Top 10 things no one will tell you about Bloor West Village and Baby Point — except your local real estate expert

Published 1 September 2026. Written by Jatin Dua, Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway, Etobicoke. Every claim below is quoted from a City of Toronto by-law, heritage conservation district plan, staff report or Council decision, a Legislative Assembly of Ontario bill as passed, a City open dataset, a TDSB planning document or a Statistics Canada census profile, named and dated, and read on 31 August 2026. Where a figure is my own calculation from open data rather than a published statistic, I say so and I show the inputs. Where a document is silent, this page says so instead of guessing.

Bloor West Village and Baby Point are two of the most confidently described and least accurately documented places in the west end. In the last twenty months the ground under both of them has actually moved — a heritage conservation district was designated over one of them, a completed heritage study was abandoned over the other, the density cap came off the main streets, and six-unit buildings became legal here and stayed illegal one river crossing west. Almost none of that appears in a listing, and some of it is not yet in the City’s own consolidated Official Plan.

Two geographic notes before the list, because they change how you read everything after them. First, there is no City geography called “Bloor West Village”. The City’s neighbourhoods here are Runnymede-Bloor West Village (89) and Lambton Baby Point (114), and the retail strip is split between those two and High Park-Swansea (87). Second, both neighbourhoods sit in Ward 4 Parkdale-High Park and report to Toronto and East York Community Council, not to Etobicoke York. That second point looks like trivia. It is the reason items 2 and 6 exist.

1The neighbourhood boundary runs down the centreline of Bloor Street West, and “Lambton Baby Point” is not Baby Point

This sounds like pedantry until you are quoted a statistic at a listing appointment, or you try to work out which community council will hear the application across the road from you.

The City’s 158-neighbourhood model puts Runnymede-Bloor West Village at number 89 and Lambton Baby Point at number 114. Neither of them is “Bloor West Village.” The strip itself is split three ways, and the split runs along the road, not across it.

The same is true of the business district. The Bloor West Village BIA, area code 023-00 in the City’s Business Improvement Areas dataset (modified 10 July 2026), has a boundary 2.89 km long and spans four City neighbourhoods — Lambton Baby Point, Runnymede-Bloor West Village, High Park North and High Park-Swansea. The Baby Point Gates BIA, area code 085-02, runs 2.04 km along Jane Street north of Annette and spans two.

Now the part that matters most, because it is the easiest way to publish a false statement about this area. The City neighbourhood called “Lambton Baby Point” is much larger than Baby Point. Neighbourhood 114 runs from Bloor Street West north to the CP rail corridor and Dundas Street West, bounded east by Jane Street and west by the Humber River. It contains the Baby Point promontory and the Lambton, Warren Park and Humber Hill area up at Dundas and Scarlett, roughly 1.5 to 2 kilometres away.

That distance is why the census figures for 114 do not describe Baby Point. The City’s Subsidized Housing Listings dataset (modified 20 February 2026) records four subsidized-housing complexes in Neighbourhood 114 — Cooper Mills Townhouses at 4020 Dundas Street West, Dundas Gooch at 3725–3735 Dundas Street West, and the Villa Otthon Lambton apartments and townhouses at 4049 Dundas Street West and 4050–4064 Old Dundas Street West. All four are at the Dundas Street West end of the neighbourhood. The 2021 census figure of 36.5 per cent of tenant households in subsidized housing is therefore a statistic about the Lambton end of a shared neighbourhood number, and it is not a description of the Baby Point streets or of anywhere else in particular. It is a caution about the geography, not a comment on either community.

2Baby Point became a heritage conservation district on 18 December 2024, and the by-law is registered against your title

This is the largest single change to what you may do with a house here in a generation, and it happened with eleven days left in 2024.

By-law 1367-2024, “To designate the Teiaiagon-Baby Point Conservation District and adopt the Teiaiagon-Baby Point Heritage Conservation District Plan,” was enacted and passed on 18 December 2024. Its authority line reads: “Toronto and East York Community Council TE18.9, as adopted by City of Toronto Council on December 17 and 18, 2024,” with written approval given by Mayoral Decision 26-2024. Section 1 designates the area “as a heritage conservation district under Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act,” and section 2 adopts the district Plan “dated November 2024.”

One precision point, because you will see the wrong year everywhere. The published Plan PDF is dated February 2025 and carries an errata note reading “April 2026 – correct typographical errors,” and the City’s own district listing page gives the year designated as 2025. The instrument is By-law 1367-2024, adopted by Council on 17 and 18 December 2024. That is the date to use.

Section 5 is the one your lawyer will find: “The City Solicitor is authorized to cause a copy of this by-law to be registered against title to the properties listed in Schedule B … in the proper Land Registry Office upon the coming into force of this by-law.” Section 4 required the Clerk to serve notice on every Schedule B owner and on the Ontario Heritage Trust, and to post notice for 30 days.

The contributing test is written into the Plan at section 5.5, and it is a date test before it is a taste test. A property contributes if its built form was “constructed during the Home Smith Building Restrictions Period (1911 – 1941)” and it maintains its integrity and has “not been significantly altered as seen from the public realm.” The 53 non-contributing properties are named in Appendix F of the Plan — among them 9, 47, 47A, 53, 55, 61, 66, 71, 73, 74 and 81 Baby Point Crescent; a long run on Baby Point Road including 89 through 130; 4, 5, 8, 11 and 12 Baby Point Terrace; 10 Catherine Street; 53 and 65A Humbercrest Boulevard; 61 Humberview Road; 12 L’Estrange Place; and 2 Pasadena Gardens.

That distinction is worth money. A buyer at one of the 53 is inside the district and subject to the permit regime, but their building is not itself a heritage attribute, and the Plan’s demolition policies treat them differently — section 9.3 governs contributing properties, section 10.2 the rest.

Three more facts from the same dataset and Plan, each of which corrects something commonly said. 68 Baby Point Road is both Part IV and Part V — individually designated under By-law 270-2018, enacted 27 March 2018, and inside the district; where the two conflict, the Plan says at section 9.2.2 that the individual designating by-law “will prevail, unless doing so would expressly conflict with this Plan.” There are zero heritage easement agreements on any of the 226 register records. And Lambton House at 4062–4066 Old Dundas Street, designated by the City of York in 1982 under By-law 4163-82, sits in the same City neighbourhood but roughly 1.7 km from Baby Point Road and outside the district — it is not a Baby Point property, however your search results file it.

3Inside the district a minor variance needs a heritage permit, painting your brick needs one, and pulling a stump needs one

This is the item every agent gets wrong, and it is the one that will actually cost you time. The mechanics come from three stacked instruments: Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act, Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 103, Article 3, and the district Plan itself at sections 11.1 to 11.5.

Start with what the Plan adds on top of the Code. Section 11.2 requires a heritage permit application for, among other things, “All Official Plan Amendments, Zoning by-law amendments, Site plan approval, Plan of subdivision, and variance and consent applications”; demolition or removal of a building, structure or heritage attribute; new construction, alterations and additions “visible from the public realm”; “any alterations within the Archaeologically Sensitive Area (ASA) that may disturb soils”; and “alterations or removal of trees with tree canopies that are visible from the public realm.”

Read the first line again. A minor variance at the Committee of Adjustment on a Baby Point lot now also requires a heritage permit. That is a second application, a second statutory clock and a second appeal route, running alongside the Committee process. It is not in any listing I have ever seen.

Chapter 103 sets what you actually file. Section 103-3.2A requires an application from “any person wishing to erect, demolish, or remove a building or structure located in a heritage conservation district, or to alter the external portions” of one. The prescribed contents run to twelve heads, including a legal description with PIN and an up-to-date survey, the date of construction of all buildings on the property, drawings and specifications covering materials, colours, dimensions and massing, photographs of every elevation, “all technical cultural heritage and/or engineering studies that are relevant and required, as determined by the Chief Planner,” and a sworn affidavit certifying the information is accurate.

Two provisions of Chapter 103 are worth knowing before you plan a renovation around a date. Section 103-3.3A says the Chief Planner “shall issue a heritage permit on behalf of Council” where the work does not conflict with the district Plan — that is staff-level approval, and it is the normal path. But section 103-3.3B provides that “at any time prior to the issuance of a heritage permit, the ward councillor may, in writing, request the Chief Planner to submit a permit application to the appropriate community council and to Council for consideration.” A permit that would otherwise be signed by staff can be pulled to Toronto and East York Community Council by the ward councillor. And where a proposal does conflict with the Plan, section 103-3.3D sends it to the Toronto Preservation Board, community council and Council.

On timing: the City’s own Heritage Permit Guide states that decisions under section 42 of the Act must be made “within 90 days of the date that the Notice of Complete Application has been served on the applicant,” that if Council does not decide in time and the applicant has not agreed to an extension “the permit is deemed approved,” and that decisions “can be appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal.” The Province’s Heritage Toolkit says the same thing in its own words. I am attributing that to those two government publications rather than quoting the statute, because I read the City and provincial guidance and not the Act itself.

Now the two rules that people find hardest to believe, both quoted from the Plan’s own exemption list at section 11.1, which sets out the alterations you may carry out without a permit:

No heritage permit needed	Heritage permit needed
Painting of wood, stucco or metal finishes	“painting of exterior masonry requires a heritage permit” — so painting your brick
Repair of existing features — roofs, cladding, dormers, cornices, porches, windows, foundations — “repaired in-kind”	The same work in a different material
Eavestroughs, weatherproofing, removable storm windows, caulking	Exterior lights where heritage attributes are altered or “below-grade infrastructure is not required” ceases to be true
Landscaping that “does not require subsurface excavation/grade changes (e.g. seeding)”	Landscaping that does
Pruning for tree health, and cutting down an imminently hazardous tree	“However, any ground disturbance, such as removal of a stump, will require a heritage permit”

Cutting the hazardous tree down is exempt. Grinding the stump out is not. That is not a drafting accident. It is there because of what is under the ground.

Section 5.2 of the Plan records that “most of the District is part of the City of Toronto’s Teiaiagon Archaeologically Sensitive Area,” and section 6.1 confirms that “both contributing and non-contributing properties in the District fall within” it. The district takes its name from Teiaiagon, described on the Plan’s cover as “the mid-to-late seventeenth century Haudenosaunee village associated primarily with the Seneca Nation,” the name meaning “It crosses the stream.” And section 6.2 says, in one sentence: “Burial sites have been encountered in the Teiaiagon Archaeologically Sensitive Area within the District.”

That is corroborated by a City planning document you can look at yourself. A Master Plan of Archaeological Resources for the City of Toronto carries on its front cover a “seventeenth century A.D. Seneca bone comb from Baby Point,” and the caption inside records that it came from “a seventeenth century Seneca burial accidentally disturbed by a service line at Baby Point,” the original artifact having been re-interred with the individual after the grave site was documented. The City put a Baby Point grave good on the cover of its archaeological master plan, and recorded that a utility crew found it.

So section 11.4 of the Plan lists the interventions inside the Archaeologically Sensitive Area that require a heritage permit, and the list is long and domestic: “major landscaping involving subsurface excavation/grade changes or soil disturbances beyond minor gardening, but including tree planting and stump removal”; excavation for below-grade private utilities “including components of irrigation systems and exterior lighting”; site grading and fill; work on “new driveways and sidewalks” requiring excavation; additions requiring subsurface disturbance, “i.e., patios and deck footings, fences, pools, sheds, and other outbuildings”; “foundation repair/alteration”; and “new public service hook-ups or repair to existing buried public services.”

The Plan also states that for properties in the sensitive area the scope of archaeological assessment is confirmed with Heritage Planning, that “the completion of all necessary archaeological work to the satisfaction of the City is a requirement of a heritage permit application,” that assessments must be done by licensed consultant archaeologists, and that “any archaeological assessment undertaken on a property located in the Teiaiagon Archaeologically Sensitive Area, regardless of the proponent or proposed alteration, will be accompanied by an Indigenous engagement process to the satisfaction of the City.”

And if human remains are encountered, the Plan describes the process under the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act: the discoverer must “immediately notify the police or coroner and immediately cease any work that could disturb the burial site,” failing which is an offence “punishable by a fine, jail time, or both”; and where an investigation is required, the Registrar “will direct the landowner to cause a burial site investigation,” carried out by an archaeologist holding a professional class licence. On a residential lot, the landowner the Registrar directs is the homeowner. That is the Plan’s description of the statute, and I am attributing it to the Plan, because I did not read the Act itself.

Two more operative rules from the same Plan. On trees, section 11.3 requires a heritage permit for any alteration affecting the canopy visible from the public realm, requires an arborist report with the application, and requires confirmation that a tree permit application under the Municipal Code “has been submitted and is under review with Urban Forestry” — two permits, in a specific order. On demolition, section 9.3.2 is the hard line: “Subject to Policy 9.3.1, the demolition and reconstruction of a building on a contributing property shall not be permitted.” Section 9.3.1 allows demolition to be considered only where the Chief Building Official has ordered it under the Building Code Act, or where heritage integrity and value have been lost.

For context on what that changed: the City’s development file records demolition-and-rebuild site plan applications at 66 Baby Point Road in 2009 and 121 Baby Point Road in 2010, both to knock down the existing dwelling and build a new one. Both addresses now appear on the district’s non-contributing list, because they were rebuilt. On a contributing lot, section 9.3.2 means those applications could not be made today.

4The 1911 Home Smith covenant is not the rule you follow today — and it is a completely different instrument from the by-law

Baby Point folklore runs on the covenants: architect-approved plans, stone or brick only, no semi-detached houses, no businesses except a doctor or a dentist. That folklore has a real document behind it. It is reproduced in full at Appendix B of the district Plan, under the heading “Home Smith and Company Building Restrictions.” What almost nobody does is read the first line of it.

The Plan introduces it this way: “The following is a copy of the building restrictions in the form of Sale Agreement which shall run with the land and be in force for a period of thirty years from the First of April, 1911.” Thirty years from 1 April 1911 is 1 April 1941. That duration is on the face of the document the City reprinted.

The clauses themselves are what you would expect from a 1911 subdivision agreement, and two of them are worth quoting because they are the ones that explain how the instrument was meant to work. Clause 2: “The external walls of each of said dwelling houses shall be constructed of stone, brick, or cement, and such building shall be designed by some architect of good standing and the plans of such buildings shall be approved by the Vendor’s architect.” Clause 9: “The Vendor, his heirs, executors, administrators or the assignee from him of this Agreement may agree to vary or cancel any of the above conditions or substitute other conditions.” The vendor could waive it. Clause 10 binds and benefits “the respective heirs, executors, administrators, successors and assigns of the parties hereto” — the parties, that is, not the City.

The Plan reprints it as a historical document, and it shows its age: two of the clauses contain blanks that were never filled in on the transcribed form, marked [sic] by the City — the minimum construction cost in clause 1 and the setback distances in clause 6.

Here is the separation that matters, because conflating these two things is how a conversation about Baby Point becomes legally misleading:

	Home Smith building restrictions (Appendix B)	HCD Plan and By-law 1367-2024
What it is	A private restrictive covenant in a form of sale agreement between a vendor, Home Smith and Company, and a purchaser	A public land-use instrument — a municipal by-law under Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act
Duration on its face	“in force for a period of thirty years from the First of April, 1911”	No expiry. Section 12.1 recommends a review within ten years and says failure to review “will in no way invalidate the Plan”
Who enforces it	The vendor and the parties’ “heirs, executors, administrators, successors and assigns” — a private civil matter	The City, through the heritage permit process, Municipal Code Chapter 103 and the Act’s offence provisions
Who can change it	The vendor or his assignee “may agree to vary or cancel any of the above conditions”	Only Council, by amending the Plan and its by-law
Where it lives	Registered instruments on title in the Land Registry	By-law 1367-2024, registered against title under section 5 of the by-law

So the safe way to say it, and the way I say it to clients: the district Plan reproduces the 1911 Home Smith restrictions at Appendix B as the historical explanation for why Baby Point looks the way it does. They are not the rule you have to follow today. The rule you have to follow today is By-law 1367-2024 and the heritage permit process.

What I am not going to tell you is whether any Home Smith covenant remains registered on any particular Baby Point title, or what effect it would have if it were. That question needs a title search in the land registry and a lawyer’s opinion, and neither is something a blog post can do for you. I make no claim either way, and if a covenant matters to your purchase, have your real estate lawyer pull and read the registered instruments on your title.

5Bloor West Village was studied for a heritage district for eight years, and then a piece of provincial arithmetic disqualified it

This is the best-documented and least-known planning story in the neighbourhood, and the status of it is precise in a way that matters.

The Bloor West Village Heritage Conservation District Study is complete. It recommends that the district not be designated. There is no district, there is no district plan, and none is coming. On the City’s Heritage Conservation Districts & Studies page, Bloor West Village appears under “Heritage Conservation District Studies Completed” alongside Casa Loma, the Distillery District and Weston II. It does not appear among the 27 designated districts, the one under appeal, or the two in development.

The paper trail runs eleven years and is worth setting out, because every step has an item number on it:

Date	Item	What happened
13 May 2014	2014.EY33.39	Etobicoke York Community Council nominated the area for study as a potential heritage conservation district
8–11 July 2014	2014.MM54.16	Council adopted a member motion directing a planning study for Bloor Street West between Keele Street and the Humber River
31 March 2015	2015.PG2.8	Council authorised the area for study under an amended prioritisation system
November 2017	—	The City engaged Stantec Consulting Ltd. to conduct the study
26 June 2018	2018.EY31.5	Council adopted the Avenue Study status report with the final consultant study
April 2021	—	The consultant’s study completed. “The consultant team did not recommend that a HCD Plan be prepared for the Study Area”
Q1 2025	—	Heritage Planning re-ran the evaluation against the new provincial criteria
10 December 2025	2025.PB38.2	The Toronto Preservation Board adopted the final report without amendment, 8 votes to 1, 2 absent

One precision point that I have not seen anyone else make. The Preservation Board is an advisory body, and the report’s recommendations were addressed to the Board. I found no record of item PB38.2 going on to City Council. So the accurate formulation is: City Planning staff recommended, and the Toronto Preservation Board endorsed, that the study not proceed to the district plan phase. Anyone who tells you “Council cancelled the heritage district” is describing a decision I cannot find.

Why it failed is more interesting than that it failed, and the City gives two reasons in its own words. The first is about shopfronts. The staff report finds that a portion of the Village Main Street character area between Kennedy Avenue and Jane Street meets some heritage criteria, but that “while many second-storey facades retain original design elements, most ground-floor storefronts have been significantly altered,” and it therefore “questions whether an HCD Plan would be an effective tool in an area where the architectural character is not the strongest character-defining element.”

The second reason is the one nobody outside heritage planning knows about, and it was made at Queen’s Park. From the same report: “On January 1, 2023, the Province’s proposed amendments to the OHA through the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022 (Bill 23) came into effect. For HCDs, per Regulation 569/22 of the OHA, at least 25 per cent of the properties within the defined area must satisfy two or more of the nine criteria for determining cultural heritage value or interest.” And then: “In Q1 2025, Heritage Planning staff conducted an updated evaluation of the area based on the new criteria … This assessment determined that the HCD Study Area, consisting of 275 properties, does not meet the provincial threshold.”

Bloor West Village was surveyed property by property from the public realm in December 2017 and the spring of 2018, studied for eight years, and then disqualified by an arithmetic test made in a 2022 regulation. Fewer than a quarter of the 275 properties met two or more of the nine provincial criteria.

What the study found about the strip along the way is still useful, and still true whether or not there is a district. The report records that the built form is “predominantly low-rise, with 95% of buildings at four storeys or less,” that two-storey buildings make up 59 per cent of the commercial section between Kennedy Avenue and Jane Street, that commercial storefront buildings are 53 per cent of all buildings, that the commonest styles are “Contemporary (23%), 20th Century vernacular (22%), Edwardian (22%), and Arts and Crafts (9%),” and that three-quarters of the structures were built between 1900 and 1939. It also draws the clean line on archaeology: “There are no registered archaeological sites or Archaeologically Sensitive Areas within the HCD Study Area” — that is Baby Point’s problem, not the strip’s.

What replaced the district is a study requirement, not a protection. Staff identified 37 properties as having cultural heritage value or interest. Five of them — 1778, 1908, 1914, 1920 and 1926 Bloor Street West — were listed on the Heritage Register in February 2025. The other 32 were identified only, and the report says what that does: “Where redevelopment involves one or more of these identified properties, a Cultural Heritage Evaluation Report (CHER) will be required in accordance with OPA 720.” Council adopted the identification with the Avenue Study urban design guidelines, item 2025.TE27.29, considered at Toronto and East York Community Council on 27 November 2025 and adopted by City Council on 16 and 17 December 2025.

Those 32 addresses are not heritage properties. They have no status under the Ontario Heritage Act, no heritage permit requirement and no demolition control. What they carry is a study obligation at development-application stage. The City’s own phrase is “properties identified as having cultural heritage value or interest,” and that is the phrase to use. One housekeeping note: two City sources disagree on the community council item number for the Avenue Study report; the item I read and verified is 2025.TE27.29.

The guidelines that came instead are worth reading if you own on the strip, and section 1.3 tells you exactly how much weight they carry: “as guidelines they are not a statutory document and they should be afforded some flexibility in application.” The heights they contemplate are a 2 to 3 storey street wall on Village Main Street, “no more than 20 metres (5 to 6 storeys)” at the East and West Village Gateways, and “a maximum height of 6 storeys” in the Humber Gateway between the river and Riverside Drive.

But the number that actually caps buildings on this street is not a height. It is section 5.4.2(a): “A total of 5 hours of sunlight should be provided on the north sidewalk of Bloor Street West, at the equinoxes.” Staff were already applying that logic before the guidelines were adopted. At 2453–2469 Bloor Street West, City Council approved a 10-storey mixed-use building with 91 units and 260 square metres of retail on 17 and 18 April 2024, item 2024.TE12.2 — staff having recommended a reduction from the applicant’s proposal “to better support the existing and planned context” and to maintain sunlight access on Bloor Street West.

6The 1929 library on Bloor Street West has been “listed” for fifty years, has never been designated, and is on a clock that runs out on 1 January 2027

Here is the clock, and it comes from two bills passed at Queen’s Park rather than from anything the City did.

Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022, re-enacted section 27 of the Ontario Heritage Act. The operative provision for old listings, subsection 27(16), requires that council “shall remove the property from the register” if it has not given a notice of intention to designate by the deadline. Subsection 27(18) then adds that where a removal is required, council “may not include the property again in the register … for a period of five years.”
Bill 200, the Homeowner Protection Act, 2024, which received Royal Assent on 6 June 2024, moved that deadline. Schedule 2, section 1(1) amends subsection 27(16) “by striking out ‘2025’ at the end and substituting ‘2027 or such later date as may be prescribed’,” with the same substitution made to the five-year re-listing ban. The schedule came into force on Royal Assent, so the extension has been law since June 2024.

The City states the effect plainly in its Bloor West Village heritage report: “The original removal deadline of January 1, 2025, was extended through Bill 200, providing for an additional two years until January 1, 2027, for properties on the Heritage Register on or before January 1, 2023. Properties listed since January 2023 must still be removed on the original two-year timeline. Once removed, Council may not relist any property for a period of five years.” Its Heritage Register Review page, modified 3 July 2026, adds that Council “is required to state its intention by January 1, 2027 or a later date prescribed by the Minister,” that there are “approximately 4,000 properties currently listed,” and that removed properties are “prohibited from being re-listed … for a period of five years from the date of removal.”

Now the local property. In the City’s Heritage Register open data:

Address	Register description	Status	Listed	Designating by-law
2178 Bloor St W	“Runnymede Branch, Toronto Public Library, 1929, John M. Lyle”	Listed	10 December 1975	none — field is null
3351 Dundas St W	“Originally known as the Dominion Bank, 1925; John M. Lyle, Architect”	Listed	16 September 1996	none
402–416 Clendenan Ave	“Part of row housing at 402-416 Clendenan Avenue; c.1889” — eight properties	Listed	6 February 1974	none

The Runnymede branch library — the landmark of the strip, by the architect of the Union Station facade — has been on the Heritage Register for fifty years and eight months and has never been designated. Unless Council states an intention to designate it before 1 January 2027, subsection 27(16) requires it to come off the Register, and subsection 27(18) then bars re-listing for five years. The same is true of a second John M. Lyle building a kilometre north on Dundas, and of an eight-house terrace on Clendenan listed in February 1974.

One honest caveat on the date I am quoting from. That register extract is the City’s release of 4 June 2026. Council could have stated an intention to designate between then and now. So the claim I will stand behind is the narrow one: as at the City’s 4 June 2026 Heritage Register release, 2178 Bloor Street West was still “Listed” and had never been designated. Check the live Register and the Council agenda system before you rely on it.

Two results from running the same dataset against the neighbourhood boundaries surprised me enough to check twice.

Put those side by side and the asymmetry is the story. Baby Point’s houses were all designated eleven days before the end of 2024, so the 1 January 2027 guillotine does not touch a single one of them. Bloor West Village has nothing on the Register to lose, and the one building on the strip that people would actually miss is the one with the clock on it.

7You can build a sixplex here and you cannot across the river — the line runs down the middle of the Humber

This is the single most concrete thing on this page, and it is barely a year old.

On 25 and 26 June 2025 City Council adopted By-law 654-2025, whose title says exactly what it does: “To amend Zoning By-law 569-2013 … to update and expand permissions for fiveplexes and sixplexes to the lands in the Toronto and East York Community Council boundaries as they existed on June 26, 2025,” together with one area of Scarborough. The Council item is PH22.4, adopted as amended on 25 and 26 June 2025, with written approval given by Mayoral Decision 10-2025. It inserts a new section 600.60 Sixplex Overlay Map into the zoning by-law. The City’s Multiplex Housing page, modified 26 August 2026, confirms the position in one line: “Four-unit multiplexes are permitted city-wide” and “six-unit permissions currently vary depending on location.”

What By-law 654-2025 actually does	Provision
Maximum units	Where a zone label’s “u” value is under 6, “the maximum number of dwelling units on the lot is 6” — so a u4 label is overridden
What counts	A detached houseplex: no more than six units, entirely on one lot, not attached to a building on an abutting lot, with at least one unit wholly or partly above another. It expressly includes a duplex, triplex, fourplex, fiveplex or sixplex
Height	Maximum height for a five or six-unit detached houseplex “may be increased to 10.5 metres” where the lowest level’s ceiling joists sit 1.0 to 1.5 m above established grade over at least 80 per cent of the floor area, that level has at least 2.4 m floor-to-ceiling height over 80 per cent of the floor area, and that level contains a dwelling unit
Conversions	A detached house converted to a five or six-unit houseplex “may continue to be considered as a lawfully existing building, provided the additional dwelling units are contained entirely within the building as it lawfully existed” the day before the building permit issues
Definitions	For this overlay, an apartment building is redefined as a building with seven or more dwelling units

Behind it sits the earlier package: Council decision 2023.PH3.16, adopted 10, 11 and 12 May 2023, implemented by By-law 474-2023, which permits a duplex, triplex and fourplex in the RD zone and sets maximum height for those forms at the height overlay value or 10.0 metres.

Now the geography, which is the part nobody says out loud. Bloor West Village and Baby Point are in the Toronto and East York district. The Kingsway, Sunnylea, Islington and everything else across the Humber are in Etobicoke York, and they are capped at four units. The boundary between those two permissions, on the ground, is the river.

That district assignment is not my inference. It is corroborated four ways in the City’s own paperwork: the heritage by-law’s authority line reads “Toronto and East York Community Council TE18.9”; Committee of Adjustment file numbers on Baby Point streets switch from the EYK suffix to TEY between 2018 and 2020; development files on the strip carry the STE 04 district and ward code where older ones carried WET 13; and the City’s own heritage report explains why, noting that the study “was transferred from the Etobicoke-York District to the Toronto and East York District following ward boundary changes in 2018.”

Two cautions, because “legally permitted” and “straightforward” are different words. First, the overlay does not exempt anyone from the heritage district. Inside Baby Point the Plan still requires a heritage permit for new construction and additions visible from the public realm and for variance and consent applications, the zoning is an RD zone with a maximum density of 0.4, and the height overlay on the great majority of the district’s addresses is 11.0 metres and 3 storeys. A sixplex is legally permitted in Baby Point. It is not thereby easy.

Second, on in-force status. The City states that the June 2025 amendments “are now in force.” I did not find an explicit statement that no appeal of By-law 654-2025 is outstanding, and I am not going to pretend I did. Before you pay a premium for six-unit potential, have your lawyer confirm the in-force status of the by-law for your specific lot.

One local consequence of all this that changes which strategy fits which side of Jane Street. Laneway suites need a public lane, and Runnymede-Bloor West Village has a dense laneway network — the City’s centreline data records at least 17 named public lanes inside the neighbourhood. Baby Point has essentially none: the only lane in the district’s street list is Humbercrest Lane, at the very edge. So the laneway route is a Bloor West Village option and effectively not a Baby Point one. The Baby Point route is the garden suite — permitted in the R, RD, RS, RT and RM zones, two storeys maximum, one suite of one unit per property, severance prohibited, with a Tree Declaration Form required and no removal of protected trees. And a garden suite in Baby Point means digging footings inside the Archaeologically Sensitive Area, which takes you straight back to item 3.

8On a major-street lot here the density cap has been switched off — and the by-law that did it never mentions heritage

This is the most consequential and least-reported zoning change on these streets, it is in force, and it went through the Ontario Land Tribunal rather than through a headline.

The City’s Major Streets Study was endorsed by the Planning and Housing Committee on 9 May 2024 (item 2024.PH12.3) and Council adopted the implementing amendments on 26 June 2024. Those amendments were appealed. By-law 1062-2025(OLT) — the zoning by-law, renumbered from By-law 608-2024 — records the outcome in its own preamble: the Tribunal, in its “Order issued on September 11, 2025, in file OLT-24-000837,” determined that “no part of Zoning By-law 608-2024 was in issue in the appeal” and deemed it “to have come into force in its entirety on June 27, 2024.”

What it does is rewrite the stated purpose of five residential zones. The RD zone’s purpose now reads: “to provide areas for a variety of residential building types, including detached houses, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and, on a lot that abuts a major street, townhouses and apartment buildings,” with the same language added to the RS, RT and RM zones and the same permissions extended to the R zone — the zone that covers the overwhelming majority of Runnymede-Bloor West Village.

Four numbers come with it, and the third is the one that has not registered with anybody:

On a lot abutting a major street	What the by-law says
Units	Maximum for an apartment building is “the greater of 60 dwelling units” or the “u” value on the zoning map
Height	“for a townhouse, the greater of four storeys” or the mapped ST value; “for an apartment building, the greater of six storeys” or the mapped ST value
Density	“despite (A) and (B) above, the permitted maximum floor space index regulations do not apply to a townhouse or an apartment building with 60 dwelling units or less on a lot abutting a major street”
Coverage and depth	Maximum lot coverage 50 per cent; and “for a lot abutting a major street, maximum building depth does not apply”

Read the third row again. On a qualifying lot the floor space index cap is simply switched off for that building type. The 0.6 density on the Annette Street side, the 0.4 on the Baby Point side — for a townhouse or an apartment building of 60 units or fewer on a lot abutting a major street, gone. What remains is six storeys, half the lot covered, and the setback and separation rules.

So the permissions reach the Jane Street and Annette Street frontages at the edge of the district and stop there. They do not reach into it. But nothing in the by-law says so, and nothing in the by-law reconciles itself with a heritage conservation district plan, which is a gap somebody is eventually going to have to argue about.

For scale, set that against what the main street itself permits today. From the City’s zoning open data, the as-of-right permission on Bloor Street West through the village is CR 2.5 zoning — 2.5 times the lot area — with a height overlay of 14.0 metres, which is about four storeys. Every mid-rise proposal on this strip in the last fifteen years has therefore required a zoning by-law amendment. The current example: at 2273, 2277 and 2279 Bloor Street West the City passed Zoning By-law 1035-2026 on 30 July 2026, item 2026.TE34.9, permitting “a 15-storey mixed-use building containing 60 residential units and 116 m² of non-residential gross floor area.” The statutory notice gave an appeal deadline of 27 August 2026. I have not been able to confirm whether an appeal was filed, so I am not going to describe that building as settled.

9The City’s own Official Plan still prints a policy that was repealed a year ago

This one is a documentation failure rather than a planning decision, and it is the kind of thing that costs somebody an argument at a hearing.

For twenty years the most-quoted sentence in Toronto neighbourhood planning was Official Plan Policy 4.1.7: “Proposals for intensification of land on major streets in Neighbourhoods are not encouraged by the policies of this Plan.” Residents’ associations quoted it. Planners quoted it. Agents quoted it.

It was deleted. By-law 1061-2025(OLT), which is Official Plan Amendment 727 and the companion to the zoning by-law in item 8, was brought into force by the Ontario Land Tribunal on 11 September 2025. Its section 3 deletes Policy 7 entirely and replaces it with the opposite proposition: “Properties in Neighbourhoods that are located along major streets shown on Map 3 may intensify beyond the prevailing building type and be assembled to include the development of townhouses and apartment buildings provided the development meets the criteria set out in Sections 4.1.5 a), h) and (i), 4.1.12 and 4.1.13.” The same amendment rewrites the Neighbourhoods introduction to contemplate walk-up apartments of four storeys or less “except along major streets where apartments may be no higher than six storeys,” and adds new policies directing that development “be supported to assemble lots along major streets.”

Anyone quoting the consolidated PDF on major-street intensification — including a planner, an agent, a neighbour or a blogger — is quoting a policy that was repealed nine months before that PDF was published. The by-law governs, not the consolidation. That is not a technicality if you are deciding whether to object to something, or whether to buy beside it.

There is a second layer of policy on this ground that points the same way, and it also cannot be appealed. On 15 August 2025 the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing approved the delineations and policies for 120 Major Transit Station Areas, and Jane, Runnymede, High Park, Keele and Old Mill are all among the approved — all of them Protected station areas. The City’s own page is blunt about what that means: “The Minister’s decision is final and cannot be appealed and the City of Toronto is required to update its zoning by-laws to allow the new heights and densities.”

The Official Plan’s Chapter 8 sets the targets, and the local asymmetry in them is remarkable. SASP 650 (Jane) and SASP 651 (Runnymede) are each planned for a minimum of “200 residents and jobs combined per hectare.” SASP 635 (Old Mill), one stop west, is planned for 50. Two stations 1.4 kilometres apart on the same subway line, with a fourfold difference in the minimum density the City is required to plan for.

The implementing zoning has not been written. The City states that Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026, received Royal Assent on 2 June 2026, that on 11 June 2026 the Planning and Housing Committee directed staff to assess its implications as part of the station-area zoning work, and that “a timeline for bringing the implementing zoning to Council for approval will be determined once staff have finalized an updated workplan.”

10Humberside Collegiate is at 133 per cent of capacity. Runnymede Collegiate, 2.5 km away, is at 68

The school numbers here are public, they are startling, and they are not what people assume.

These come from the Toronto District School Board’s own Long-Term Program and Accommodation Strategy 2024-2033, Tab 10 school data for Ward 7, which publishes capacity, full-time-equivalent enrolment, projected utilisation and surplus seats school by school. Capacity and enrolment are as at 2023.

School	Capacity 2023	FTE 2023	Utilisation 2023	Projected 2028	Surplus seats 2023	Home-school participation
Humberside Collegiate Institute	1,032	1,375.44	133%	144%	−343	59%
Runnymede Collegiate Institute	756	513	68%	75%	243	18%
Western Technical-Commercial School	1,515	1,333.54	88%	83%	181	—
Runnymede Junior & Senior Public School	1,011	957	95%	94%	54	76%
Humbercrest Public School	796	590	74%	80%	206	65%
Annette Street Junior & Senior Public School	568	514	90%	92%	54	51%
Warren Park Junior Public School	231	174	75%	84%	57	48%

The board defines the last column on the same page: the home-school participation rate is “the percentage of school-aged children within a school’s boundary who attend their local school,” as distinct from the TDSB participation rate, which is the percentage attending “any TDSB school.” At Humberside, 96 per cent of the school-age children in the boundary attend a TDSB school and 59 per cent attend Humberside. At Runnymede Collegiate the home-school rate is 18 per cent — fewer than one secondary-age child in five inside the boundary attends the school in it.

The honest framing, which is not the one you will hear at an open house: the two closest public secondary schools to Bloor West Village are respectively a third over capacity and a third under it, and the difference is mostly about where families choose to go. The crunch here is a choice phenomenon before it is a building phenomenon.

Current enrolment from the Ministry of Education’s 2024-25 file, for scale: Humberside Collegiate 1,455, Western Technical & Commercial 1,430, Runnymede Junior and Senior Public School 980, Humbercrest Public School 550, Runnymede Collegiate Institute 495, Annette Street Junior and Senior 485, Warren Park Junior 190.

The buildings themselves are old and carry published repair backlogs. From the same board strategy: Humberside Collegiate, built 1910, 190,035 square feet on 8.08 acres, a renewal backlog of $26.0 million and a facility condition index of 85.7 per cent, with a pool. Runnymede Collegiate, built 1928, backlog $21.9 million, index 83.8 per cent. Runnymede Junior and Senior, built 1915, backlog $12.6 million, three portables, listed as not accessible. Humbercrest, built 1915, backlog $7.9 million. Warren Park, built 1930, backlog $3.6 million, two portables.

One thing I am deliberately not telling you, because I could not verify it. I do not know which secondary school any particular Baby Point or Bloor West Village address is zoned to. The board’s address lookup was unreachable when I did this work, attendance boundaries are address-specific and they change. Use the TDSB’s Find Your School tool for your actual address, which is the right advice regardless. For the same reason there are no Catholic-board utilisation figures on this page: the provincial facility inventory dataset has no downloadable resources attached and I have enrolment only.

Four more, because they come up every week

The Committee of Adjustment says yes to about nineteen out of twenty, and the one refusal in Baby Point in a decade was overturned on appeal. Matching the City’s Committee of Adjustment closed-applications dataset against the 222 addresses in Schedule B of the heritage by-law gives 31 closed applications since 2016 — 22 approved, 3 deferred, 1 refused and 5 with no decision recorded, plus one active file at 66 Baby Point Crescent filed 14 July 2026 and postponed. That is an approval rate of 22 of the 23 that were decided. The single refusal is 8 Baby Point Terrace, file A0898/16EYK, filed 21 November 2016 for a front and rear addition and a storey above the garage, refused by the Committee — and then approved by the Ontario Municipal Board, order dated 21 June 2018. Across the wider street sets the pattern holds: about 94 per cent of decided applications approved on the Runnymede-Bloor West Village streets and about 96 per cent on the Lambton Baby Point streets. The matching and the arithmetic are mine and the street-based tallies are approximations, because several of those streets cross neighbourhood boundaries. And a caution I will make explicitly: there have been only 1 filing in 2024, 3 in 2025 and 1 active in 2026 inside the district. That is far too few data points to claim the heritage designation has suppressed applications, so I am not claiming it. Worth noticing anyway: one of the 2025 approvals was for a mezzanine inside an existing detached garage — which today would also require a heritage permit, because the variance application itself triggers one.

More than half of one of these neighbourhoods is ravine-protected land, and in it a permit is needed to remove a tree of any size. I downloaded the City’s Ravine & Natural Feature Protection area shapefile and intersected it with the Neighbourhoods layer, computing areas in a projected coordinate system. 93.3 hectares of Lambton Baby Point’s 178.3 hectares — 52.4 per cent — lies inside the Ravine and Natural Feature Protection Area (93.3 ÷ 178.3 = 0.524). Runnymede-Bloor West Village, by contrast, has 5.3 hectares of 159.4 — 3.3 per cent. Testing the 226 heritage register address points against the same layer, 59 of them (26.1 per cent) plot inside a protection polygon and 123 (54.4 per cent) sit within 30 metres of one. The intersections and percentages are mine; the layers are the City’s. Two caveats travel with those numbers and they matter: an address point is one coordinate, so a lot whose rear third is in the ravine can still test as “outside,” which means this understates the number of affected lots; and that layer was last refreshed in July 2019, so it is directional only. What is not directional is the rule. Municipal Code Chapter 658 prohibits injuring, destroying or removing “any tree” in a protected area without authorisation — any species, any size, dead or alive — and also covers fill, grade changes and, per the City’s permit page, “constructing new or replacing old structures or retaining walls.” Outside a ravine, Chapter 813 sets the threshold at a stem of 30 centimetres or more measured at 1.4 metres. Penalties under both chapters run from a $500 minimum to $100,000 per tree, with $500 to $10,000 per day for continuing offences such as fill. Tree protection zones are also larger inside a ravine: for a 30 to 40 centimetre tree, 4.8 metres in a ravine against 2.4 metres on ordinary private property. And separately from the City, part of the district is regulated by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority; the heritage Plan itself notes that “where applicable, TRCA approval is required prior to the issuance of a municipal building permit,” and TRCA’s own guidance says that for work near a slope “a study may be required to locate the stable top of slope” and that a geotechnical slope stability assessment “may be required” after its staff review and site visit. Check your own address on the City’s Ravine and Natural Feature Protection By-law Map and on TRCA’s Regulated Area Search. I am not publishing a parcel-level claim from a 2019 layer, and I am not publishing any permit fee, because I could not retrieve the current schedules.

The tax on holding is frozen ten years back, the tax on buying went up five months ago, and the vacant home tax follows the house. MPAC states that “property assessments for the 2026 property tax year will continue to be based on fully phased-in January 1, 2016 current values,” the province having extended the postponement by regulation in August 2023. Toronto’s 2026 total residential rate is 0.767311 per cent — but do not multiply that by a market price, because the base is the 2016 assessed value, which is a different and generally much lower number. Meanwhile the Municipal Land Transfer Tax became graduated on 1 April 2026 for properties containing one or two single-family residences, following a Council amendment passed on 17 December 2025 (item 2025.EX28.1). Up to $2,000,000 the familiar bands apply — 0.5 per cent to $55,000, 1.0 per cent to $250,000, 1.5 per cent to $400,000 and 2.0 per cent above that — then 2.5 per cent from $2,000,000.01 to $3,000,000. Above $3,000,000 the City publishes higher rates, and here I stop: the City’s page does not state whether those higher bands apply only to the slice above the threshold or to the entire consideration, and on a single sale above that threshold the two readings differ by tens of thousands of dollars. I am not printing a figure above $3 million until that is settled with Revenue Services or read out of the Municipal Code, and neither should anyone else. There is also a municipal non-resident speculation tax of 10 per cent for foreign buyers on certain residential properties, effective 1 January 2025, and an MLTT administration fee of $102.56 plus HST. Finally the one that catches buyers: the Vacant Home Tax is 3 per cent of the property’s current value assessment from the 2024 taxation year, a property is deemed vacant if the owner fails to declare, and the City states that the tax “is attached to the property, not the individual” and that it “forms a lien on the property, and the purchaser will be held responsible for the payment of the tax.” Ask for the vendor’s filed declaration of occupancy status. It is a normal thing to ask for and it is your money.

Bloor West Village invented the business improvement area, and there is a protected Official Plan view over the river. The City’s own heritage report tells the story: between 1953 and 1966 Toronto’s shopping centres grew from 5 to 27, and “by 1970, 57% of the businesses present in 1960 had been replaced or were vacant. In response, local businesses established Toronto’s first Business Improvement Area (BIA) in 1970, the first of its kind in Toronto.” Note the City’s wording carefully — “the first of its kind in Toronto,” not in the world. The world-first version is widely repeated and I could not verify it in a primary source, so I am printing the City’s sentence and nothing more. Two other things worth knowing about the setting. The Humber valley view is protected in the Official Plan as Schedule 4 view C7 – Humber River, covering the views from both sides of the Bloor Street West Bridge, the Old Mill Bridge and the Dundas Street West Bridge. And on flooding: TRCA’s flood-vulnerable-cluster mapping, which identifies concentrations of existing buildings inside the regulatory flood plain, puts the Humber watershed’s two worst Toronto clusters at Rockcliffe and Jane/Wilson, both well upstream, and there is no Special Policy Area and no flood-vulnerable cluster in this study area. That is not the same as saying no lot here is in a flood plain — the valley lands plainly are regulated — so check your own address rather than reading a general finding as a specific one.

What this list is not

It is not an argument against buying here. Bloor West Village is a main street that survived the shopping-centre era by inventing a tool the rest of the country copied, with two accessible subway stations on it and a housing stock where 83.9 per cent of the dwellings predate 1960. Baby Point is a 222-property landscape from the 1920s with a median construction year of 1928, sitting above a Canadian river valley, that the City thought was worth designating. Very few Toronto neighbourhoods have this much documentation behind them.

The point is that every one of the ten items above is knowable before you sign, and almost none of it is in a listing. The folklore about these two places is unusually strong — the covenants, the heritage protection, the school — and quite a lot of it is either from the wrong document, the wrong side of the street or the wrong decade. That is the whole difference between working with someone who has read the by-law and working with someone who has read the brochure.

Frequently asked questions

Is Baby Point a heritage conservation district?

Yes. By-law 1367-2024 designates the Teiaiagon-Baby Point Heritage Conservation District under Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act and adopts the district plan dated November 2024. It was enacted and passed on 18 December 2024 under the authority of Toronto and East York Community Council item TE18.9, adopted by City Council on 17 and 18 December 2024, with written approval by Mayoral Decision 26-2024. Section 5 of the by-law authorises the City Solicitor to register it against the title of every property in Schedule B. On my own count of Schedule B there are 222 addresses, and the plan reports 169 contributing and 53 non-contributing properties within it.

Do I need a heritage permit to remove a tree stump in Baby Point?

On the face of the district plan, yes. Section 11.1 lists cutting down an imminently hazardous tree among the works that do not need a permit, then adds: however, any ground disturbance, such as removal of a stump, will require a heritage permit. Section 11.4 lists tree planting and stump removal among the interventions in the Teiaiagon Archaeologically Sensitive Area that require a permit, alongside deck footings, fences, pools, sheds, new driveways, irrigation and lighting excavation, foundation repair and new buried service hook-ups. Most of the district falls within that sensitive area, and the plan says burial sites have been encountered in it.

Does painting my house need a heritage permit in the district?

It depends what the house is made of. Section 11.1 of the district plan treats painting of wood, stucco or metal finishes as work for which a permit is deemed to be issued, and then says in brackets that painting of exterior masonry requires a heritage permit. So painting your trim does not need a permit and painting your brick does. Repairs to existing features are also exempt only where they are repaired in-kind, in the same type of materials.

Does a minor variance in Baby Point need a heritage permit too?

Yes. Section 11.2 of the Teiaiagon-Baby Point district plan requires a heritage permit application for Official Plan amendments, zoning by-law amendments, site plan approval, plans of subdivision, and variance and consent applications, as well as for demolition, for new construction and additions visible from the public realm, for soil-disturbing work in the Archaeologically Sensitive Area, and for alterations to tree canopy visible from the public realm. That is a second application and a second approval running alongside the Committee of Adjustment process.

Am I still bound by the Home Smith covenants in Baby Point?

That is a title question for your lawyer and I make no claim about it either way. What can be said from the public record is this: the district plan reproduces the Home Smith and Company building restrictions at Appendix B as a historical document, and the plan’s own introduction to it says the restrictions were to run with the land and be in force for a period of thirty years from the First of April, 1911. Clause 9 allowed the vendor or his assignee to vary or cancel any of the conditions. That 1911 private covenant is a different instrument from By-law 1367-2024, with a different duration, different enforcement and different waiver rules. The rules that bind you today are the by-law and the heritage permit process. If a covenant matters to your purchase, have a real estate lawyer pull and read the registered instruments on your title.

Is Bloor West Village a heritage conservation district?

No. The heritage conservation district study for Bloor West Village is complete and appears on the City’s page under studies completed, not among the designated districts. City Planning staff recommended, and the Toronto Preservation Board endorsed on 10 December 2025 by 8 votes to 1, that the study not proceed to the district plan phase. The Preservation Board is an advisory body and I found no record of the item going on to City Council, so it is not accurate to say Council cancelled it. The report gives two reasons: most ground-floor storefronts have been significantly altered, and under Ontario Regulation 569/22 at least 25 per cent of properties must satisfy two or more of nine criteria, which the 275-property study area did not meet when staff re-evaluated it in the first quarter of 2025.

Are the 32 identified Bloor Street properties protected?

No. Of 37 properties staff identified as having cultural heritage value or interest, five were listed on the Heritage Register in February 2025 and the other 32 were identified only. Identification carries no Ontario Heritage Act status, no heritage permit requirement and no demolition control. What it triggers is a Cultural Heritage Evaluation Report under Official Plan Amendment 720 where redevelopment involves one of those properties. Council adopted the identification with the Avenue Study urban design guidelines as item 2025.TE27.29 on 16 and 17 December 2025.

What happens to 2178 Bloor Street West on 1 January 2027?

As at the City’s Heritage Register release of 4 June 2026, 2178 Bloor Street West – recorded as Runnymede Branch, Toronto Public Library, 1929, John M. Lyle – was still listed and had never been designated, with no designating by-law on the record. Under section 27(16) of the Ontario Heritage Act as amended by Bill 23 and by Schedule 2 of Bill 200, which moved the deadline to 1 January 2027 or such later date as may be prescribed, a property in that position must be removed from the Register if Council has not stated an intention to designate, and section 27(18) then bars re-listing for five years. Council could have acted since June 2026, so check the live Register and the Council agenda system before relying on this.

Can I build a sixplex in Bloor West Village or Baby Point?

Both neighbourhoods are inside the Toronto and East York Community Council boundaries, and By-law 654-2025, adopted by Council on 25 and 26 June 2025, extends fiveplex and sixplex permissions to exactly those lands plus one area of Scarborough. Where a zone label carries a u value below 6, the maximum becomes 6 units. Across the Humber in Etobicoke York the cap remains four. Two qualifications: inside the Teiaiagon-Baby Point district the heritage permit requirements still apply, the zoning is an RD zone with a maximum density of 0.4 and the height overlay on most of the district is 11.0 metres and 3 storeys; and while the City states the amendments are in force, I did not find an explicit statement that no appeal is outstanding, so have your lawyer confirm in-force status for your lot.

Does the density cap still apply on a lot fronting Bloor or Jane Street?

Not for that building type. By-law 1062-2025(OLT), deemed by the Ontario Land Tribunal on 11 September 2025 to have come into force on 27 June 2024, provides that the permitted maximum floor space index regulations do not apply to a townhouse or an apartment building with 60 dwelling units or less on a lot abutting a major street. It also sets the maximum at the greater of 60 units, four storeys for a townhouse and six storeys for an apartment building, with 50 per cent lot coverage and no maximum building depth. I searched the full text of that by-law for the word heritage and there are zero occurrences. On the Zoning Policy Road Overlay the major streets here are Bloor Street West, Jane Street, Annette Street, Dundas Street West, Runnymede Road and Scarlett Road, and no street inside the heritage district is among them – but that is my inference from the overlay rather than a reading of Official Plan Map 3, so verify it.

Related reading

• Top 10 things no one will tell you about The Kingsway, Etobicoke
• Top 10 things no one will tell you about Roncesvalles, Toronto
• Top 10 things no one will tell you about High Park and Swansea
• Top 10 things no one will tell you about The Junction
• Toronto Municipal Land Transfer Tax: the bracket table from 1 April 2026
• Toronto Vacant Home Tax: the buyer can be left holding it
• Toronto West market report, July 2026

Sources

Every figure on this page traces to one of these, and each was read on 31 August 2026. Primary sources only — by-law text, a heritage conservation district plan, a Council or Preservation Board decision, a bill as passed at Queen’s Park, a City open dataset, a school board strategy document, or the agency that administers the thing being described. Where I could not verify something from a primary source, it is not on the page, or the page says plainly that it is not verified.

• By-law 1367-2024 — Teiaiagon-Baby Point Heritage Conservation District designation. City of Toronto. The Part V designation, the authority line citing Toronto and East York Community Council item TE18.9 as adopted by Council on 17 and 18 December 2024 and Mayoral Decision 26-2024, the adoption of the district plan dated November 2024, the 30-day notice and service on the Ontario Heritage Trust, the section 5 direction to register the by-law against title, and Schedule B from which the 222 addresses are counted. toronto.ca
• Teiaiagon-Baby Point Heritage Conservation District Plan. City of Toronto City Planning. Sections 5.1 and 5.5 on 169 contributing and 53 non-contributing properties and the Home Smith Building Restrictions Period 1911 to 1941; sections 6.1, 6.2, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4 and 11.5 on heritage permits, the exemption list including the stump rule, the Archaeologically Sensitive Area, trees and heritage impact assessments; sections 9.2 and 9.3 on Part IV conflicts and the prohibition on demolition and reconstruction of contributing buildings; section 2.2 on the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act; section 2.4 on TRCA; section 2.5.1 on protected view C7; section 12.1 on review; Appendix B, the Home Smith and Company building restrictions; Appendix D on structure addresses; and Appendix F, the non-contributing list. toronto.ca
• Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 103, Heritage, Article 3; Heritage Permit Guide. City of Toronto. Section 103-3.2A and the twelve heads of a heritage permit application including the PIN, survey and sworn affidavit; the section 103-3.2D list of alterations for which a permit is deemed issued; section 103-3.3A staff issuance; section 103-3.3B, the ward councillor’s power to require an application to go to community council and Council; section 103-3.3D on conflicts going to the Toronto Preservation Board; and the Heritage Permit Guide on the 90-day decision period, deemed approval and appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal. toronto.ca
• Heritage Conservation Districts — 4. Management of the district. Government of Ontario, Ontario Heritage Toolkit. The province’s own statement of the 90-day period running from the notice of receipt, the rule that council is deemed to have consented if it fails to act, and the property owner’s right to appeal a refusal or conditions to the Ontario Land Tribunal. Used, with the City’s guide, in place of the statute, which I did not read. ontario.ca
• A Master Plan of Archaeological Resources for the City of Toronto. City of Toronto City Planning. The cover illustration captioned as a seventeenth century Seneca bone comb from Baby Point, the inside caption recording that it came from a burial accidentally disturbed by a service line at Baby Point and that the artifact was re-interred, and the record of David Boyle documenting the village site in the late nineteenth century. toronto.ca
• Heritage Conservation Districts & Studies. City of Toronto. The list of 27 designated districts, the four completed district studies including Bloor West Village, the districts under appeal and in development, the statement that where an HCD plan and a zoning by-law conflict the plan prevails to the extent of the conflict, and the statement that Part V designation does not regulate the use of a property. toronto.ca
• Bloor West Village Heritage Conservation District Study — Final Report, 1 December 2025; Toronto Preservation Board item 2025.PB38.2. City of Toronto. The decision history from 2014.EY33.39 through 2014.MM54.16, 2015.PG2.8, the Stantec engagement, 2018.EY31.5 and the April 2021 consultant recommendation; the storefront integrity finding; Ontario Regulation 569/22 and the 25 per cent threshold that the 275-property study area failed on re-evaluation in the first quarter of 2025; the built-form statistics; the finding that there are no Archaeologically Sensitive Areas in the study area; the 37 identified and 5 listed properties; the Bill 200 deadline restatement; and the Board’s adoption on 10 December 2025 by 8 votes to 1. toronto.ca
• Council item 2025.TE27.29 — Bloor West Village Avenue Study, Urban Design Guidelines, Final Report. City of Toronto. Considered by Toronto and East York Community Council on 27 November 2025 and adopted by City Council on 16 and 17 December 2025, adopting the guidelines, directing staff to apply them in development review and identifying the attachment properties as having cultural heritage value or interest. Note that two City sources give different item numbers for this report; this is the one I verified. secure.toronto.ca
• Bloor West Village Urban Design Guidelines, April 2026. City of Toronto City Planning. Section 1.3 stating that the guidelines are not a statutory document, the character-area street wall and height guidance for Village Main Street, the Village Gateways and the Humber Gateway, and section 5.4.2(a) requiring five hours of sunlight on the north sidewalk of Bloor Street West at the equinoxes. toronto.ca
• Council item 2024.TE12.2; Notice of Passing of Zoning By-law 1035-2026; Development Applications open dataset. City of Toronto. The April 2024 Council approval of a 10-storey mixed-use building with 91 units and 260 square metres of retail at 2453-2469 Bloor Street West, reduced from the applicant’s proposal to maintain sunlight access; the statutory notice recording By-law 1035-2026 passed on 30 July 2026 for a 15-storey building with 60 units and 116 square metres of non-residential floor area at 2273, 2277 and 2279 Bloor Street West under item 2026.TE34.9, with an appeal deadline of 27 August 2026; and the application records for 66 and 121 Baby Point Road. secure.toronto.ca
• Heritage Register open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data, metadata modified and last refreshed 4 June 2026. The 226 register records inside Lambton Baby Point, of which 223 are Part V carrying By-law 1367-2024 and a designation date of 18 December 2024 and 3 are Part IV; the absence of any heritage easement agreement; the construction-year field from which the 1928 median is taken; the status and 10 December 1975 listing date for 2178 Bloor Street West with a null designating by-law; the records for 3351 Dundas Street West and 402 to 416 Clendenan Avenue; and the absence of any register record inside Runnymede-Bloor West Village. open.toronto.ca
• Heritage Register Review. City of Toronto, page modified 3 July 2026. The requirement for Council to state its intention by 1 January 2027 or a later date prescribed by the Minister, the approximately 4,000 currently listed properties, the five-year prohibition on re-listing after removal, the data-informed citywide prioritisation process, and the retention of research records for formerly listed properties. toronto.ca
• Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022 and Bill 200, Homeowner Protection Act, 2024 — Royal Assent prints. Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Bill 23, Schedule 6, re-enacting section 27 of the Ontario Heritage Act, including subsection 27(16) requiring removal from the register where no notice of intention to designate is given and subsection 27(18) barring re-listing for five years; and Bill 200, Schedule 2, striking out 2025 and substituting 2027 or such later date as may be prescribed, in force on Royal Assent on 6 June 2024. ola.org
• By-law 654-2025 — fiveplexes and sixplexes in Toronto and East York. City of Toronto. The title extending five and six-unit permissions to the lands in the Toronto and East York Community Council boundaries as they existed on 26 June 2025 plus one area of Scarborough; the authority citing Planning and Housing Committee item PH22.4 adopted by Council on 25 and 26 June 2025 and Mayoral Decision 10-2025; the new section 600.60 Sixplex Overlay Map; the detached houseplex definition; the override of a u value below 6; the 10.5 metre height provision and its three conditions; the conversion rule; and the redefinition of an apartment building as seven or more units. toronto.ca
• Multiplex Housing; Garden Suites; By-law 474-2023 and Council item 2023.PH3.16. City of Toronto, multiplex page modified 26 August 2026 and garden suites page modified 21 August 2026. The statement that four-unit multiplexes are permitted city-wide while six-unit permissions vary by location and that the June 2025 amendments are now in force; the May 2023 multiplex decision and the duplex, triplex and fourplex permissions with the 10.0 metre height rule; and the garden suite rules, including the zones in which they are permitted, two storeys, one suite of one unit per property, the prohibition on severance, the protected tree rule and the Tree Declaration Form. toronto.ca
• By-law 1062-2025(OLT) — zoning for low-rise intensification on major streets. City of Toronto. The preamble recording the Ontario Land Tribunal order of 11 September 2025 in file OLT-24-000837 and the deeming of By-law 608-2024 into force on 27 June 2024; the rewritten purpose clauses for the RD, RS, RT, RM and R zones; the 60-unit and storey provisions; the provision that maximum floor space index regulations do not apply to a townhouse or apartment building of 60 units or fewer on a lot abutting a major street; the 50 per cent lot coverage rule; and the disapplication of maximum building depth. This is also the by-law whose full text I searched for the word heritage. toronto.ca
• By-law 1061-2025(OLT) — Official Plan Amendment 727. City of Toronto. The amendment deleting Neighbourhoods Policy 7 and replacing it with the policy permitting properties along major streets shown on Map 3 to intensify beyond the prevailing building type and be assembled; the revised Chapter 4.1 introduction contemplating apartments no higher than six storeys along major streets; and the new policies on lot assembly. toronto.ca
• Toronto Official Plan, June 2026 Office Consolidation, Chapters 1 to 5. City of Toronto. The consolidated Chapter 4 text in which the repealed Policy 7, stating that proposals for intensification of land on major streets in Neighbourhoods are not encouraged, still appears on a page footed June 2026 Consolidation, and in which searches for 727, for no higher than six storeys and for major streets shown on Map 3 return nothing. toronto.ca
• Zoning for Major Transit Station Areas; Minister-Approved Major Transit Station Areas open dataset; Official Plan Chapter 8, August 2025 consolidation. City of Toronto and City of Toronto Open Data, dataset modified 3 February 2026. The Minister’s approval of 120 station area delineations on 15 August 2025, the statement that the decision is final and cannot be appealed and that the City is required to update its zoning, the ending of minimum parking requirements in protected station areas as of 15 August 2025, the Royal Assent of Bill 98 on 2 June 2026 and the Planning and Housing Committee direction of 11 June 2026 with no timeline for the implementing zoning, the delineations for Jane, Runnymede, High Park, Keele and Old Mill; and, from Chapter 8 of the Official Plan, Site and Area Specific Policies 650 (Jane), 651 (Runnymede) and 652 (High Park), each planned for a minimum population and employment target of 200 residents and jobs combined per hectare, against SASP 635 (Old Mill) at 50, and the statement that any amendment to the delineations or policies requires the approval of the Minister. toronto.ca
• Municipal Code Chapter 658 (Ravine and Natural Feature Protection) and Chapter 813 (Trees); When to Apply for a Tree or Ravine Permit. City of Toronto, permit page modified 29 January 2026. Section 658-2A prohibiting injury, destruction or removal of any tree in a protected area and section 658-2B on fill and grade; the section 658-4 exemptions; the section 658-12 penalties of $500 to $100,000 and $500 to $10,000 per day for continuing offences; the section 813-12 threshold of a 30 centimetre stem measured at 1.4 metres and the section 813-29 penalties; the permit triggers in a ravine including any tree regardless of size, topography changes, fill and constructing or replacing structures and retaining walls; the tree protection zone table; and the instruction to check an address on the Ravine and Natural Feature Protection By-law Map. toronto.ca
• Ravine & Natural Feature Protection area open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data. The 854 protection polygons intersected with the neighbourhood boundaries to produce the 93.3 of 178.3 hectare and 5.3 of 159.4 hectare figures on this page, and intersected with the heritage register address points to produce the 59 inside and 123 within 30 metres counts. Note that this layer was last refreshed on 23 July 2019, that it is not the Schedule A-2 data maps in the Municipal Code, and that it is used on this page directionally only. open.toronto.ca
• Neighbourhoods; Neighbourhood Profiles; Business Improvement Areas; Subsidized Housing Listings open datasets. City of Toronto Open Data, Neighbourhoods and Subsidized Housing modified 20 February 2026, Neighbourhood Profiles modified 27 May 2026, Business Improvement Areas modified 10 July 2026. The polygons for Runnymede-Bloor West Village (89), Lambton Baby Point (114) and High Park-Swansea (87) used for the boundary tests and area calculations; the 2021 census counts for both neighbourhoods including the 3,220 of 3,840 dwellings built in 1960 or before and the tenure and subsidised-housing figures; the Bloor West Village BIA boundary of 2.89 kilometres spanning four neighbourhoods and the Baby Point Gates BIA at 2.04 kilometres; and the four subsidized-housing complexes in Neighbourhood 114, all on Dundas Street West and Old Dundas Street. open.toronto.ca
• Committee of Adjustment Applications open dataset; Zoning By-law open dataset. City of Toronto Open Data, Committee of Adjustment modified 29 August 2026 and Zoning By-law modified 20 February 2026. The 31 closed applications matched to Schedule B addresses with 22 approvals and the single refusal at 8 Baby Point Terrace, file A0898/16EYK, later approved by the Ontario Municipal Board by order dated 21 June 2018; the wider street-set tallies; the RD zoning with a maximum density of 0.4 and the height overlay of 11.0 metres and 3 storeys across the district; the CR 2.5 zoning and 14.0 metre height overlay on the Bloor Street West strip; and the Zoning Policy Road Overlay from which the major street list is inferred. open.toronto.ca
• Municipal Land Transfer Tax Rates & Fees; Vacant Home Tax; Property Tax Rates & Fees; MPAC, The Assessment Cycle. City of Toronto, MLTT page modified 7 April 2026, Vacant Home Tax page modified 22 July 2026 and property tax page modified 11 May 2026, and the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation. The 17 December 2025 Council amendment under item 2025.EX28.1 and the graduated bracket table effective 1 April 2026 up to and including the 2.5 per cent band to $3,000,000; the municipal non-resident speculation tax at 10 per cent from 1 January 2025 and the $102.56 administration fee; the Vacant Home Tax at 3 per cent of current value assessment from the 2024 taxation year, the deeming rule, and the statements that the tax is attached to the property, not the individual, and forms a lien for which the purchaser will be held responsible; Toronto’s 2026 total residential rate of 0.767311 per cent; and MPAC’s statement that 2026 assessments continue to be based on fully phased-in 1 January 2016 current values. toronto.ca
• TDSB Long-Term Program and Accommodation Strategy 2024-2033, Tab 10 School Data; School enrolment by grade, 2024-2025. Toronto District School Board and the Ontario Ministry of Education, enrolment dataset metadata modified 24 August 2026. The 2023 capacity, full-time-equivalent enrolment, utilisation, projected 2028 utilisation, surplus seats and participation rates for Humberside Collegiate, Runnymede Collegiate, Runnymede Junior and Senior, Humbercrest, Annette Street, Warren Park, Swansea and Western Technical-Commercial; the board’s definitions of the TDSB and home-school participation rates; the construction years, floor areas and renewal backlog figures as at January 2024; and the 2024-25 enrolment totals quoted on this page. tdsb.on.ca