The Leaside Property Owners’ Association has taken up the cause of neighbours on McRae Drive opposite Trace Manes Park who are opposing a box-style replacement home at 158 McRae. In an appeal to residents on Friday, August 23, Co-Presidents Geoff Kettel and Carol Burtin Fripp say that the out-of-character box will spoil the look of the street and dwarf its neighbours. In recent years large box homes have made inroads into streets in south Leaside, Bennington Heights and elsewhere.
“Do you ever marvel at the view across McRae Drive from the playground at Trace Manes Park – soon to be revitalized as the Georgia Walsh playground – to the row of houses making up the block from Crandall to Field? These seven houses in Revival style are all the same, yet all different. This iconic Leaside streetscape is threatened by the proposed teardown of just one of the houses – 158 McRae Drive – and its replacement with a large modern box with flat roof. The new home, if approved by the Committee of Adjustment on Thursday, August 29, will be wider, higher, anddeeper than any of the other homes on the block. It will dwarf the adjacent homes and simply not ‘fit’, as seen in the drawing attached to the application. The application for this new house and the variances to the zoning by-law that it requires will be heard at the North York Committee of Adjustment on Thursday, August 29, at 9.30am.”
The South Bayview Bulldog, August 23, 2019
Petition begun to oppose large box replacement on Mcrae – South Bayview Bulldog, August 23, 2019
