• Demolition of older existing rental apartment buildings
• Economic life of older rental apartment buildings
• Whether furnished executive suites are "rental apartments"
• Replacement of demolished rental apartments with new rental units

Goldlist Properties Inc. (Goldlist) owns two rental apartment buildings, at 310 and 320 Tweedsmuir Avenue in the City of Toronto, which were built in the early 1960s. The buildings contain 246 units with 100 of these units operating as furnished executive suites offering hotel-type accommodation. Goldlist applied to the City to demolish these buildings and to replace them with either (a) 276 condominium apartments and townhouses or (b) 250 condominium apartments and townhouses and 117 rental apartment units. The City of Toronto opposed both redevelopment options.

Goldlist retained Dr. Frank A. Clayton, President of Clayton Research, to assess the housing market implications of housing policies of the former City of York and former municipality of Metropolitan Toronto related to the provision of rental housing, affordable housing and a mix of housing. He also examined whether the furnished executive suites are in fact "rental apartments" and whether the existing rental apartments would likely remain "affordable" if their redevelopment was not approved.

The evidence that Dr. Clayton gave concluded that:

• The 100 furnished executive suites are not part of the rental housing stock;
• The existing rental apartments will not be retained as affordable rental units if the application for redevelopment is not approved;
• The two redevelopment scenarios proposed by Goldlist are consistent with, or at least not inconsistent with, the housing policies of the former City of York and Metropolitan Toronto reviewed; and
• In the former City of York a sizeable proportion of the new housing built since 1991 has been affordable, York already has a high percentage of affordable housing, and York has not had any upper priced condominiums built there since 1991.

Mr. M.A. Rosenberg, Chair of the Ontario Municipal Board panel that heard this case, stated that the Board carefully weighed all the evidence and preferred the testimony of the Goldlist witnesses (Messrs. Michael Goldberg and Will Dunning and Dr. Clayton) with respect to the redevelopment option that included rental apartments but with some revisions. Among these revisions was an increase in the number of rental units from the proposed 117 units to 146 units (the allowable density was correspondingly raised). The Board stated that the furnished executive suites are rental apartments and that the retention of the existing apartment buildings is not economically feasible.

OMB File No. PL957383, PL990391