As an eight-storey proposal near Bayview and Bloomington might move forward despite local concerns, Richmond Hill’s recurring tower fights point to a deeper problem: a city that has made gentle growth too difficult and big development battles almost inevitable.
By Editorial Board
Two recent Richmond Hill development fights tell the same story from different angles. One is at 13572 and 13586 Bayview Avenue, near Bloomington Road, where a project beside a wetland has kept evolving beyond what was first approved. The other is on Elgin Mills Road West, at the edge of the historic Mill Pond area, where a seven-storey proposal faced intense opposition from nearby residents and was rejected by Council. Together, they show that Richmond Hill’s problem is not simply one building, one developer, or one angry public meeting. The deeper problem is a growth model that keeps forcing housing debates into high-stakes battles over large projects.
Richmond Hill does not need to choose between frozen neighbourhoods and oversized projects. It needs a growth model that lets the city change gradually, productively, and in more places.
The Bayview Avenue case is especially revealing. In July 2022, the previous Council approved an eight-storey building with 103 units on a site adjacent to a wetland. The current Council has since approved more units within the same height and footprint, increasing the project from 103 units to 135. Now the developer is seeking an 11-storey building with three levels of underground parking. This time, the current Council has gone to the Ontario Land Tribunal to resist further development on the site, turning what had already been a controversial approval into a continuing planning fight.
The Elgin Mills Road West case shows a similar tension in a different setting. In 2025, developer Amir Meysam Nahvi proposed a seven-storey residential building at 50, 54, 62, 72, 78 and 86 Elgin Mills Road West, right on the edge of Richmond Hill’s historic Mill Pond area. The proposal included roughly 227 dwelling units and two levels of underground parking. It also asked for a density of 2.85 times the lot area, more than triple what local zoning allowed for the area. For many nearby residents, especially those living in the townhouse complex at 100 Elgin Mills Road West, the issue was not only the number of units, but the scale, location, and cumulative impact of the proposal.
Residents raised concerns that were specific and serious. They argued that a seven-storey block would be out of step with a low-rise historic neighbourhood where much of the surrounding built form is closer to three storeys. They worried about privacy and shadowing, because the building would have stood close to the adjacent townhomes, with upper floors looking directly into backyards and private living spaces. They also raised concerns about underground excavation near a local stream and floodplain, especially in an area where flooding and water-table issues are already part of the local memory. Add to that the traffic challenges on a narrowing stretch of Elgin Mills Road West, near Alexander Mackenzie High School, and the proposal became more than a simple density debate.
On the surface, these two cases may seem like separate planning disputes. One is in north Richmond Hill, near Bayview and Bloomington, close to wetlands and the Oak Ridges landscape. The other is near Mill Pond, one of the city’s most cherished historic areas. But both cases point to the same question: why does Richmond Hill keep ending up in development fights where residents feel blindsided, Council feels boxed in, and developers keep pushing for more intensity than neighbours believe the site can handle?
The easy answer is to blame developers. The easy counter-answer is to blame residents for opposing housing. Neither answer is enough. A Strong Towns analysis starts somewhere else: it asks whether Richmond Hill’s development pattern is producing a stronger city over time. That means looking beyond the number of units and asking whether growth helps the city become more financially productive, more walkable, less car-dependent, more resilient, and easier to maintain over the long term.
By that test, both cases are warning signs. The Bayview case shows what happens when an approval does not end the fight. An eight-storey building was approved, then more units were allowed within the same height and footprint, and now the request is for 11 storeys with three underground parking levels. To residents, this can look like a moving target: each compromise becomes the starting point for the next request. That creates distrust, especially when the site is environmentally sensitive and the public thought the major decision had already been made.
The Elgin Mills case shows the other side of the problem. A seven-storey building with 227 units may sound like the kind of mid-rise housing cities are supposed to encourage. But a mid-rise building is not automatically good urbanism just because it is shorter than a tower. If a building overwhelms its immediate neighbours, raises credible concerns about flooding, depends on deep underground parking, and sends traffic into a constrained road segment, the issue is not simply whether the city needs more homes. The issue is whether the project actually contributes to a coherent and durable neighbourhood.
This distinction matters because Richmond Hill does need more homes. But not every proposal that adds homes makes the city stronger. A building can add density while still deepening car dependence. It can add units while damaging public trust. It can increase assessment value while also creating new long-term servicing, traffic, infrastructure, and public-realm costs. That is the difference between density and urbanism: density is a number, while urbanism is a pattern of streets, buildings, services, public spaces, and daily life.
A Strong Towns approach does not ask only how many units can fit on a site. It asks what kind of place the project helps create. Are there safe and pleasant walking routes? Are useful destinations nearby? Can residents live some of their daily lives without driving? Does the street become more active and humane, or just busier? Does the development strengthen the city’s tax base enough to help pay for the infrastructure and services it will require over its full life cycle?
Those questions are often missing from Richmond Hill’s development debates. Instead, the discussion collapses into a familiar fight: residents say the proposal is too big, developers say the city needs housing, Council tries to draw a line, and the system pushes everyone toward legal and technical arguments. Underneath that fight is a planning failure that has been building for decades. Richmond Hill has allowed very little gradual change in most established neighbourhoods, while housing demand has continued to grow and provincial policy has pushed municipalities to accommodate more homes.
When most of the city is still organized around detached houses, wide roads, separated land uses, and car-dependent routines, growth pressure does not disappear. It goes to large sites, major corridors, assembled lots, and locations where developers can make a big enough proposal to justify the cost of consultants, delays, public opposition, and possible appeals. That system favours large developers far more than small local builders. It does not naturally produce a steady supply of duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, small walk-up apartments, or modest main-street infill. When small development is difficult, expensive, or politically risky, the market shifts toward bigger bets.
That is why residents can feel as if every development proposal is suddenly too large. Part of the answer is that Richmond Hill has made smaller change too hard in too many places. This is the local-control paradox: residents often oppose gentle density because they fear neighbourhood change, and Council often responds cautiously because that opposition is intense. But when small change is blocked across most of the city, growth pressure returns through larger applications, provincial targets, and tribunal fights where local control may be weaker than residents expect. In that sense, saying no to small change does not necessarily preserve control; over time, it can produce less of it.
None of this means residents are wrong to object. In both the Bayview and Elgin Mills cases, the concerns are serious. Wetlands, flooding, underground parking, traffic safety, privacy, shadowing, and historic neighbourhood character are not minor details. They are exactly the kinds of issues that determine whether growth strengthens or weakens a place. But objections alone are not a growth strategy, and fighting one controversial project after another is not the same as building a better planning model.
Richmond Hill needs a better development bargain. That bargain should start with a wider menu of housing choices, so the city is not forcing most growth into a small number of high-conflict sites. More duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, backyard suites, apartments above shops, small walk-up buildings, modest main-street infill, and well-placed mid-rise buildings would not eliminate every large proposal. But they would reduce the pressure to treat every major application as a referendum on the future of the neighbourhood. A city with more small options is less dependent on mega-projects.
The city also needs to be more honest about parking. Both of these cases involved underground parking, and that is not a minor design detail. Underground parking is expensive, it changes project economics, and it can create excavation concerns near sensitive landscapes, streams, floodplains, and high-water-table areas. It also reflects a deeper problem: Richmond Hill is trying to add urban levels of housing in places where daily life is still built around driving. If a development needs multiple underground parking levels because the surrounding area remains car-dependent, the city should ask whether it is building complete neighbourhoods or simply stacking suburban living vertically.
That question should matter to Council as much as height and unit count. Growth is not automatically good or bad. Growth can make a city stronger when it adds homes, local customers, walkable streets, productive land use, and long-term public value. But growth can also make a city weaker when it increases servicing burdens, traffic pressure, infrastructure costs, environmental risks, and public mistrust without creating better places. Richmond Hill should not confuse the approval of more units with the creation of a stronger urban future.
The Bayview and Elgin Mills cases should not be dismissed as simple NIMBY stories. They are signals that Richmond Hill has not yet built a planning model that residents trust. Residents are right to ask whether a project fits its site. Council is right to worry when an approval seems to invite the next expansion. Developers are right that the city needs more housing. But all three are stuck inside a system that offers too few good choices, and that is the real problem.
Richmond Hill does not need to choose between frozen neighbourhoods and oversized projects. It needs a growth model that lets the city change gradually, productively, and in more places. That means making small development easier, legalizing gentle density beyond a few corridors, reducing parking rules that make housing more expensive and places more car-dependent, and requiring larger projects to contribute to real street life rather than just unit counts. It also means protecting sensitive environmental and historic areas with clearer rules before every difficult application becomes a legal battle.
Most of all, the city has to admit that “no change” is not a plan. If Richmond Hill blocks small change across most of the city, big change will keep arriving in the few places where developers can make the numbers work. Residents will keep feeling blindsided, Council will keep fighting rearguard battles, and the city will keep confusing density with real urbanism. The question is not whether Richmond Hill should grow; it will grow. The real question is whether that growth will arrive through bruising site-by-site fights or through a stronger, more local, more financially productive pattern.