TOareaFan
Superstar
I read your very good summary on it and I think you and I are in agreement....there is absolutely nothing wrong with what is going on, or proposed, for the site in DT (although the "rush' is interesting as that piece of dirt crossed my desk several times over the past 20 years or so and nothing seemed to happen...leading to me making a bold prediction once that seemed to be coming true but now may not)....if you were whiteboarding what was needed and where Rogers should be, this is certainly what most would come up with.....it is "good".Yeah, I watched it too. I was hoping there would be a bit more discussion and questions from council, especially after the Williams Parkway sound wall item before it. MZOs should be rare events, and I don’t know why Rogers suddenly had a need to rush this.
But they had a strong endorsement from the Downtown BIA, from the New Brampton lobby group, and a briefing note that basically said “go for it.” Given the struggles to support the downtown core over the years, but now a flurry of development proposals (mostly residential), it’s not the location that would be controversial.
It’s above board, at least – it was in an open session of Council, with the staff briefing note made public (which is unusual).
But yeah, I would have liked more discussion on the Dixie Road lands.
As a near 50 year resident of Brampton who has never lived in the DT, though, the disrespect that anything not "DT" gets is just annoying.....as the DT site is the obvious logical conclusion that fits with a long term stated goal you could argue that "no discussion needed here" applied...but the Dixie site has never been talked about in terms of residential and the impact on streets/residents on Balmoral, Braemar, Birchbank will be noticeable....and yes, there is a long time before we get "unit counts" but the rezoning is gonna get done and by then the amount of community input will be limited. I suspect that the "rush" for this one is that the money brought in (either via a j/v or outright sale) from Rogers with the new zoning in place is what is going to be used to build the DT campus (and some).
I was also a bit confused by the one delegator who talked about building a new bus garage at the site....the city would be bidding against very stiff competition for that site and I am not sure the money is there. Q4 numbers are in and all metrics in industrial space continue to skyrocket.....availability rates are down to around 1.8%...national average rental rates are approaching $10.50 psf net (they only hit $10 for the first time in history in Q3) and cap rates are down and valuations are up. This will end up being, likely, one very large single (maybe two) tenant warehouse/logistics space.
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