Toronto Police Service reminds residents to be vigilant about break & enters

From the Toronto Police Service:

Break and Enters are still happening all over our city and we really need to get tough on the criminals. Getting tough on criminals simply is : not giving them the freedom to waltz into our neighbourhoods, commit criminal offences and leave seemingly unnoticed. The reality is, they are being noticed by community members who see them in our neighbourhoods but ignore them and go about their business instead of calling the police or keeping an eye on them to see where they are going and what they are actually doing in your neighbourhood.

Please be reminded that the criminals do not just appear in the homes they break into, they walk and drive into your neighbourhoods using the streets and walkways. If you see anything at all suspicious, please call the non-emergency number 416 808-2222 and report it so the responding officers can immediately attend and investigate the suspicious persons. It might prevent your home from being broken into. Thank You PC Gary Gomez # 6528 42 Division Crime Prevention 416 808-4220

Church land needed for Redlea Ave. extension (Scarborough Mirror - July 13, 2012)

From the Scarborough Mirror (July 13, 2012)

Church land needed for Redlea Ave. extension
Mike Adler

The City of Toronto is preparing to extend a road through the parking lot of one of Scarborough's largest churches in order to ease traffic congestion around Kennedy Road and Steeles Avenue.

The first $2-million section of the long-planned southward extension of Redlea Avenue would be built by developers proposing a grocery store and two-storey mall building where Redlea now ends, in a cul-de-sac south of Steeles.

On Wednesday, Toronto Council approved expropriation of land on Passmore Avenue and at the Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church in order to push Redlea further south from Passmore to McNicoll Avenue.

PLANNED FOR 40 YEARS

The former Scarborough Township had planned 40 years ago for Redlea, running parallel to a rail line, to end at Finch Avenue. Because the road was left unfinished, the employment area south of Steeles "hasn't seen its fair share of growth" and is in "a race for density" with property owners on the Markham side of Steeles, Scarborough-Agincourt Councillor Mike Del Grande told a community meeting this week.

Residents of the Heathwood area in the northeast Agincourt see extending Redlea as a way to discourage people from driving on Cannongate Trail and other neighbourhood streets to bypass Kennedy and Steeles.

Building Redlea to Passmore will be an "enormous benefit" to the community and "literally uncork the bottle" at some intersections, said Dave Richardson, a transportation engineering consultant who studied the area traffic for the mall developer, Global Fortune.

Church officials did not respond to an inquiry this week, but a report to council said city staff started proceedings to expropriate the property last February and have met and corresponded with the church "on numerous occasions" in an unsuccessful attempt "to reach mutually acceptable terms" for selling the land.

"They're not too happy about it. They don't want to do it even though they've known for a long time there is an easement (protecting the Redlea right of way) going through their property," Del Grande said at the community meeting.

The church has been at its Kennedy Road location, which houses a sanctuary for 1,600 worshippers and a community centre, since 2007. The Redlea extension would split the church parking lot, which Doors Open Toronto in 2010 described as the city's first to have approved "bio swayles" for processing storm water.

Plans for the supermarket and mall on Redlea, meanwhile, may be cleared by Scarborough Community Council at a meeting in September.

On a 3.6-acre site south of the parking lot for the Milliken GO Station, the 109,000-square-foot commercial building, which would have most of its 487 parking spots underground is being counted as a third phase of the Splendid China mall project.

Splendid China converted a former Canadian Tire into the first phase of a condominium-style indoor mall on the Scarborough side of Steeles. A second Splendid China phase stalled, however, and the latest proposal is from a "successor" company, Global Fortune.

Del Grande said he has hope Toronto will eventually widen Steeles, which narrows at the tracks, after Markham agrees to help pay for a rail underpass under Steeles that could easily cost $50 million.

Owners of Pacific Mall and Market Village have ambitious plans for redevelopment and expansion on the Markham side of Steeles and allowing traffic to reach those malls through an extended Redlea would be "a bonanza" those owners don't deserve, he said.

Denis Lanoue, president of a Heathwood ratepayers group, said the city should post "no through traffic" signs on Redlea to stop Steeles traffic from going north to south.

Lanoue said residents also see a need to give southband traffic an advance green on left turns from Kennedy onto Passmore, a measure Del Grande said he would support.

Splendid China's developers had pledged $60,000 to build traffic-calming speed humps on Cannongate, but Lanoue said resdents don't like the idea.