Toronto Council to decide city’s next steps regarding proposal for 11-storey building beside Glen Stewart Ravine
Toronto Council will be giving direction this week to its legal staff regarding the next steps in a controversial development application seeking to build an 11-storey residential building on Kingston Road near the north bank of the Glen Stewart Ravine.
The matter is on the agenda for the Toronto Council meeting slated to start on Wednesday, Nov. 12, at Toronto City Hall. Council meetings are multi-day affairs and it is not known at this time exactly when the issue will be discussed, but the meeting is expected to continue through until Nov. 14.
The proposal for the building at 847-855 Kingston Rd., just west of Beech Avenue, calls for an 11-storey mixed-use building with 99 residential units. That proposal was first submitted to the city in December of 2022.
In late 2024, developer Gabriele Homes Ltd. moved to have the proposal reviewed by the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) for a decision on its approval. The developer asked for the OLT review due to “failure of City Council to make decisions on the revised applications” for the 11-storey building.
The history of proposed development on the site goes back more than 10 years to August of 2015 when a seven-storey residential building on the site was sought by the same developer.
Community members, including representatives from the Friends of the Glen Stewart Ravine group, are concerned that the current proposal will have severe environmental impacts on the ravine to the south. The proposal calls for the building to have zero-metre setback from the long-term stable slope at the ravine’s northern edge.
In August of this year, scheduled mediation meetings between the City of Toronto, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and the developer were held to see if an agreement could be reached regarding the proposal prior it to going to the OLT for review in April of 2026.
Those meetings were confidential and the results have not been made public.
However, at this week’s Toronto Council meeting a Confidential Attachment regarding further action by the City Solicitor will be discussed.
In the agenda item (CC34.7), the City Solicitor is recommending that “City Council adopt the recommendations contained in the Confidential Attachment.” The attachment is confidential and its contents cannot be made public in advance due to “solicitor-client privilege and information regarding potential litigation”, said the agenda item.
“The City Solicitor requires further directions for the upcoming 15-day Ontario Land Tribunal hearing scheduled to commence on April 13, 2026. For reasons set out in Confidential Attachment 1, this matter is urgent and cannot be deferred.”
The Friends of the Glen Stewart Ravine told Beach Metro Community News late last week that they have been made aware that the item is on the agenda for the Nov. 12 Toronto Council meeting, but they do not know what the recommendations made in the Confidential Attachment are.
“I don’t have anything to share that will enlighten you. It’s sure hard to have a sense of how this is going to go,” said Sheila Dunn.
“I can tell you that in the last two-and-a-half days, 430 letters went to City Council about this and previously over 1,000 letters went to individual councillors in various wards.”
In previous Beach Metro Community News stories, Councillor Bradford had said in April of this year that he was in favour of the city opposing the proposal at the OLT hearing. “I support having city staff and our legal team oppose this application at the OLT,” he said in an April 24 Beach Metro Community News story.
