Settlement Of 114 Richmond Road (Convent) OMB Case

As you know from our previous notes, the three Appellants, Hampton Iona Community Group, Westboro Community Association and Sylvano Carrasco, while preparing for the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) challenge against the City for 114 Richmond Road, had all entered into direct discussions with Ashcroft to see if a compromise could be reached as Ashcroft had approached the Appellants seeking a negotiated settlement. The City was not involved in the negotiations. We have reached a settlement, effective today, amongst all the Appellants and the developer and therefore the case will no longer be proceeding to the OMB hearing scheduled for July 18. We had been in negotiations over the past 4 months.

All three of the Appellants requested a number of concessions from the developer in order to more properly address the issues raised by our members and the residents of the community most impacted by, amongst other things, the additional density and increased traffic the development will introduce to the neighbourhood.

We had mixed success in getting significant movement from Ashcroft, but we were at least able to cap the heights and densities and prevent further erosion to some of the residents’ key objectives for the community.

In agreeing to this settlement, we all had to weigh the strong potential of an imposed adverse decision by the OMB and the use of scarce financial and volunteer resources needed to mount a 5 to 7 day hearing against the outcome of a negotiation settlement in which we participated and securing some of our goals and objectives.

Our Board decided (as did the other Appellants) that we would achieve more from a negotiated settlement than we would from the OMB process.

The highlights of the settlement are:

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