Rand Estate patron Benny Marotta is at it again with a new and even more outrageous application for the entire estate.
Mr. Marotta now seeks approval from the Town for an (ostensible) 5-story hotel on the front half of Randwood accompanied by 270 residential units on the back half. The entirety of the subdivision traffic would enter and leave the estate via the 200 John St E panhandle.
The gall of Mr. Marotta in making this application is hard to put into words. He has been engaged in an almost 9-year battle with the Town and its residents in which he has fought the Town’s designation of the estate under the Heritage Act, made and then withdrawn an application for an effective 7-storey hotel and then made an application for a 196-unit subdivision which was soundly rejected by the OLT in October of 2024. His company Solmar then appealed that OLT decision to both the Tribunal Chair and the courts. The OLT Chair easily rejected the appeal and, as we recently reported, the court appeal was withdrawn on the doorstep of the hearing with costs payable to the Town and SORE.
The October 2024 OLT Decision gave the Town everything it was asking for. The panel’s key findings and directives are set out below, followed by the way they have been handled in the new Marotta application:
- A residential street using the 200 John St E panhandle cannot be approved due to heritage, traffic safety, mature tree and bat impacts. Solmar needs to seek its access elsewhere. IGNORED
- The Rand pool garden complex and Bath Pavilion, agreed by all to have been designed by the renowned Dunington-Grubb landscape design team, are to be maintained in place and rehabilitated in accordance with the recommendations of then-Town heritage planner Denise Horne. IGNORED
- The Estate’s Axial Walkway and Mound Garden are to be rehabilitated and maintained in their original location as part of the overall Dunington-Grubb designed landscape. IGNORED
- The Carriage House is to be retained in situ and accommodated by a suitable lot design. IGNORED
- The remaining mature trees on the site (that were not clear cut by the Marotta companies in November of 2018) are part of the Estate’s cultural heritage landscape and are to be preserved. IGNORED
- Low density residential should comprise more than half of the residential units on the estate. IGNORED
It defies comprehension how Council can do anything other than reject this application at the earliest opportunity. It completely flies in the face of the well-reasoned October 2024 OLT Decision, in which the OLT was standing in the shoes of Council, after an 8 week hearing on which the Town spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars and which was a “complete win” for the Town according to Town counsel Nancy Smith in her subsequent report to Council. It also flies in the face of the 850 page heritage report by former Town heritage planner Denise Horne, which was embraced and accepted in its entirety by the OLT. It further flies in the face of a resolution passed by this Council on December 15, 2023 that residential access will not be approved on the 200 John St E panhandle and that development on the Estate must use a constraints- based approach respecting the cultural heritage attributes and natural heritage features of the estate.
The new Marotta application in effect pretends none of this ever happened. It makes a mockery of the time, effort and expense that the Town and its residents have gone to since 2018 to conserve and ensure responsible development of the Rand Estate. The Town staff report on this application should and must follow the Denise Horne report, the December 15, 2023 Council resolution, the Town’s August 20, 2024 written submissions to the OLT and the October 2024 OLT Decision itself, in which the OLT spoke for the Town. Council should then reject this application summarily and let Mr. Marotta take his chances with the OLT, which we can confidently predict would make short work of it.