Toronto Ryerson Student Learning Centre | 50.59m | 8s | Ryerson University | Zeidler
- Thread starter Bogtrotter
- Start date
mdrame
New Member
There is wasteful spending and then there WASTEFUL SPENDING. Public art doesn't cost $122 million a pop; and neither do green spaces and streetscapes. This is to me a $30,000-umbrella like scandal on steroids.
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mdrame
New Member
Can I make a cheaper suggestion? How about installing security cameras instead? Or hire more security guards instead of wasting money on that building?
Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
Sorry, I fail to see how money is being wasted on an educational institution building fronting one of the most iconic portions of the most important street in the country.
mdrame
New Member
I do not know and neither do you. What I do know is that LED or not, the hydro expenses are far more than they would have been if the building was not illuminated.
For god's sake, not even privately owned properties are that illuminated. And that's because they have to be mindful of their expenses because those hydro expenses would be coming from their own pockets, whereas Ryerson management will be using our hard earned tax dollars to fund their extravagance.
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khris
Senior Member
Ryerson isn't privately owned?
You can not make comments like "outrageous" expenses related to their hydro bill if you don't actually know the amount is outrageous. Doesn't matter if I know. If you're going to make such claims, you should be able to back it up.
gabe
Senior Member
Yes. This is one of the busiest streets in the entire city and they are just going to stick a Starbucks at street level? This is going to be such a dead zone now, compared to what it was with Sam's back in the day.
When we toured back in the fall, we were told that the Starbucks was going into the lobby, one floor above street level. There is a space for it in there…
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AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Yes. This is one of the busiest streets in the entire city and they are just going to stick a Starbucks at street level? This is going to be such a dead zone now, compared to what it was with Sam's back in the day.
Do we know this is going to be Starbucks? In any case, it wasn't like Sam (or on that matter, the still extant HMV) are particularly great at inducing street level activity now. You might have better luck with a 24/7 cafe.
AoD
P23
Active Member
seems odd they wouldn't maximize retail considering the location
typezed
Active Member
I'm tight with money in my personal life. Overall such caution has probably been detrimental to me, but on the other hand it's the only thing that keeps me alive, since it's often harder for me to make money than it would be for many people. I do appreciate it when managers of public funds show some concern about the costs of their projects.
However it often seems to me that much fixation on the cost of things is hurting us as a society. I'm no accountant, so maybe my understanding is wanting, but it seems to me that money isn't a finite resource. It's numbers, a measure of movement of goods and services through the economy. We're always talking about how there isn't enough money, not to do basic maintenance, to cut the grass in the parks and pick up garbage, to repair roads and bridges, to build public transit. But we all lived through 2008, when the richest in the private sector were getting richer playing with a glut of magic money, and when the accounting failed to add up governments just swept in with a different pool of magic money to ensure that none of us became too fearful from seeing rich people become less rich. And then everyone went back to driving up equity and housing prices.
Is the real deficit in not enough money, not enough numbers, which would grow with greater participation in the economy, or is the real deficit in people not getting enough opportunity, experience and security in the job market. There seem to be a lot of surplus people who could be making greater contributions. Isn't our real deficit occuring when young people don't have the opportunity to build skills early in their working lives?
So some ambition in city building provides opportunity for people to grow their skill sets and become more valuable members of society. While being too tight with the wallet lessens opportunity and marginalizes people. We just came through a period of reactionary penny-pinching with the thoughtless former Mayor. That experience should give us some insight into what bullshit this approach can be. All that bluster about respecting the taxpayers only to end up paying much more for much less transit, for one example.
In the case of Ryerson the question may balance on whether they're meeting real needs with these buildings or engaging in empire-building for an institution that's attempting to up its profile against the more traditional universities. I don't know about the Image Centre except that I liked skating on the water feature beside it (not very busy compared to City Hall and Harbourfront, and fun to circle the rocks). This new building looks to provide some interesting unique spaces for students. It wouldn't be appropriate to build a featureless warehouse at this location or for this need. If it is well used by waves of students for the next several decades it will be worthy of the investment.
Take a walk around the city and instead of letting your blood boil over the cost of little things like lighting features, look with appreciation and gratitude at all we have to use and enjoy because previous generations took the chance, spent some money and, more importantly, did the sweatwork. We have some responsibilty to future generations to continue the investment in city building.
However it often seems to me that much fixation on the cost of things is hurting us as a society. I'm no accountant, so maybe my understanding is wanting, but it seems to me that money isn't a finite resource. It's numbers, a measure of movement of goods and services through the economy. We're always talking about how there isn't enough money, not to do basic maintenance, to cut the grass in the parks and pick up garbage, to repair roads and bridges, to build public transit. But we all lived through 2008, when the richest in the private sector were getting richer playing with a glut of magic money, and when the accounting failed to add up governments just swept in with a different pool of magic money to ensure that none of us became too fearful from seeing rich people become less rich. And then everyone went back to driving up equity and housing prices.
Is the real deficit in not enough money, not enough numbers, which would grow with greater participation in the economy, or is the real deficit in people not getting enough opportunity, experience and security in the job market. There seem to be a lot of surplus people who could be making greater contributions. Isn't our real deficit occuring when young people don't have the opportunity to build skills early in their working lives?
So some ambition in city building provides opportunity for people to grow their skill sets and become more valuable members of society. While being too tight with the wallet lessens opportunity and marginalizes people. We just came through a period of reactionary penny-pinching with the thoughtless former Mayor. That experience should give us some insight into what bullshit this approach can be. All that bluster about respecting the taxpayers only to end up paying much more for much less transit, for one example.
In the case of Ryerson the question may balance on whether they're meeting real needs with these buildings or engaging in empire-building for an institution that's attempting to up its profile against the more traditional universities. I don't know about the Image Centre except that I liked skating on the water feature beside it (not very busy compared to City Hall and Harbourfront, and fun to circle the rocks). This new building looks to provide some interesting unique spaces for students. It wouldn't be appropriate to build a featureless warehouse at this location or for this need. If it is well used by waves of students for the next several decades it will be worthy of the investment.
Take a walk around the city and instead of letting your blood boil over the cost of little things like lighting features, look with appreciation and gratitude at all we have to use and enjoy because previous generations took the chance, spent some money and, more importantly, did the sweatwork. We have some responsibilty to future generations to continue the investment in city building.
Tewder
Senior Member
Agreed... and an engaging and inspiring city (including the built form) provides a healthy and edifying environment to live in, which goes a long way to mitigating some of the more stressful aspects of living in close urban quarters... which may in fact lower health care and mental health care costs in the long run.
Respect for taxpayers should never be considered 'bluster', and it's a shame that Ford's populist posturing has co-opted and bastardized the notion of fiscal responsibility. We blame Ford - or the many who voted for him originally - for the ideal of wanting to run a tight ship (among other things) yet make the very same mistake they did in refusing to acknowledge the funding issue that was/is the real source of Toronto's financial woes. For this we need to be considering the culpability of other levels of government.
G.L.17
Senior Member
Freezing property taxes (essentially cutting them after inflation) does not indicate we have financial woes. What it says is we are not willing to tax enough to fund our needs. We can certainly say we don't want to spend, but there is no way anybody can say that the City of Toronto is not rich enough to build what is needed.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Thanks GL17 - I think the composition of the new SLC with 10 Dundas in the frame spoke to the drawbacks of looking at everything through an accounting lens very, very clearly.
AoD
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