Towers are marching into Cabbagetown

Paul Dilse, Op/ed –

Over the last 20 years, real es­tate speculators, land develop­ers and their partners at City Hall and Queen’s Park have re­made great swaths of downtown Toronto into high-rise towers – too often banal, intimidating or ugly, and mostly unaffordable.

They’ve been encircling Cab­bagetown for almost as long.

At the tight southwest corner of Wellesley Street East and Sherbourne Street, where a gas station and previously a brick house had been, the city ap­proved a 35-storey condomini­um tower in 2013. The result: an ignoble tower clad in black metal with its podium faced in precast brown brick. According to the final report on the zoning amendment application, of a to­tal 286 apartments, the equiva­lent of eight are affordable.

Farther east along Wellesley is a ludicrous proposal to insert a condominium tower amid exist­ing high-rise towers in St. James Town (see the July 2025 issue of the bridge). When the applicant floated the proposal in 2018, the tower was going to stand 51 sto­reys tall. Like Pinocchio’s nose, it has grown to 58 storeys, one floor for every year since. E d­ward LaRusic, Ward 13 (Toronto Centre) Councillor Chris Moi­se’s deputy chief of staff, told me in correspondence: “as it’s probable that there is a positive staff report, Councillor Moise is probably going to be supporting the staff recommendations to approve this application.”

At 410 Sherbourne Street, site of the Phoenix nightclub, a tow­er grew to 39 storeys. Kristyn Wong-Tam, formerly the ward’s representative on city council, told us at the community consul­tation meeting in 2022 that the project had started at 25 storeys in pre-consultation. Wong-Tam was concerned about the exces­sively tall tower’s shadowing ef­fect on multiple open spaces, its inappropriate transition to exist­ing low-rise buildings, the size of its floor plate, the location of driveways and service areas and the loss of a live music venue.

When city planning staff rec­ommended approving the appli­cation in 2023, it had become 42 storeys tall without any afforda­ble housing. City Council held off until the lease for the Phoe­nix nightclub was extended.

Opposite the Phoenix, the city initiated a rezoning on a mu­nicipal parking lot to permit a 26-storey tower in 2021. When a nonprofit housing provider is found to build the tower, it would offer 267 rental apart­ments, at least a third of which would be affordable.

A few metres south, at 383– 387 Sherbourne Street, a private developer in 2021 proposed a 49-storey tower nearly double the height of what the city re­zoned for itself on the parking lot. Six months after applying for the rezoning, the developer appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal, an arcane provincially appointed body that can over­rule municipal governments.

The city settled for a 39-sto­rey tower. It will sprout from retained parts of the existing walk-up apartment building at no. 387, while the existing walk-up apartment at no. 383, next door to Sacré-Coeur Church, will be kept whole. Of the pro­ject’s 378 units of housing, 27 will be affordable.

Down Sherbourne at its in­tersection with Gerrard Street East, the city approved an 18-storey tower last year. The project had had a long gestation, and if the account of the process in the provincial appeal tribu­nal’s report can be believed, the original proposal was for a squat five-storey structure. The city wanted a ten-storey tower, but the applicant rejected that concept and appealed. In 2019 the tribunal allowed a 15-storey tower despite the city’s misgiv­ings about the building’s shad­ow on Allan Gardens, Toronto’s second-oldest park (1864). It’s a precious vestige of open space containing the city’s oldest hor­ticultural gardens (1860) and the Palm House (1909-10), which the city recently restored. Late last summer, while construc­tion had already started on the blocky 15-storey tower, the city accepted the addition of three more floors.

At Sherbourne and Carlton Streets, St. Luke’s Church re­ceived planning approval in 2022 to build staggered boxes around and cantilevered over the landmark church. Not con­tent with the original twelve storeys, the church has applied to erect a 48-storey tower to be built under, around, through, and cantilevered over retained parts of the Victorian edifice.

Each of these sites is in or ad­jacent to a heritage conservation district – a protected historic area where each property with­in its boundaries is designated by the municipality under the Ontario Heritage Act. Yet, in granting planning approvals piecemeal and without con­sideration for their cumulative effect, the city has ignored its own objectives for the Cabbage­town Northwest, Cabbagetown Southwest and Garden District heritage conservation districts. In addition, the Downtown Sec­ondary Plan, a framework for growth in the downtown core, does not direct intensification to Sherbourne Street or eastward along Wellesley.

With the city’s insatiable ap­petite for development charges, planning fees and property tax revenue, no place in Cabbage­town is safe from creeping tow­ers. At various times over the last half century, ordinary cit­izens organized and stood up for the obvious historic worth of their neighbourhood. They have to do this again now.