UtakataNoAnnex
Superstar
...chop, chop!
Toronto Union Park | 303.33m | 71s | Oxford Properties | Hariri Pontarini
- Thread starter Conrad Black
- Start date
I get that you are repeating your point because you sincerely believe it, while more seasoned UrbanToronto members are trying to tell you that things do not happen the way you are describing it. There's been some attempt to explain it to you, but maybe not the whole process, the reason for being the whole process is long and complicated, involving many players, and a full explanation would take more time than anyone's been willing to take so far.
There's no-one at City Hall who sits around waiting for the next submission to come in just so that they can take scissors to it. Every building is scrutinized against a whole pile of planning rules and guidelines. These differ depending on how each block is zoned, how close it is to major transit, how tall/dense its neighbours are, if it would shadow parkland, if the site is affected by helicopter flight paths, if it borders an active rail corridor, if there is industry nearby that is loud or produces offending emissions, if it's near the top of the bank of a ravine, etc. etc. etc.
That's the planning rules. Equally important for projects, if not more so, are the market conditions. Nobody builds if they don't think they can make money on their project: there has to be a market for what they are selling or leasing, and that goes for condo suites or rental units or office space or retail space. The larger a project is, the more uses there may be in a project, the more market segments it has to satisfy and the longer it takes to get everything ready to go, and then get built.
In this case, this is a very significant site in the downtown, with substantial buildings already on it as a complicating factor, right beside the Union Station Rail Corridor in an area where the City has identified a need for more public space, and where the developer originally proposed to provide it (by bridging over the rail corridor). Doing that is incredibly expensive and requires both a robust market and cooperation by other parties, including the City.
When Oxford first proposed two office towers here, there was significant demand for new office space in Toronto: a bunch of developers saw that and half a dozen other projects of similar scale were proposed at the same time, all hoping to lure corporations to relocate to their project. Then COVID happened, and work-from-home happened, and demand for office space dwindled. With the current return-to-office currently happening, demand is on the upswing again, but it's not there to the degree that it was pre-pandemic. There are still a pile of developers who, if they were to secure enough tenancy, would be able to start on their big office tower project soon enough, but it's the kind of thing that's only going to happen on a one-at-a-time basis until there's much more demand again.
Oxford have (obvious to many others here) given up on the grandiose plans for Union Park themselves, (including no expensive rail deck park now), and have been scaling things back, proposing something they think they can build here, on the west half of the site at least. Their own next-office-tower ambitions have shifted to their 30 Bay Street site where they'd like to build a tower they've dubbed The HUB. That one appears to be Toronto's most likely next office tower start once they have a major tenant.
None of that is because someone at City Hall has a pair of scissors.
You can respond, but, don't make your response "no, it's the people at city hall, don't give me that bs" or any form of that sentence again, because if you do, it will be considered trolling. Most people reading this thread already consider what you are doing to be trolling. Read up in our Rules of Conduct about that if you're not certain what is meant by that, but essentially, don't just keep repeating the same thing in the threads, especially if it's not backed up by anything real, or your account on UrbanToronto will be in jeopardy.
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Collingwoodbuildinglover
Senior Member
You mistake what the counselors are capable of and what market conditions will do to my knowledge the city never asked Oxford to change the designs as they did they made that decision as a business decision stop blaming government for what private industry is responsible for I have zero issue pointing out when the government screws up this isn't one of those cases
I'm not sure what to tell you beyond what I already did.
This is a discussion board where we try to learn from each other, not just ignore what others who have more experience say and instead just repeatedly blast the same thing again and again to beat the opposition into submission. Like I told you before, that kind of repetition is considered trolling, and we don't put up with it for very long around here.
Besides taking time to consider the kind of discussions we prefer to have on the UT Forum, you should take some time to learn how the Toronto planning system actually works. Read some planning reports. Read some of our front page stories. You're right that councillors stop some planning applications from being approved, and that others go ahead but may be shorter/smaller, etc., but not for the simple reasons that you're banging on about.
Initially, I'm giving you a week off from UrbanToronto before you get a chance to post again. When your account does reopen, your tone will need to change, or there will be another ban and it will be for longer. You can avoid all that by just coming back willing to discuss things, and willing to learn from others who have more experience with the planning system and UrbanToronto, instead of just yelling at us about how you're right and we don't know anything.
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