Can You Build a Sixplex in Davenport? Ward 9
Davenport (Ward 9) is one of the nine Toronto wards where up to six residential units may be permitted as-of-right on an eligible detached-house lot, under Zoning By-law 654-2025 and Official Plan Amendment 818 (June 2025), subject to the zoning by-law and applicable law. Being in the ward gets a lot to the starting line. Whether six units actually fit — and whether the project pencils — is decided by the specific lot, not the ward.
Two things to keep straight: the sixplex permission (five or six units) applies to detached houses only. Semi-detached and townhouse lots aren’t eligible for the fifth and sixth units — but they can still add up to four units under Toronto’s city-wide multiplex rules.
Updated August 2026 · MBL Developments · one of a nine-part series, one post per ward.
What the ward covers
A west-end ward running from Eglinton Avenue West and Dufferin Street in the north down through the St. Clair West corridor, bounded roughly by Oakwood Avenue and Winona Drive to the east, reaching south past Davenport Road toward Dundas Street West and the GO Transit rail corridor, and west toward the Canadian Pacific rail lines. The ward takes in Corso Italia, Dovercourt Village, Regal Heights, Bloorcourt and Bloordale Village, Dufferin Grove, Wallace-Emerson, Carleton Village, and areas adjacent to the Junction Triangle. Ward lines follow specific streets and get redrawn from time to time, so treat any neighbourhood list as a guide, not a survey — the City publishes the official ward boundaries on toronto.ca.
Neighbourhoods & built form
The character changes street to street, and the built form is what matters most for a sixplex — it’s the raw material you’re working with, and the heritage-character pockets are where the “does it fit” question gets hardest.
- Corso Italia. The St. Clair Avenue West retail strip is fronted by two- and three-storey mixed-use buildings, with a residential grid behind it of narrow-lot semi-detached and detached houses on deep pre-war lots.
- Dovercourt Village. A dense grid of two-storey brick semi-detached and detached houses on narrow lots close to Bloor Street, typical of the pre-1960 fabric that dominates the ward.
- Regal Heights. A residential pocket of detached and semi-detached houses on the slope above Davenport Road, mostly built before 1960.
- Bloorcourt / Bloordale Village. Bloor Street West storefronts backed by narrow-lot houses and low-rise apartments, with existing walk-up apartment buildings under five storeys already common on the side streets.
- Wallace-Emerson. A mix of older houses, low-rise apartments, and former-industrial parcels near the rail corridor and the Wallace-Emerson community centre.
- Carleton Village. Modest detached and semi-detached houses on a compact grid bounded by rail lines, adjacent to the Junction Triangle.
Getting around
TTC Line 2 (Bloor–Danforth) runs along the ward's southern edge with Dufferin and Lansdowne stations; the 512 St. Clair and 505 Dundas streetcars and the 29 Dufferin and 47 Lansdowne bus routes serve the north–south and east–west corridors. Bloor GO Station (Kitchener line) and UP Express connect to Union Station and Pearson Airport, and the under-construction Bloor–Lansdowne GO station will add a stop on the Barrie line. Major roads include St. Clair Avenue West, Bloor Street West, Dufferin Street, Lansdowne Avenue, Dundas Street West, and Davenport Road.
Downtown access & lifestyle
The ward is a short subway or GO ride from downtown. Retail and dining cluster along St. Clair West's Corso Italia (institutions such as Tre Mari Bakery and La Paloma gelateria), the Bloorcourt/Bloordale stretch of Bloor Street West, the Dovercourt–Ossington corridor, and Geary Avenue's cluster of breweries and workshops. Parks include Dufferin Grove Park (with its year-round farmers' market) and the Wallace-Emerson park and community centre. The annual Corso Italia Toronto Fiesta, a summer street festival on St. Clair West between Dufferin and Lansdowne, is among Toronto's largest and draws crowds reported in the hundreds of thousands, alongside the weekly Dufferin Grove market — recurring foot traffic that may support rental demand.
Schools & families
The area is served by both the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB), with catchments assigned by home address. Local TDSB elementary schools include Dovercourt Public School, McMurrich Junior Public School, and Regal Road Junior Public School. Publicly verified EQAO standings for these specific schools were not confirmed in this research, so no claim of notably strong EQAO performance is made; families should check current EQAO results and the exact catchment for any given address directly.
The numbers
From the ward’s 2021 City of Toronto Census profile:
| Population (2021) | 104,730 |
| Renter households | 48% |
| Predominant housing form | 81% ground-related (29% single or semi-detached) |
| Median household income (2020) | $85,000 |
| Housing-stock character | Predominantly pre-1960 |
Figures are ward-wide 2021 Census counts (income is for 2020), from City Planning’s ward profile. “Renter households” is tenant-occupied dwellings as a share of private households reporting tenure; “ground-related” is the City ward-profile grouping of low-rise and ground-oriented dwellings (detached, semi-detached, row houses, duplexes and apartments in buildings under five storeys), from the 2021 Census. They describe the ward; they don’t rate it, and every lot inside is different.
Who lives here
The ward's median age is 38.4, just below Toronto's 39.6. The largest age cohort is 30-to-39-year-olds at 22.1%, well above the citywide 16.6%, and 40-to-49-year-olds (14.8%) also exceed the Toronto share (13.0%). People in their 20s (14.8%) sit just below the Toronto average (15.5%), and young children aged 0–9 (8.7%) are slightly below the citywide 9.1%. The profile points to a working-age adult population concentrated in the 30s, consistent with the ward's 73% working-age share (Toronto: 70%).
What that means for a sixplex — and what it doesn’t
The six-unit framework applies to eligible detached-house lots — not semis or townhouses, which can still add up to four units under the city-wide multiplex rules. So the raw material that matters here is the ward’s detached-house stock, read lot by lot. That is exactly where the real questions begin, because none of the ward-level numbers above can tell you what a specific lot will carry.
Being in Ward 9 means the six-unit framework may apply to an eligible detached lot here, subject to the zoning by-law and applicable law. It does not mean six units fit, or that the building is otherwise compliant or pencils. The same lot-by-lot gates apply here as everywhere:
- Lot geometry. Frontage and depth, minus setbacks, set the buildable envelope. On a narrow lot a full sixplex may not fit; some sites instead support a smaller main-building multiplex plus a qualifying garden or laneway suite — a different legal and financing object, under separate rules and approvals.
- Overlays, heritage, and specific zoning. The ward is the boundary; the actual zoning, heritage designations, and overlays run lot by lot and can quietly cap what you build.
- Trees, easements, servicing. A protected tree, a registered easement, or a servicing constraint can constrain the design, add cost, or reduce the unit count — long before price is the issue.
- What’s in the ground. On any lot with an existing or former structure, environmental status is unknown until it’s investigated. Real cost, real gate.
A qualified zoning review on the specific lot is step one; where the ward map, the by-law and a professional review differ, rely on the current by-law, official City mapping and qualified planning/legal advice — not the ward map.
How you’d actually evaluate a lot here
The sequence is the same in every one of the nine wards: confirm the lot can carry six units on paper (geometry), confirm the market supports the rents (closed-lease evidence, not asking prices), and confirm the numbers pencil at a price you can actually pay. It runs lot by lot, not ward by ward — that lot-level due diligence is what determines whether a sixplex is actually buildable.
This is one of nine ward posts. Start with the overview: Where you can build a sixplex in Toronto — the nine as-of-right wards. New to the financing side? Our CMHC primer covers the mechanics, no signup to watch.