Oakville Residents Group Asks Province to Pause 11-Tower Midtown Project

The parking lots and low-rise strip malls beside the Oakville GO station are slated to become a cluster of 11 highrise condo towers, and the residents' group that has followed the plan from the start now wants the province to stop and show its work.

The Oakville Community Association, which represents more than 2,000 residents, sent a five page letter to Ontario's Minister of Infrastructure, Kinga Surma, asking for a hold on the project until an independent review is complete. The group wants the province to disclose what checks it ran on the finances and expertise of Distrikt Developments, the private partner chosen to lead the build, and says the four minister's zoning orders behind the project should be revoked if the review cannot show they were justified.

The letter followed an August 27 Toronto Star investigation, which reported that Distrikt has never built a highrise condo and that company president Emil Toma has faced a run of legal and financial battles since he started building in 2009. The most recent was a Toronto apartment project, run through a separate company, that collapsed into receivership without ever breaking ground.

Distrikt says it is qualified. Toma told the Star the company invested "as a minority partner" in a project "majority owned and sponsored by major institutional partners," and that Distrikt's role is to lead the development process through land assembly, planning and approvals while its partners handle construction.

Why the scale keeps coming up

Oakville's own midtown plan spread 12,000 new residents across a 103 hectare area south of the QEW. The provincial version puts roughly that many people on a site less than five per cent of that size, about the footprint of the Rogers Centre, with more than 6,800 homes. Town councillors and planning staff have opposed the project for years, and because zoning orders bypass local planning, there is no appeal.

The Ministry of Infrastructure has not said whether it will review or revoke the orders, pointing instead to Infrastructure Ontario, which says it checks a building partner's reputation, finances and access to capital before signing on. Association president Michael Reid, who wrote the letter, said as of last Friday the group had heard nothing back from the province.