An Oakwood Village homeowner is alleging chainsaw-wielding developers tried to cut down a tree on private property without his permission.<\/p>\n
Ian Pearson tells CityNews Modcity, a development company accused of cutting down trees at multiple properties across Toronto, had workers come to his property and try to cut down his tree.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were guys with chainsaws back here and they had taken out two sections of my fence,\u201d said Pearson. \u201cThe property owner had told them that the property line was on the other side of this tree, that I had built my fence into his property, and that it was his tree and he was cutting it down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pearson said Modcity\u00a0bought the house behind him with plans for a major redevelopment. Before they even had a permit to build at the address on Glenholme Avenue, workers were hacking down the tree at the corner of Pearson\u2019s property.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were guys up here in the tree with harnesses and they were taking off branches not only on the property owner\u2019s side but on my side because the objective was to bring down the whole tree.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, Pearson and his wife were both away. His friend Mike was house sitting for him, and confronted the Modcity workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he hadn\u2019t been here, I would have come back to \u2018Where the F is my tree?\u2019 Right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Modcity has applied for a fourplex and a garden suite on the neighbouring\u00a0property\u00a0but Pearson said his tree is in the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir garden suite plan basically has them digging down four feet into the protection zone to build the garden suite \u2026 it\u2019s on their survey, they know what they\u2019re doing. They just figure one way or another, they\u2019re going make it happen. Regardless of what the laws are or anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
The maximum fine for cutting down a mature tree in Toronto is $100,000. The city confirms that they have three active investigations into Modcity\u00a0for cutting down trees at other properties.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanna see those fines actually laid down right now on Modcity, I wanna see them enforce the rules that we have,\u201d said city councillor Josh Matlow. \u201cIf a company doesn\u2019t care about\u00a0other people and their properties, they might care about their own wallets. So, it\u2019s gotta hit \u2019em where it hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ron Sheinen, the principal of Modcity, was seen at the property in a photo taken by a neighbour. <\/p>\n
CityNews asked him to comment on the dispute over the tree and\u00a0he said in a text message,\u00a0\u201cI am truly unsure of what you\u2019re referencing,\u201d and then unsent the message.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell that\u2019s typical of him right? That\u2019s typical of him,\u201d said Pearson. \u201cHe was here, yesterday morning right before they started doing this. I\u2019m pretty sure he instructed them that as soon as the permit cleared that they were in there with a backhoe trying to take out the roots of the tree.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pearson has now put a lock on that section of the fence, to try to prevent\u00a0workers from removing it and accessing his property, in an effort to protect his tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Oakwood Village homeowner is alleging chainsaw-wielding developers tried to cut down a tree on private property without…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-558821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}