Hamilton Corktown Plaza | 91.43m | 27s | Slate | Core Architects

KingJames said:
I see in the variance that they are pushing for lower due to sales (60% of Phase 1 units sold but with only 9% of parking spaces sold along with them)..Good to see they have a solid number of housing units sold, wonder what those parking spaces are going for, perhaps that might be the reason they are not being added to the unit purchases, or maybe , as they are advocating, just not the demand to have so many stalls.
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Parking is expensive to build underground. If they charge buyers, people will often opt to not get parking. That's why reduced parking minimums are so important. They reduce the cost for developers to build housing, and allows developments to be viable.
 
Chris R. said:
Parking is expensive to build underground. If they charge buyers, people will often opt to not get parking. That's why reduced parking minimums are so important. They reduce the cost for developers to build housing, and allows developments to be viable.
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You can see the cause and effect, sell parking spots at higher price point, don't get uptake, make case to lower parking ratio, produce less spots, save some cash in the build. At least with this method the City gets some visibility on parking spot demand by unit purchasers. Let's see if they allow the variance.
 
KingJames said:
You can see the cause and effect, sell parking spots at higher price point, don't get uptake, make case to lower parking ratio, produce less spots, save some cash in the build. At least with this method the City gets some visibility on parking spot demand by unit purchasers. Let's see if they allow the variance.
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I suspect they will. I'm betting planning committee approves the draft changes to the parking requirements tomorrow, so this will essentially be a shoe-in for these changes. The draft changes are actually referenced in their minor variance request.

Reading through more of the document, it seems they have estimated the cost of each parking stall to be $124,000 each, which they surely cannot sell for that price.
 
Chronamut said:
..while they eat hot dogs to afford to pay for it.. or maybe they get food from a food bank, or don't have as nice things.. there is always an unseen price to pay..

when everything goes up but your wages don't you simply have to scale everything else back.

We used to call those hot dog mansions - people who could afford big houses to keep up with the joneses but as a result could only afford to eat hot dogs..
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Quality of life is worse, yes. But what I meant was that one way or another, people are managing to make higher mortgage payments. It seems that as long as employment doesn't tank, everyone will ride it out.
 
innsertnamehere said:

In for a variance to reduce the amount of required parking from 0.55/unit to 0.33/unit.
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So this was postponed due to the cyber attack against the city to today. However it seems like the request was tabled until a later date.

I wonder what this means for the project. I can see three theoretical options:

1) Since it was delayed, they figure they might as well wait until the parking requirements formally change to zero, and they can adjust without any conditions or reduced conditions. Or reduce further than 0.33 ratio. They'll have another month of sales to that may have further impacted their desire to adjust the parking ratio.

2) The project is on hold and so there is no point.

3) The project is seeing substantial changes.

Anyone have any other theories on why the adjustment might have been tabled?
 
Wondering if anyone knows more about this. I don't see it on either of the two next CoA agendas. I'm wondering, if the by-law changes pass, will this development even need to go to CoA or can they simply submit a new site plan with the reduced parking count?
 
The parking by-law has passed, FYI. The final by-law went to Council on April 10. If it is not appealed, they won't need variances.

I believe it will be appealed though as IIRC the West End Home Builders Association had issues with the electric vehicle charging provisions, and a few other landowners provided letters to council protesting certian aspects. They will likely appeal as a result, which will mean it will need to go to the OLT before going into force. The main provisions about reduced parking likely wont have any appellants and will probably be "released" by the OLT fairly quickly, but until that happens, it won't be in force, and a variance will be needed.

If Slate isn't intending to go to permit for a little while however, they may just decide to not bother with the variance and wait for the by-law to come into force.
 
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I will note that council annoyingly passed the by-law requiring all parking spaces for residential uses be EV charging spaces, including level-2 chargers, and that 50% of all commercial spaces be level-2 EV chargers. This means a commercial plaza with 100 parking spaces would have to provide 50 level-2 EV charging stations, which is frankly kind of absurd as that means you need a massive electrical supply to support such a huge number of level-2 outlets.

To make it worse, the by-law requires that the chargers be the SAE International J1772 standard, which basically every north american auto manufacturer is currently phasing out in favor of Tesla's NACS standard. So installing chargers which 90-95% of EVs on the market in 2-3 years use will require a variance.

It's stupid and there is a reason it'll be appealed. There is a reasonable expectation on this front for EV chargers I think, but it's far lower than 100% and 50%. Probably 100% rough-ins and 5-10% chargers in non-residential contexts is more appropriate, and remove the requirement for them to be a dead-standard outlet.
 
innsertnamehere said:
The parking by-law has passed, FYI. The final by-law went to Council on April 10. If it is not appealed, they won't need variances.

I believe it will be appealed though as IIRC the West End Home Builders Association had issues with the electric vehicle charging provisions, and a few other landowners provided letters to council protesting certian aspects. They will likely appeal as a result, which will mean it will need to go to the OLT before going into force. The main provisions about reduced parking likely wont have any appellants and will probably be "released" by the OLT fairly quickly, but until that happens, it won't be in force, and a variance will be needed.

If Slate isn't intending to go to permit for a little while however, they may just decide to not bother with the variance and wait for the by-law to come into force.
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Yea, that's what I heard from staff. From my understanding the West End Building Association were fine with it as long as it is made clear what "EV ready" meant. The city staff indicated they would discuss offline. I'll ask what's up with that though.

In terms of resident appeals, I assume they'll get tossed quickly, or.may not occur in general. People are generally supportive of these changes, and so maybe they won't bother. They said absolute earliest these could go into affect is May, so I suspect a 20 day appeal period? I could have sworn I saw that long. So May 8th to appeal as notice was given to the public April 19th.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Yes, 20 day appeal following notice. So May 8th.

The final by-law still fully requires EV chargers from the looks of it (and the old standard too!), so I imagine the development industry will appeal it:

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So speaking to someone in the industry, it seems the way it's worded means that any charging type can be used. This has apparently been confirmed by the city. As for the requirement for there to be electricity to each parking spot. Apparently Alectra has been brought in to discuss this issue with the by-law as well.

From what I understand the development industry is fine with these standards as long as the city understands the conditions for what that means in terms of feasibility, which it seems the city is will to play ball with.

I suspect we'd be waiting on resident appeals. If that happens.
 
If that’s the case I’m interested to hear how - because the way the bylaw is worded certainly doesn’t look that way. It requires residential parking spaces to be “electric vehicle parking spaces” which it then defines as Level 2 J1772 spaces. By my read an NACS level 2 charger, or a rough in or level 1 charger would not meet the standard.
 
innsertnamehere said:
If that’s the case I’m interested to hear how - because the way the bylaw is worded certainly doesn’t look that way. It requires residential parking spaces to be “electric vehicle parking spaces” which it then defines as Level 2 J1772 spaces. By my read an NACS level 2 charger, or a rough in or level 1 charger would not meet the standard.
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I think they just worded it badly. They also called them "elective" vehicles.
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