Despite much speculation, the Green P Parking Lot behind Eglinton Avenue near Avenue Road is not going to be developed, according to local city councillor Mike Colle.
“Let me be absolutely clear the city is not negotiating with the applicant on acquiring the Green P Parking Lot,” Colle said. “As I stated categorically at the community meeting, our small businesses on Eglinton see the Green P Lot as essential, plus if this lot was to have any other use, it would be as a public park, like what I did behind the Capitol Theatre at Young and Castlefield.”
Rumours of the development connected to a housing application on Eglinton for a 19-storey condo arose at the same time a City of Toronto report is set to look at the housing potential of city-owned surface parking lots across the city.
According to a report by David Jollimore, Toronto’s deputy city manager, there are approximately 130 public parking lots scattered throughout the city, with 74 strategically situated within what’s termed as “major transit station areas” — zones adjacent to public transit hubs. The report views these parking lots as potential sites for innovative housing solutions, a departure from their current function primarily as spaces for private car storage.
“Surface parking is about the worst land use you can think of,” said city councillor Gord Perks, also chair of the city’s planning and housing committee. “In a city that is short of housing, of green spaces, of community centres, of just about everything you can name, using part of our scarce land for a parking lot is just backwards and terrible.”
The city’s strategy involves identifying city-owned parcels along transit routes and stations, where residents are less reliant on personal vehicles. These parcels, often referred to as “lazy land,” are viewed as prime candidates for redevelopment. For instance, a site at Dundas West and Ossington Avenue, currently occupied by less than half an acre of parking space, is slated for transformation into a residential community, featuring a 10-storey mass timber building offering 100 units of purpose-built housing.
“There are sites where in some cases you can park for 24 hours for as little as, you know, five to 10 dollars for 24 hours, which makes no sense when they’re sitting next to billions of dollars worth of transit infrastructure,” said Mark Richardson, volunteer technical lead for the advocacy group HousingNowTO. “We have a choice in the city about what it is we want to subsidize.”
As the idea of repurposing parking lots for housing gains momentum, challenges persist. Concerns regarding the feasibility of such projects, as well as potential impacts on parking availability and revenue generation, demand careful consideration. Nevertheless, city officials have expressed optimism about the prospects of these initiatives, buoyed by the identification of 130 suitable sites out of the city’s portfolio of 300 parking facilities.
How to get them built is another question, but Perks thinks the city’s renewed role as a public builder will help push these projects ahead where private market developers are sitting on the sidelines.
“Private market developers will only come into an agreement if they can extract value, right? So we’re giving away some socially owned or publicly owned wealth [land] in exchange for affordable housing,” he said. “And that’s silly.”
The report was scheduled to be discussed at an upcoming Toronto City Council meeting.