“The single-family house has ruptured these city blocks”

FROM OCTOBER 2024 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

Recent land use changes mean sleepy, residential Dovercourt will be transformed by its new “major street” status, paving the way for higher, denser multiplexes and more commercial space. One architect calls it the European-style solution that “Toronto is craving”

Dovercourt Road is one of those West End streets that’s neither fish nor fowl. Parts of it feel and behave like an arterial road, except one lined with houses, while other stretches – south of College or south of Queen – feel cozy and residential.

It has played many parts in the city’s past, but thanks to new land use and zoning moves by Toronto City Council, Dovercourt is likely to see a newish form of intensification, certainly not the high density of Liberty Village, but definitely more than what currently exists.

York’s colonial founder, Lieut.-Gov. John Graves Simcoe, carved up what is now the old core of the city into 32 so-called “park lots,” long and narrow plots extending from Queen to Bloor, and from Lansdowne east to the Don River. Number 26 straddled what is now Dovercourt Road, which Simcoe divided in two and deeded to a pair of his cronies. Both parcels ended up in the hands of the storied Denison family, successive generations of which built large estates whose names – Heydon Park, Bellevue, Lakeview and Dover Court – have demarcated that part of the city for well over a century.

Dover Court itself was a farmhouse located at present-day Dundas and Ossington. In 1853, Richard Denison, a farmer and militia officer, built a new mansion at the end of what is now Lakeview Ave., which takes its wide form from its earlier incarnation as a driveway.

As the West End filled out, Dovercourt Road, extending from King to Bloor and later up to Davenport, was served by a commuter streetcar line, connecting the city’s northwest working-class suburbs to the downtown core via King. Though mostly residential, Dovercourt also had a movie theatre, an industrial-scale bakery and clusters of shops and factories around Dupont. The streetcar went out of service in 1966 and the TTC hasn’t run buses up and down it for decades.

The architects at Brown/Storey have proposed housing densification along a trio of streets – Dovercourt, Ossington and Christie, highlighted in the rendering here – from College north.

Despite its role as a north-south thoroughfare and former incarnation as a streetcar route, most of Dovercourt is zoned residential, although current land use regulations allow for multiplexes up to four units. (The exceptions include a complex of 1960s-vintage apartment towers south of Bloor and Dovercourt, a smattering of older walk-ups south of College, as well as a pair of much more recent condo mid-rises at the south end, just north of King Street.)

Thanks to recent land use changes that aim to kick-start more missing-middle housing, higher-density multi-family buildings will soon be permitted on much of Dovercourt, which has been designated as a “major street” in the city’s official plan. Under rules passed by council last May, developers will be able to intensify portions of designated major streets with townhouses and small apartment buildings of up to 60 units and a maximum height of six storeys, subject to various rules about setbacks and massing. The city will also allow builders to assemble residential lots for this kind of redevelopment. (Council’s bylaw is currently under appeal at the Ontario Land Tribunal.)

Council has also made a few other changes that will alter Dovercourt’s predominantly residential character. The city is now finalizing a bylaw that will enable more small-scale retail along parts of Dovercourt, and the latest bylaw changes will also permit some small businesses to operate from houses or apartments, a move that essentially legalizes a long-established practice and also recognizes that some people never returned to the office after COVID.

The most impactful, though longer-term, change will occur within a pair of so-called Major Transit Station Areas (MTSAs) – zones near rapid transit stations (Ossington and Dufferin subway stations and the King-Liberty GO station) that have been targeted under provincial legislation for very significant intensification – i.e., highrises.

According to planner and architect Naama Blonder, founder of Smart Density, a boutique design firm located at Richmond and Bathurst, Dovercourt could evolve into a street lined with the kinds of low-rise apartments that are common in Europe or places like Mexico City. Blonder, whose firm has worked on various missing-middle projects, says she isn’t persuaded that council’s decision to allow laneway suites, garden suites and fourplexes will provide sufficient density in core areas, and especially along secondary arterials like Dovercourt.

Small-scale apartment buildings up to six storeys, she argues, “offer the scale and built form that I think Toronto is craving, and also allow neighbourhood-supporting retail.” Blonder also sees Dovercourt as a prime location for missing-middle density because of its urban context – near transit, cutting through the predominantly low-rise neighbourhoods of the West End.

One of the examples from the architects at Brown/Storey of what denser, courtyard-style residences could look like.

On the eve of the pandemic, architects James Brown and Kim Storey unveiled a more ambitious vision for Dovercourt, as well as Ossington and Christie – a trio of streets they have dubbed the Un-Avenues. The design proposal, which their firm has submitted to several architecture competitions, envisions all three streets intensified from College north (or Bloor, in the case of Christie) to allow for a new style of apartment complex, featuring a highrise and two mid-rises surrounding a courtyard that would be connected to the open spaces on adjacent properties.

“We want to get away from the single-family house, which has kind of ruptured and destroyed those city blocks,” says Brown, adding that their studies envision breaking up the long blocks of all three and creating more east-west connections to the adjoining residential streets. “The shorter block just creates better intervals and integrates into the surroundings.”

Storey adds that the West End’s development has always focused on the main east-west streets, which have the retail and the transit routes. “The idea was that you might zone less dense housing along Dovercourt, and then have something more dense along Christie,” Storey says. Left as is, arterials like Dufferin, Dovercourt and Ossington, she says, “just become part of the yellow belt.”

More permissive zoning, however, could also drive up costs and rents if developers target higher-income buyers and replace older houses carved up into multiple apartments with townhouses or small-scale apartments. “I think it’s important that we make these zoning changes and provide a bigger mix of housing,” says Davenport Councillor Alejandra Bravo. But, she cautions, “displacement is not a goal here, and it is something that has to be always considered because of the way that the market operates. We have to be vigilant and figure out how we can continue to support those tenants.”

The gentle intensification of Dovercourt, adds Craig Race, an architect who specializes in laneway units, won’t happen overnight. He points out that despite the easing of zoning rules, many time-consuming and costly bureaucratic processes remain in effect. Bravo agrees: “All of those things mean that this would take a long time to actually develop.”

What’s more, with so much of Dovercourt carved into single-house-sized lots, builders will have to assemble parcels in order to take advantage of the changes. “With every unit you go above four [i.e., a multiplex], it gets harder and harder to justify development,” she says; you can’t just plunk an apartment building on a single lot, given rules about setbacks. “Which is why you won’t just see a house turn into a six-storey building tomorrow.”