There is no Richmond Street, no Richmond park and no Richmond school anywhere in Etobicoke. The name on this pocket of streets belongs to a subdivision and a residents association, and to little else on paper.
Richmond Gardens sits north of Eglinton Avenue West, between Kipling Avenue and Islington Avenue, with The Westway along the top. Wincott Drive is the spine, and about fifty short crescents, courts and places run off it. It is not an official neighbourhood. The City's statistical neighbourhood here is Willowridge-Martingrove-Richview, and the older district name is Richview.
The name is thinly documented. A Richmond Gardens Ratepayers and Residents Association re-formed in August 2015, and it appears again in 2019 coverage of a high-density proposal on Eglinton. Past that there is very little, including any record of who coined it. Some mapping calls the pocket Richview Gardens.
Dairy farms until 1956
The land was Richview, one of Etobicoke's farming communities. Settlement began in 1818, and before the Richview post office opened in 1852 the crossroads was called Kit's Corners. It stayed dairy country until expropriation ended the last operations in 1956, and the houses went up on working farmland within a few years. In 1960 the 1888 Richview church was expropriated for Highways 401 and 427, though its graveyard survived in the interchange lands.
The expressway that was never built
Eglinton Avenue West is abnormally wide along the bottom of this neighbourhood, with grassy open land beside it. That is not landscaping and it is not a hydro corridor. In the 1960s Metro Toronto assembled the land for the Richview Expressway, which was never built.
Sixty years on, that abandoned right of way is why a light rail line can go in here without wholesale expropriation. The width of the corridor, Metrolinx says, is what allows stations at Martin Grove, Islington and Royal York to be built north of Eglinton rather than in the roadway. The oldest planning scar here turned into the most useful land in it.
What is being built under Eglinton
There is no walkable subway. Islington station on Line 2 is about 4.8 kilometres away, so everyone buses. The 37 Islington and 45 Kipling reach their stations in well under fifteen minutes, and the 32 Eglinton West currently links Mount Dennis station to Renforth station, so residents already ride the alignment their LRT will replace. Downtown is a bus, Line 2 and usually a Line 1 transfer, roughly three quarters of an hour to Bloor-Yonge.
The Eglinton Crosstown West Extension runs 9.2 kilometres west from Mount Dennis to Renforth with seven new stations: Renforth, Martin Grove-Eglinton, Kipling-Eglinton, Islington-Eglinton, Royal York-Eglinton, Scarlett and Jane-Eglinton, four of them underground. Two sit on this pocket's edge. Islington-Eglinton station is planned at 4530 Eglinton Avenue West, on the northwest corner of Islington and Eglinton. That is this pocket's southeast corner, about 840 metres from the middle of it. Kipling-Eglinton station is planned at 4760 Eglinton Avenue West, at the southwest corner.
Construction began in July 2021, and the western twin tunnels were finished in June 2024. Excavation of the four station boxes began in July 2026. Metrolinx publishes no opening date, so I will not invent one. blogTO reported in February 2026 that service is not expected until the early 2030s. Transit schedules move. Plan around the construction, not the opening.
Curved streets, and nobody splits a lot
Farming ended in 1956, Richview Collegiate went up in 1957 and the library opened in 1966, which brackets the subdivision at the late 1950s through the 1960s. About three quarters of the housing in the wider City neighbourhood predates 1981, but that figure includes its apartment towers. This pocket is the detached half. The street pattern is the tell: curved crescents feeding one collector and ending in cul-de-sacs, planning meant to keep traffic out.
No published record names the builder, the plan of subdivision or the lot frontages, so I will not invent them. Going back to 2017, every application on these streets in the City's Committee of Adjustment file has been a minor variance. Not one has been an application to sever a lot. In an Etobicoke where sever-and-build-two is routine, that is unusual. What happens instead is one-off rebuilding, and in February 2026 a garden suite on Wincott Drive.
One plaza, and a fight over it
Richview Plaza, at Wincott Drive and Eglinton, is the only walkable retail here: Pet Valu, M&M Food Market, Rexall and a TD branch. It is also the live planning fight. A 2018 rezoning proposed 13 storeys. By 2023 that had become 24 and 29 storeys, and a site plan the same year proposed 22, 31 and 13 storeys with partial retention of the plaza. The rezoning is under appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal, a petition of more than 1,600 signatures asks Council to refuse the two tall buildings, and the file sits in Ward 2, Etobicoke Centre.
The Richview library, 630 metres away on Islington Avenue, opened in October 1966 as Etobicoke's regional library. Green space is local and small, and there is no City community centre, arena or pool in the pocket. Schools serving the area include Central Etobicoke High School and St. Marcellus Catholic School on Denfield Street, plus two French-language elementary schools, one with CS Viamonde and one with CSC MonAvenir. Attendance boundaries change, and this is a list of nearby schools rather than a catchment map. Confirm any address with the board.
What I tell buyers to check
Aluminum wiring, and the insurance behind it. The Electrical Safety Authority says homes built from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s may have aluminum branch wiring, safe only where the connections and terminations were done properly. Have a licensed electrical contractor assess it and issue the ESA Certificate of Acceptance. Some insurers will not write or renew without one, so bind coverage before your conditions expire.
The rest of the 1960s list. Ask your inspector to look for asbestos in vermiculite insulation, duct wrap and floor tile before any demolition, and to camera-scope the drain, since cast iron and clay lines of this era are at or past service life. Check the panel amperage and the clear basement height before assuming a legal suite is feasible.
Assume years more construction on Eglinton. Metrolinx's notice for Eglinton near Kipling covers realigning the road to build the station box, from 20 July to 31 December 2026, with a lane closed each way and three TTC stops moved. blogTO reports the realignment is called temporary but will persist through the station's construction. It is a real cost now and a real advantage later.
The open land on Eglinton is not permanent. That green strip is the abandoned expressway right of way and the LRT is going into it, so do not pay for it as a view. Two provincial Transit-Oriented Community sites also flank the future Islington-Eglinton station, and provincial sites can move outside ordinary municipal process.
Comparables here are genuinely thin. About fifty short streets, low turnover, and a wide spread between an original 1960s house and a full rebuild on the same crescent. Ask for street-level comparables.
Listen to the site, twice. Highway 401 is under two kilometres northwest and Pearson is 6.3 kilometres due west, which puts this pocket roughly along the east-west runway alignment. I have not seen noise contours for these streets, so stand on the lot on a weekday morning and again in the evening.