’s Shelter Support and Housing Administration (SSHA), now Toronto Shelter Support Services, needed a new location for the Adelaide Re­source Centre for Women at 67 Adelaide Street East. The city wanted to expand shelter ser­vices in the building and needed the programming moved out.

SSHA and the city’s Corpo­rate Real Estate Management (CREM) hired the Lennard Commercial Realty brokerage to find suitable locations for the women’s drop-in. Accord­ing to city staff reports, 11 sites were evaluated against specified criteria and 233 Carlton was selected as the most optimal.

In early 2019, the city tele­phoned Marc Kielburger as a representative of the landlord to discuss potential use of the property. Months later, the lease conditions were finalized and detailed in July on a Delegated Approval form prepared by the city’s real estate arm.

The city agreed to pay around $6 million for a 15-year lease (ten plus one five-year exten­sion), commit $3.7 million for renovations and exempt the owners of all property taxes for the rental period. At the time 233 Carlton was assessed on tax rolls as worth just under $2.3 million, but according to media and public sources, the property was only available for lease, not for sale.

During lease negotiations SSHA staff met with then-City Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam’s executive assistant, who relayed her reservations about expand­ing services in Cabbagetown. In an email exchange acquired by the bridge, Wong-Tam’s office said the site risks becoming a “major flashpoint” in the com­munity and noted the challeng­es social service operators have faced in combating anti-social behaviour in and around their premises.

Her office requested further details about 233 Carlton, but did not receive any additional information before delegated authority was approved on July 31, 2019.

On October 1, the Delegated Approval Form became public on the city’s website. Wong- Tam’s office expressed dismay to city manager Murray that no public consultation had taken place despite previous SSHA staff assurance that residents and businesses would be proac­tively engaged.

“We have lost community trust in the last 48 hours,” her office wrote.

Murray’s apology letter was sent out the next day.

As shock and confusion spread over the proposed drop-in centre, attention in Cabbage­town quickly focused on a sin­gle question: why 233 Carlton?

The search

City staff documents indicate that beginning in 2018 and con­tinuing into early 2019, SSHA and the city’s real estate division conducted multiple, overlapping site-search exercises to identify potential new shelter locations (including drop-in sites) across Toronto.

Search 1, between January and December 2018, clearly set out the city’s screening crite­ria. These included proximity to public transit, availability for purchase or a minimum 10-year lease, a building of approxi­mately 20,000 square feet, and a main-floor entrance with an existing elevator or the capacity to add one to meet accessibility standards. City staff also cau­tioned that sites requiring zon­ing relief could introduce added time, cost, and uncertainty – an important concern given the city’s stated need to quickly se­cure new shelter locations.

Search 2, carried out between May 2018 and May 2019, did not articulate its criteria as explicit­ly. However, the report indicates that properties were assessed against “bylaw requirements and program/site considera­tions,” suggesting that many of the same baseline standards continued to apply.

Both exercises state the num­ber of properties being con­sidered – but doesn’t list them – and why they were either identified or eliminated. Wheth­er 233 Carlton was among the assessed properties is unknown, but what can be determined is that the Cabbagetown site posed compliance challenges.

• At approximately 13,000 square feet, 233 Carlton was well under the 20,000 mini­mum.

• It had no elevator, and need­ed a minor zoning variance to add space for one.

Search 3, initiated in Novem­ber 2018, was carried out by Lennard Commercial Realty and the city’s real estate divi­sion. Unlike the earlier search exercises, this evaluation was project-specific, investigating approximately 11 sites as po­tential replacements for the Adelaide Resource Centre for Women.

While the screening criteria for this search were not public­ly documented, the selection of 233 Carlton suggests city staff applied greater flexibility than before. Thus, the process shift­ed from strict compliance with established criteria toward man­aging risks associated with a property deficient in zoning and accessibility standards. With administrative discretion prior­itized over adherence to criteria, the decision to use delegated au­thority avoided scrutiny by City Council.

This approach resulted in pro­longed delays and millions of dollars in additional costs to the city.

Renovation nightmare

The consequences of selecting 233 Carlton Street were imme­diate.

A minor variance request to increase the gross floor area to install an elevator made its way to the Committee of Ad­justment in late February 2020. Weeks later a group of Cab­bagetown residents and busi­nesses appealed the decision to the city’s quasi-judicial Local Appeal Body.

Two years and a global pan­demic passed before the Appeal Body granted the minor vari­ance.

To carry out renovation plans, BDA Inc., a general con­tractor, was selected through a municipal bid process in No­vember 2022. The total cost to the city, net of HST recoveries, was recorded to be $8.7 million.

Thus, in three-and-a-half years the original renovation estimate of $3.7 million had more than doubled – despite no change in the scope of work.

According to an email state­ment from the city, the prelim­inary estimate was “a high-level assessment based on minimum work.” Inflation and Covid-era construction pricing, in addition to a “detailed assessment of the work” – led to the project cost increasing. Also, the original amount did not include consul­tation and project management costs (forecast at $2.2 million upon project completion).

Work began in early 2023, with an opening expected at the end of the year. This was later pushed to November 2025 – al­most two years later – due to de­lays installing the elevator.

FOI documents the bridge received state that the eleva­tor subcontractor Pace Eleva­tor was replaced in September 2025 due to “non-performance” and “non-communication” by ATTA/Modern elevator. Once again, the completion date was pushed back, this time to Au­gust 2026.

An October 2025 RAG chart (red, amber, green) used to track project status, depicts the ele­vator work in red, signifying deficiencies in schedule, budget and target benefits. By the time installation is completed, along with scheduled walkthroughs and staff training, 880 days of overrun is projected.

The massive delay is reflect­ed in overall costs of complet­ing renovations at 233 Carlton, forecast to be $13.5 million– 3.5 times the original estimate.

An internal risk and status assessment (RAG chart) for the 233 Carlton Street project, obtained by the bridge through a freedom of information request. (Names have been redacted.)

Seeking accountability

“From day one, this was the wrong building in the wrong location, and everyone knew it,” said Howard Bortenstein, an organizer of a residents group that opposed the site selection, in an email to the bridge. “The city insisted, without offering a shred of proof, that this was the best location, even as it ignored every practical warning,”

To date the city has refused to publish the list of alternative sites investigated in the months before the 233 Carlton lease was signed. In the absence of a public record, the claim that the Cabbagetown location was the most optimal choice can’t be verified.

“Cramming a long list of fa­cilities and services into a struc­ture never designed for them, including major structural changes like adding an elevator, made massive cost overruns ob­viously inevitable,” Bortenstein said.

Andrew Haisley, a Winchester neighbourhood resident, told the bridge he was shocked to learn about the ballooning construc­tion costs, and wondered what better accommodation could have been bought for the money. Going ahead with delegated au­thority instead of a council de­cision, he pointed out, wouldn’t have been possible with the $13.5 million now being fore­cast to finish the job.

“I thought the overrun on Par­liament (Dixon Hall project) was bad. But this is an entirely another order,” said Haisley.

In an email to the bridge, Kristyn Wong-Tam, now MPP for Toronto Centre, said that on several occasions as councillor she expressed concern about the practicality of moving the wom­en’s resource centre to Cabbage­town. “I recall asking city staff why they chose a property that was so constrained for space, required expensive construction and a Committee of Adjust­ment process. I was told it was the best available option out of the alternatives, meaning others were even further away from the original location, would take too long to secure, may require a full re-zoning application and could cost even more to reno­vate.”

Wong-Tam added that the staff decision to use delegated au­thority made it hard for her of­fice to explain why 233 Carlton was chosen over other sites. “I had nothing else to compare this location with.”

Wong-Tam supports releasing the list of alternative properties considered for this project, “on the principles of transparency and accountability,”.

Ward 13 Toronto Centre Councillor Chris Moise re­sponded to the bridge saying city staff did not notify him of the cost spikes, though they had previously reported problems with the elevator.

“I want to get to the bottom of this and know why these cost over-runs didn’t automatically trigger a report to council by city staff,” said Moise.

“The last five years were un­foreseeable in 2019,” he added, likely referring to the Covid pandemic and other factors. “But that doesn’t excuse the fact that these cost over-runs are un­acceptable.”

Moise said he has no objection to examining the use of Dele­gated Authority to “bring great­er financial transparency and fewer surprises like these.”

For Bortenstein and others in Cabbagetown, the scale of public investment in the project raises fundamental questions about transparency, account­ability and how key decisions were made. “This is systemic failure at an industrial scale. We deserve real answers, not excus­es from city politicians and offi­cials who allowed this wasteful spending to happen,” Borten­stein said.