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winter confidence Volume 52 No. 22
BEACHMETRO.COM
February 6, 2024
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Toboggan Proposal for Queen and Lee calls for six-storey ban likely residential building and new, larger grocery store to be ended this week By Alan Shackleton
By Amarachi Amadike, Journalism Initiative Reporter
Local
BEACHES EAST-YORK Councillor Brad Bradford is expected to propose a motion to reverse Toronto’s recent tobogganing ban at a number of hills across the city during the Feb. 6 council meeting. Seconding the motion will be Mayor Olivia Chow, marking a major victory for Bradford who has been Toronto Council’s most vocal critic on the matter. The Beaches-East York councillor, along with support from media and residents across the city who Continued on Page 2
Winter Stations to host opening celebrations OPENING CEREMONIES for Winter Stations 2024 are set for Family Day at Woodbine Beach. The annual Winter Stations art installations have been adorning Woodbine Beach since 2015. New for this year’s exhibition will be the addition of Queen Street Stations, which will include three art installations set for Woodbine Park, Kew Gardens park and Ivan Forrest Gardens park, There will be six new art installations along Woodbine Beach as part of Winter Stations 2024. The opening ceremonies will take place on Monday, Feb. 19, at noon. A number of dignitaries, artists and local politicians are expected to attend. The opening ceremonies for Queen Street Stations will take place on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 6:30 p.m. at Woodbine Park. For more on this year’s Winter Stations please see Page 6 of today’s paper, or go to https://winterstations.com.
A PROPOSAL to build a six-storey residential building at an iconic corner on Queen Street East in the Beach has captured the attention of the community. The plan will see the northwest corner of Lee Avenue and Queen Street East transformed from what is now the Beach Foodland grocery store and four other twostorey buildings to the west into a six-storey 60-unit residential building. The proposal includes the addresses 2026, 2028, 2030, 2032-2038 and 2040 Queen St. E. In the proposal, the grocery store will be returned to the site at street level and almost triple it from its current size, though it is not known at this time whether that new grocery store will operate under the Foodland banner. The 2040 Queen East proposal is being put forward by current property owner Sobey’s Inc. grocery chain (which owns Foodland), and Crombie REIT which is a Canadian real estate investment trust. According to information on the 2040 Queen East website, at https://2040queeneast.ca, the vision for the proposal is to “build a larger, modernized grocery store and introduce new housing units to meet the growing needs of the neighbourhood”. “The expanded grocery store footprint will allow for more selection, improve the overall shopping experience, and provide more employment opportunities on site. We’re proposing a mid-rise building that complements the existing character of The Beaches: a six-storey mixed-use building that would include 60 new residential units and 1,140 square metres of retail grocery space,” said the website. Given the location is in what is considered to be the “heart” of the Beach since it is across the street from Kew Gardens park, The Beaches Branch Library and the historic former bank building from 1911 that is now home to a Coles book store, there is a lot of commu-
Above, this artist’s rendering shows what the proposal for a six-storey residential building and expanded grocery store might look like at the northwest corner of Queen Street East and Lee Avenue. Photo below, the corner as it looks now.
nity interest in this proposal and the impact it will have. Both Sobey’s/Crombie REIT, and Beaches-East York Councillor Brad Bradford are promising there will be significant opportunities for concerned residents to have input on the proposal. However, Bradford said the formal community consultation process can only begin once the rezoning application for the project has been officially “received” by the City of Toronto, and as of Feb. 1 it was not appearing on the Toronto Application Information Centre website. A spokesperson for Crombie REIT told Beach Metro Community News last week that the application was submitted to the city in late
December “and is currently being processed for intake”. “The application is not available yet on the city’s Application Information Centre, however our project website, 2040queeneast.ca, was recently launched to begin sharing information and gather feedback from the community early in the process,” said Elizabeth Engram, Senior Manager, Marketing & Public Relations Crombie REIT. Bradford said residents can expect a community meeting on the proposal in the near future. “The moment that the City receives a formal application for this address, my team will work to urgently schedule a community meeting to discuss the proposal,” Bradford told Beach Metro Com-
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munity News. “That’s a critical piece of what will be an extensive review process because it allows neighbours to hear directly from our City Planning division on what is being proposed and for them to gather feedback from the community. It’s also an opportunity for neighbours to hear directly from the applicant – and for the applicant to hear directly from them.” On its website, 2040 Queen East also said community input will be part of the planning process for the redevelopment. “We anticipate that the City of Toronto will host a community consultation meeting in Spring 2024. Community members that live Continued on Page 2