DELIVERED TO CONCERNED RESIDENTS OF BABY POINT COMMUNITY
April 20, 2010
Mr. & Mrs. Bozinoff
266 Rusholme Rd
Toronto, M6H 2Y8
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Bozinoff;
In your hand delivered letter to neighbours dated March 31, you asked for comments and concerns about your house plans for 66 Baby Point Rd. In response to that invitation, we attach excerpts from many of the letters on our neighbourhood blog outlining a variety of concerns (www.babypointatrisk.blogspot.com).
The letters are informative and we suggest that you please take a moment to review them.
Over 150 people have registered their opposition to your plans and remain vigorously opposed to them. These are just a few of the comments of the many received.
Absent the opportunity to meet the registered owner of 66 Baby Point Rd., Mrs. Bozinoff, the concerns below have been communicated to Mr. Bozinoff on multiple occasions. They can be summarized as follows:
1. The massing and density of your house which is greater than twice as large as the homes around it. The ten (10) adjacent homes average 2,800 sq ft.
2. Your attached double car garage ruins the historic visual space between the homes in the neighbourhood.
3. The infringement of your house into ravine lands.
4. The intransigent insistence of one new neighbour on their rights in law to negatively impact a neighbourhood streetscape that has been respected for generations and is the architectural legacy of Robert Home Smith.
The solutions are as follows:
All of the above can be solved with a house design that fits the relative size and scale of those around it. Scaling back the size of the home proportional to the adjacent properties directly impacts points 2, 3 and 4 above since the garage would be left in its historic spot, the ravine would not be compromised, and the streetscape preserved.
While you may have convinced the City that your home is acceptable by the letter of the law, the community does not share this view. As a market research practitioner, you would agree that it is statistically significant when over 75% of a neighbourhood have given voice to the opposition to your plans, and continue to express this opposition.
As you probably know, the majority of residents in Baby Point are within an upper income profile and could afford extremely large homes like you plan. Yet rather than build large structures, these same residents have traditionally shown restraint in modifying their house plans in order to ensure that they do not upset their neighbours, and preserve the historic streetscape and architectural heritage.
We would ask that you consider doing the same.
Should you choose to continue to ignore our many stated concerns, one would be justified in interpreting this as an indelible sign that from the outset you had little intention of true engagement in giving consideration to our concerns.
Moreover, we would further note that the only public display of communication with the neighbourhood at large is confined to the one mass mailing effort on March 31st. the very day that the community learned that you hired a lobbyist to push through your plan at Toronto City Council.
Should you want to truly engage as you mentioned in your letter of March 31st, you may respond to the community through the email address provided below. We have created a Steering Committee representing over 150 concerned neighbours. The Steering Committee looks forward to the receipt of your thoughts and ideas about our concerns about present and future risks to the environs of the Baby Point Residential community and the solutions proposed above. We will forward your thoughts and proposal to the remainder of our concerned list.
Signed:
Steering Committee for the Many Concerned Baby Point Residents
Our Email:
http://www.baby.point.at.risk@gmail.com
Steering Committee Members: Mary Anne Demonte-Whelan, Christopher Hales, Patty Vandergrift, Dr. Robert Galway, Kevin O’Doherty, Leslie Chase, David Ceolin, Carrie McKean, Tom Siklos, Pam Slaughter
See our neighbourhood blog Baby Point at Risk for more info on the neighbourhood’s concerns about your plans http://www.babypointatrisk.blogspot.com
