Don’t demolish the Dominion Foundry!

Public interest in Ontario can sometimes be served by the use of a mechanism called a Ministerial Zoning Order (MZO), which bypasses municipal rezoning processes and lengthy community consultation in order to fast-track important initiatives such as affordable housing development.

In general I support it if it’s used in a way that respects local priorities and neighbourhood scale. The problems in this case?
1. Destruction of an important piece of historic industrial architecture — the Dominion Foundry complex, which includes glorious interior spaces more than 100 years old.
2. Proposed 40 storey building height in a neighbourhood that is much lower, maximum of 15 storeys. A very walkable area at human scale becomes something much less livable.
3. No information provided to the public about building uses as of today, five days after demolition started. I suspect there is not enough affordable housing — anything less than 100% is not enough. And there is likely NO geared-to-income housing for lower income households.

This is huge missed opportunity to create something special: a project that provides much-needed affordable and geared-to-income housing units while preserving the heritage buildings for community use and limiting the size and height to something people can relate to.