Toronto Mirvish Village (Honest Ed's Redevelopment) | 85.04m | 26s | Westbank | Henriquez Partners

Northern Light said:
Sure; but that's not a function of the housing form of low density, that's lifestyle and family size
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Leaving everything else aside… yes: that’s right. These neighbourhoods are being occupied by fewer, richer people every year, and that will continue to be the case until apartment buildings are allowed
 
UtakataNoAnnex said:
...I'm pretty sure mowing down all those heritage structures to get to those density quotas is not the way to do it.
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To be clear though, I am not opposed to converting a lot of these dwellings into affordable apartments including rooming houses. Or even adding residential extensions to them. And The City can start with the low hanging fruit of frat houses first for the /high fives here...
 
Seems all a bit off topic, but just to add my two-cents, these are some of the most dense neighbourhoods in North America. We're seriously discussing clear cutting 100-150 year old buildings to make already dense areas more dense all while suburbanites with 50' frontages are laughing in there 10x less dense neighbourhoods while their services are being subsidized by these properties (at least the multiplex properties, but likely the SDHs too).
 
RitsmaCW said:
Seems all a bit off topic, but just to add my two-cents, these are some of the most dense neighbourhoods in North America. We're seriously discussing clear cutting 100-150 year old buildings to make already dense areas more dense all while suburbanites with 50' frontages are laughing in there 10x less dense neighbourhoods while their services are being subsidized by these properties (at least the multiplex properties, but likely the SDHs too).
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"Clear cutting" is not what would happen. Nobody is going to send in bulldozers to the whole neighbourhood. It's about not legally restricting intensification near existing infrastructure, which would occur gradually/organically over time as the market would dictate. Most buildings would remain in place for decades to come and certainly there are some individual structures that deserve to be protected.

Case in point: there was a beautiful 100-ish year old building on a large corner lot my parents neighbourhood in Roncy/High Park. The family wanted a bigger house, and they were legally and easily able to completely raze that house and build a brand new bigger modern house on the lot. If they had wanted to turn that same lot into a 3-4 storey apartment building, it would have been illegal and required years of legal and bureaucratic wrangling that would have significantly increased the costs, most likely making it financially unviable. That is the potential zoning reform advocates are trying to unlock.

EDIT to add: And nobody wants to let those suburban lots off the hook, but in the immediate future they are less well served by transit.
 
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The annex is one of the neighbourhoods best served by transit in the continent, and it’s a travesty that our planning policies actively prevent people from living there unless you’re rich. There is, of course, a beautiful collection of mid sized apartment buildings in the annex which add greatly to the neighbourhood (and are some of the only affordable-ish options) but those would all be illegal to build today.
 
RitsmaCW said:
Seems all a bit off topic, but just to add my two-cents, these are some of the most dense neighbourhoods in North America. We're seriously discussing clear cutting 100-150 year old buildings to make already dense areas more dense all while suburbanites with 50' frontages are laughing in there 10x less dense neighbourhoods while their services are being subsidized by these properties (at least the multiplex properties, but likely the SDHs too).
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Nobody is discussing that, and definitely not seriously. But yes, the suburbs (near and far) need to get denser too. These neighborhoods have great transit, though, which our suburbs don’t.
 
milkycontent said:
"Clear cutting" is not what would happen. Nobody is going to send in bulldozers to the whole neighbourhood. It's about not legally restricting intensification near existing infrastructure, which would occur gradually/organically over time as the market would dictate. Most buildings would remain in place for decades to come and certainly there are some individual structures that deserve to be protected.
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IF someone calls the entire area ' a waste' you can't suggest they want modest, organic change.

That is advocacy for wholesale distraction.

Words have meanings and ought to be chosen carefully.

milkycontent said:
Case in point: there was a beautiful 100-ish year old building on a large corner lot my parents neighbourhood in Roncy/High Park. The family wanted a bigger house, and they were legally and easily able to completely raze that house and build a brand new bigger modern house on the lot. If they had wanted to turn that same lot into a 3-4 storey apartment building, it would have been illegal and required years of legal and bureaucratic wrangling that would have significantly increased the costs, most likely making it financially unviable. That is the potential zoning reform advocates are trying to unlock.

EDIT to add: And nobody wants to let those suburban lots off the hook, but in the immediate future they are less well served by transit.
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Let's be clear.

As of right now, 4-plexes are legal, rooming houses and legal laneway suites are legal, and secondary suites are legal; and all of these are present in the Annex.

Let's concede w/o any equivocation that only 2 of those were legal for the last decade, the other 2 were made legal in the last 1-3 years.

Still this notion that hyper-restrictive zoning remains is entirely incorrect, and it's about to get a whole lot looser.

evandyk said:
The annex is one of the neighbourhoods best served by transit in the continent, and it’s a travesty that our planning policies actively prevent people from living there unless you’re rich.
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100% not true. The neigbhourhood is full of rental apartments, secondary suites, laneway homes, apartments over stores and more. The notion that this is some area that is entirely bourgeois is not supported by the facts.

evandyk said:
here is, of course, a beautiful collection of mid sized apartment buildings in the annex which add greatly to the neighbourhood (and are some of the only affordable-ish options) but those would all be illegal to build today.
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Let's be clear, rooming houses are legal, secondary suites are legal, laneway houses are legal, 4-plexes are legal, and within a few months six-storey apartments will be as well.

But to have these appear holus bolus is to destroy what makes the area one you want to live in now.

And, as I have repeatedly pointed out, and many have repeatedly ignored, brand new apartments/condos will not be any more affordable per ft2 than what exists now and truthfully, probably less.

So your solution either sustains or exacerbates the problem.

*****

We need to be 100% clear 350ft2 boxes are not acceptable living conditions; and the solution to housing costs exceeding incomes is not to build more of them. It's to raise incomes and supress demand, and free-up captive supply (Air BnB et al.) The end.
 
AlexBozikovic said:
Leaving everything else aside… yes: that’s right. These neighbourhoods are being occupied by fewer, richer people every year, and that will continue to be the case until apartment buildings are allowed
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Didn't that recent zoning change to allow larger buildings, apply to all areas of the city?
I don't know much about it, but the impression I got was that low rise multi-unit buildings could now be integrated into any neighbourhood, or do I have that wrong?
 
Northern Light said:
IF someone calls the entire area ' a waste' you can't suggest they want modest, organic change.

That is advocacy for wholesale distraction.

Words have meanings and ought to be chosen carefully.
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I did choose my words carefully, which is why I called it a "wasted opportunity" and not a "wasted area"!
 
citylights said:
In passing by earlier today, all of Ellis Don’s signage has been removed and replaced with Icon West Construction signs (which is Westbank’s internal CM).

Now, of course there’s a million possible reasons for this change — maybe they were always meant to take over at this stage.

View attachment 517907
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ED walked off the job two months ago...
 
ProjectEnd said:
When you're doing a job for someone, the expectation is, traditionally, that you get paid. Maybe I'm just old fashioned though...
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I don't think of you as old fashioned PE; more post-modern with a bit of an edge.

That motif though still works with the idea of getting paid for your work.
 
Northern Light said:
Still this notion that hyper-restrictive zoning remains is entirely incorrect, and it's about to get a whole lot looser.

100% not true. The neighbourhood is full of rental apartments, secondary suites, laneway homes, apartments over stores and more. The notion that this is some area that is entirely bourgeois is not supported by the facts.
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I know the neighbourhood has rental apartments. I've lived in one. I know it has condos that don't cost $1.5M. I owned one, though I couldn't afford one with space for a kid, so we had to move. I know you can now build laneway suites. I'm in the middle of building one right now (not quite in the Annex, but close) and hope to move in sometime early next year.

The Walmer Rd apartment was built a long time ago. The other two are things that have only started to arrive in the Annex recently. Opportunities that are finally being built after years of stuff like that being impossible to build in places like the Annex. And we need more.

I am not sure what the description "bourgeois" entails exactly. The average home price in the Annex is almost $3M now, though the students living on Walmer and St. George probably do bring the median incomes down, though it would still be near the top of any list of Toronto neighbourhoods.
 
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