April 16, 2008

Jack Layton adds voice to protest over Leslieville shopping-centre plan

TORONTO

The province should step in and quash a proposed “big box” complex that residents of a central Toronto neighbourhood fear will alter the fabric of their community, NDP leader Jack Layton said Sunday.

Should the SmartCentres development — which would feature a 1,900-car parking lot and is rumoured to include a Wal-Mart — go ahead as planned, residents fear it will clog the area with traffic and set an unsustainable precedent for future development in the city’s core.

“I say to Premier (Dalton) McGuinty: do the right thing. Step in and stop the Wal-Mart here in the east end,” Layton said before a vocal crowd that rallied against the development Sunday afternoon.

Layton compared the grassroots fight against the development to the construction of the Spadina Expressway in the mid 1960s. The project was halted at the last minute by the province following a massive uproar from residents.

While the Ontario Municipal Board will review the project next month, residents of the quaint Leslieville neighbourhood want the government to declare the issue a provincial matter — a legislative tool that would allow it to effectively stop the development.

In recent years, Leslieville residents have fought to shut down a garbage incinerator and pull down a hulking concrete chunk of the Gardner Expressway, the latter of which cost taxpayers $30 million, Layton said of the community’s determination.

“If you had suggested that Wal-Mart would be located where we took down the Gardner Expressway, we all would have said ‘leave it up,”” he said.

But SmartCentres has said the project isn’t a big box store. In fact, plans it submitted to the OMB for approval show a pedestrian mall beside a mixed-use development that tops out at three-storeys.

The blueprints also show the parking lot would not be seen from major roadways and that the largest retail space would be smaller than most Wal-Marts in the province.

City zoning mandates the area be used for employment and local councillor Paula Fletcher said the land, which currently houses a film studio, should be used for jobs in the film and media industries.

“The area needs to be protected for high, value-added jobs,” she said, noting a job in the film industry is worth $100,000 to the economy, whereas a retail job is worth around $30,000.

“There’s lots of room for big box stores in Toronto, but not on these important, strategic employment lands.”

Provincial officials could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Canadian Press

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