The city’s 2002 Official Plan identifies this area as “regeneration”.No other planning guidelines exist, so a detailed secondary plan is a good thing for neighbourhood, to better ensure new developments are compatible (otherwise, without any detailed city planning guidelines, a developer could go directly to OMB with plans for any type of development). To date, most residential development in this area has been 2-3 storey townhouses (with the exception of Vinegar Lofts and Malt House Lofts). City planning had public meetings on June 28, 2012 and Jan 24, 2013. As of Dec 2013, still no final planning report! Likely the city’s strategy is to delay completion of this plan while it charges ahead with Regent Park rezoning. By the time the folks living in 3 storey townhouses in Queen-River “wake up”, it will be too late for them to complain about the wall of 30 storey condos approved for Regent Park’s River street border.
After 5 years, the Queen-River secondary plan was approved in 2017. Barely 2 years later, that “plan” was being revised. One has to wonder whether this secondary plan reflects objective urban planning “best practices”, or does it simply document the latest demands by developers for this area?
2017 secondary plan
2019 analysis of possible changes
2020 secondary plan
List of all City of Toronto Secondary Plans (more detailed local development policies to guide growth and change in a defined area of the city)