Chronology of Events:

The Players in order of appearance
City Planning Department	Chaired meetings to determine use of Wychwood Car Barns
Wychwood Carhouse Redevelopment Working Committe	group of 25 - 150 local residents attended from the beginning to ensure parkland option accepted.
artScape	develops and manages arts building within City of Toronto, was there from the beginning.
Councillor Mihevc	entered the scene, summer 2000 when his York Ward was expanded to include Wychwood Barns
Wychwood Barns Advisory Council	created April 2001 to replace operative Working Committee. .ID's below.
Artscape's Advisory Council	created to work with Advisory Council. ID's below

1913
76 Wychwood Ave is expropriated by the City of Toronto for use by the TTC

1997
TTC declares 76 Wychwood, the CarBarns site, surplus to its needs.

1998/1999
76 Wychwood reverts back to the city.

City establishes a working group made up of local citizens (group is elastic, containing at various times as few as 30 and as many as 200 local residents.) This group meets every few months for TWO YEARS with city planning staff to come up with a plan for the site which is palatable to the neighborhood, and which can be presented to city council.

In the beginning, City staff refused to consider presenting any all park options to City Council at all, but because of public pressure and the fact that the majority of residents strongly favoured a park, they did include it as Option 4, of the 4 options they presented to council in 2000.

May 25, 1999 -
Commissioner of Urban Planning & Development, Draft Background Report to Wychwood Carhouse Redevelopment Study- Working Committee: article 2.3 - "The site is surrounded by a stable low density residential neighbourhood on all sides. New development should be of a density, height and built form and land use pattern which is compatible with the existing neighbourhood character. New development should not result in the intrusion of vehicular traffic or parking into the low density neighbourhood."

May 1999 to Feb 2000 -
Wychwood Carhouse Redevelopment Working Committee established and in that time meets with City Staff 7 times. May 13, 2000 Open House - 4 development Options presented. Each option retained some or all of the 1913 barn only. No other barns kept in any option presented.

Political Campaigns start heating up, and both Rob Davis & Councillor Mihevc attend the working groups, and seeing which way the wind is blowing, jump on the 100% Park bandwagon, making supporting it the major part of their platform, and even going so far as to hand out signs for residents to put in their windows.

August 31, 2000.
After 8 Community meetings - Status report - Wychwood Carhouse Redevelopment Study by the Commissioner of Urban Development Services contains diagrams of Options 1 through 4.

October 2000
City Council adopted August 31, 2000 status report and supported Option 4. the Commissioner of Urban Development Services was directed to report to the appropriate Community Council on the implementation of this option.


TO DATE THERE HAS BEEN NO INPLEMENTATION REPORT ON OPTION 4.


October/November 2000 Election campaign -
Councillor Mihevc campaigned on 100% park platform. Gave out window signs which read "100% Park". Campaign literature touts 100% Park.

November 2000 -
Municipal election, Councillor Mihevc elected Councillor of Ward 21.

April 2001 -
1st meeting of the TTC Barns Working Group after election. Councillor Mihevc disbanded the Working Group, saying that the 100% park was won. He created a small "reference group" to help design the park. He also introduced Artscape (who are not new, as they have attended many of the working group meetings) and said that he would be consulting with them on the possible community uses for the one 1913 barn.

June 26, 2001 -

Without prior notice or consultation with the larger group or the neighborhood, Councillor Mihevc made a motion at City Council - 1. that the Wychwood Streetcar Barns be used for "a multi-use community Arts Centre with a mix of community performance and meeting space, public gallery space, studios and a component of affordable live/work space for low-income artists" and 2. that Artscape be granted money to undertake a feasibility study. 3. to waive the provisions of Chapter 27 of the City of Toronto Municipal Code requiring that the motion be referred to the Community Services Committee (an opportunity for the community to be consulted and made aware of the radical change of direction.)
ITEM: In all the working group meetings over two years, a proposal for an Arts Centre had never been entertained or discussed.and hence was completely out of left field.

October 19, 2001 -
Staff Report from Director Community Planning South District, working with Councillor Mihevc and Artscape is presented to Midtown Council. (Again, no consultation with community.) The report, which was adopted by Midtown Council, provides for the maintaining of all five barns, and requires the local residents to raise $30,000 to receive City funding. It asks for rezoning of the site "an appropriate mix of cultural and arts facilities and other uses within the car barns." Funds from the sale of the three residential lots on the South end (originally slated to fund the bulding of a park) will now be used to maintain the buildings.

November 22, 2001 -
Public meeting to notify residents of Artscape proposal. Councillor Mihevc says the proposal is "preliminary" and that there will be plenty of time to discuss it.


Dec 6, 2001 -
Councillor Mihevc presented the Artscape "implementation report" (File No.798-5) to City Council. On December 14 the City Clerk's office noted that City Council, at its meeting held on December 4, 5 & 6, 2001, made a decision that authorizes Artscape to enter into negotiations for long term lease of the car barns upon acceptance of its feasibility study by the Commissioner of Corporate Services in Consultation with the Commissioner of Economic Development. Approved uses of the barns include "artists studios, galleries, live/work units and other uses as determined through a feasibility study..." (NOTE that approval of the feasibility study comes from the Commissioner, not Council, which means that residents would not have an opportunity to make representations at that time.)


Dec 11, 2001-
Artscape and Councillor Mihevc host a "Design Charrette" to get help designing the "Arts Centre". Advertised as a session to design the park, this is in fact the first public intimation that all 5 barns would be kept. However, the whole project is described as "preliminary." There is no reference at all to the fact that the Councillor has begun the process to rezone the site, and negotiate a long-term lease with Artscape.
In short - first mention to the local community of Artscape plan which was already well underway with its feasibility study money from Council and rezoning application.

Jan 5, 2002 -
Globe & Mail Article describing the Councillor's & Artscape's plans for Wychwood Barns: Residential, businesses, performance space, social services, etc. The Neighbourhood is of course alarmed.

Jan. 22, 2002 -
Artscape unveiled architects' plans to more than 250 angry local residents who expected a park. Not one of their many questions was answered by Mihevc or Artscape.
o 26 people spoke at the meeting in the limited time allotted.
o 18 people were against the Arstcape proposal and for a green park.
o 7 favoured Artscape ¨ 2 of those lived in the neighbourhood. ¨ 4 did not live in the neighbourhood & one of those was applying for a studio;
o 1 was non-committal

Mihevc/Artscape plan then included:
¨ The footprint of 5 barns
¨ Residential, studio, gallery and office space
¨ A rehearsal space for the "anchor tenant" theatre company
¨ A parking lot
¨ A community oven
¨ Plans for a weekly farmers' market
¨ A greenhouse & foodshare programme run by the Stop
¨ A 200 seat outdoor amphitheatre / Bandshell

Wychwood Barns Advisory Council	Artscape's Advisory Council
Mr. Mihevc's reference group Roscoe Handford, Michael Kainer, Peter MacKendrick, Elizabeth Cinello	Artscape Community Survey, Sept 10, 2001.. itemV Roscoe Handford, Michael Kainer, Peter MacKendrick, Elizabeth Cinello, and Mallory Gilbert

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According to the City of Toronto, Ward 21 is Park Deficient to the extent of 9 acres. Even with the entire Wychwood Carbarns site devoted to parkland, it would only go halfway towards addressing the deficiency.

Spring, 2002 -
The much anticipated Artscape feasibility Study was released, well after schedule.Response to it can be found here. It was accompanied by a survey/poll crafted by the Coucillor & his development comrades.It asked: which of these false positives do you support. It did not include a negative option. Fortunately this flaw in polling methodology was spontaneously rectified by citizens who cast "write-in" ballts for the negative option.

Summer, 2002
Staff analysis of A/S Feasibiity Study released. While it lauded the intent of the project effusively, it's misgivings regarding the absence of financial underpinnings were buried in euphemism. Mihevc's Junk poll results on the other hand were given undue prominence. Accordingly, a Freedom of Information request was filed with the City to acquire the raw data of the survey, Needless to say the bureaucracy was less than forthcoming, but courtesy of the Provincial Information Commissioner's intervention, the data was released on Jan 2 '03; well after the fact. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Sept, 2002
At Midtown Council, for the first time since the fractious Jan 22 meeting, citizens had an opportunity to express opinions in an unbiased venue. Deputations wre made. Councillor Mihevc found sone of them hurtful. The matter was deferred until the Parks Dept could report.

November, 2002. The Parks Dept report did not introduce any unexpected variables into the equation.. Midtown Council spent little time examing the issue, and (indolent votes being what they are) passed it off to Council.

November 29, 2002:
Council had little inclination to address dear Mr Mihevc's little project within his nominal fiefdom, but it went along with the always respected Commissioner Halstead when he said that the issue was time sensitive due to "debate in the community." ???

The last act of the meeting was to approve Councillor Mihevc's "calling of the question", which means that there was no debate, no airing of the issue; merely a straight up vote. When asked about how he liked subverting democracy, Councillor Mihevc opined that he liked it.