With Coucillor Gary Crawford
By Gary Crawford
I hope you’ve all been keeping safe and well amid the recent surge of winter weather. Although Wiarton Willie promised us an early spring, we’ve certainly been getting our fair share of snow in the lead up to it!
One of the more recent highlights of my winter was getting to host a virtual bookmark event this past Family Day with Scarborough Southwest’s young and young at heart. It was wonderful to get together with several families to create our very own custom bookmarks and it was extra special to be able to share one of my greatest passions with an equally enthusiastic group. I have to say that I was quite impressed by all the budding artists in Scarborough Southwest. Some of you may not know this, but prior to my career in politics I worked as an artist on a fulltime basis and beyond that, art has simply been a lifelong passion of mine. I’m definitely looking forward to further opportunities to collaborate and spark creativity among each other.
I also had the fortunate opportunity of serving as one of the judges for the Cliffcrest Scarborough Village Southwest Residents Association photo contest. Congratulations to all the winners! There were so many wonderful entries exemplifying the natural beauty unique to Scarborough Southwest. I strongly encourage you to check out a sampling of the images within this very issue of the Bluffs Monitor.
Finally, I’d like to take a moment to provide an update in regard to the redevelopment of Lenmore Court (1615-1642 Kingston Rd.). As some of you may be aware, some concerns were raised in regard to the relocation of the existing tenants. In their initial proposal, the developers of the property had committed to providing offsite replacement units to existing tenants. However, they have since revised their proposal to provide onsite replacement units to existing tenants and the tenants have been made aware of this revision. Although there is still much work to be done as we are at the beginning of a very long process, I am extremely pleased that we were able to reach this outcome through the collaborative work conducted by my office, City Planning and Altree Development.
This is just one of our recent efforts to address housing affordability in Scarborough Southwest. We’ve also recently unveiled the City’s first modular housing building at 11 Macey Avenue. The site hosts 56 studio apartments with the purpose of providing housing to persons experiencing homelessness. Scarborough Southwest will also be the home of the City’s first two Housing Now sites, located at 705 Warden Ave. and 777 Victoria Park Ave. The purpose of the Housing Now initiative is to repurpose underutilized city property for affordable housing. These sites will host multi-residential mixed used developments and will rent for approximately 80% of Toronto’s average market rent.
As always, please continue to abide by the latest COVID-19 health and safety guidelines. It’s important that we all do our part to overcome this challenge.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to my office if you require assistance. We’re always happy to look into what we can do to help and support you.