This is a topic that's long fascinated me. I agree w/ NL that there are some ppl in the City who care, but it comes down to priority and what takes precedence. Which leads me to PE's excellent point about too much focus from city staff on stepbacks, heights, shadows, and not enough on ground floor experience, materiality, etc. This has been my experience with city staff for over a decade. The city should take a very active approach in
helping make the ground floor conditions and experience as great as possible. And they need to hold developers feet here to the fire, because if developers had their way... they will build whatever is profitable, which is not really retail.
A few considerations:
No question that there is a need for changing the way loading is handled, I take no issue w/that. I merely take issue w/the idea that this is mostly on City Planning.
Solid Waste and ECS impose standards that individual planners may be able to technically override, but they may put themselves at some professional jeopardy is so doing, and may expose the City to some liability as well if things don't work out well because the City's own subject experts were ignored/over ruled.
Yes, the standards need to be changed, but let's not just dump that on City Planning as if Planners went to school or joined the civil service dreaming of how to accommodate large garbage trucks in new builds. It ain't so.
- Amenity - City needs to stop it with the amenity. Completely controlled by them. Let the developer choose if and how much amenity to provide. Often times it gets thrown in the ground floor, taking away space from retail
Agreed. Mandating amenity space requirements smacks of micro managing and imposes both capital costs and future maintenance fees costs/higher rents on developments. However well intentioned, this is a poor idea.
However, I do feel it should be offset by increasing parkland provision requirements. These are simply far too low. But the focus should also be to mandate off-site acquisition or to take cash-in-lieu for the City to do same rather than mandate/accept micro-parks w/little or utility.
The traditional 10% (of site area) mandate was really developed for subdivisions where 10% of a 100 acre site gets you a 10 acre park of quality at the centre of the community. One that can provide for an outdoor pool, a ball diamond, a soccer pitch, a large playground, a natural area, picnic space and have a bit of room leftover.
10% of sites that are often under 1 acre makes no sense whatsoever. Even worse though is that the needed parkland often serves a large population than the 10 acre park would have been needed for in times past.
The provision should be on a per unit basis, not lot area.
- Gaudy lobbies - this is almost all on the developer. I get why they like illustrious lobbies, but totally unnecessary. Virtually every new building along Charles could have included retail at base. Instead they have unnecessarily large lobbies
Agreed. Perhaps the City could cap lobby area on a per resident/unit basis?
- Services/utilities - transformers, gas meters, louvres, intake/exhaust vents, etc. These all need to go somewhere and don't help retail. This is a combination of building code, city reqs and developer choices. For developers that don't care, you'll see this stuff thrown wherever. Some of the new builds around church/dundas are notorious for this
Yup. Here, a requirement should be:
1) These must be placed to face a rear-laneway access wherever such exists / is practical.
2) Failing the above, there must be a requirement to mitigate the appearance of same, there are access requirements that may limit use of landscaping, but movable screens may be an option.
- Heritage - protecting certain heritage buildings (that have no merit being protected) is sterilizing not only development but any potential future retail user. The heritage retention as part of a redevelopment also adds to cost - which could be recouped in certain pockets in downtown, but not necessarily at Gerrard and Main St.
Yes there has been some over-use of heritage protection, largely to block development, notably on Danforth and in Midtown.
That said, for every over-reach, there's lots of under-reach. Where kinda/sorta protecting a facade hardly seems adequate, and where cantilevers over the top of the heritage, by the new build greatly diminish the heritage resource. Sometimes, protection should be absolute (you just can't build here, period). Or more effective (no cantilevers allowed)
- Stepbacks/Cantilevers - each stepback or cantilever can introduce a transfer slab and columns that jeopardize the usability, open span space and height of retail uses. The city needs to rethink their focus here.
In fairness the City has already relaxed the angular plane and demonstrated through multiple projects a willingness and even desire to look at fewer setbacks.
Cantilevers are almost always from the development side, trying to claim additional space they ought not to and can't nearer to grade.
So this focus from city staff on stepbacks, heights and resulting shadow impacts for 20 minutes on a sidewalk are really at the expense of a great ground floor
Disagree. I don't see any negative connection here; and indeed, I'll go further, I think a sunny sidewalk, with healthy greenery creates a vibrant, desirable walking and patio destination, where a shadowed zone w/little tree growth promotes sterility and decay.
Imagine if they instead put greater time and effort into how to make the best ground floor, and let a few buildings go taller and no podium/stepback.
No podium/setback leads to lots of shadow, dead/no trees or flowers, and high wind, a disaster for retail.
Yes, the City should do more to impose quality retail, but taller/no setbacks would be less than effective at that, and indeed I would argue would be a step backwards.
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I've posted extensively on ways to improve retail conditions before. But I'll cover just a bit here.
1) Narrow, deep units are preferable to wide and shallow. Most businesses require shelving for back of house storage and for product display, if the business is 50% glazing, then window film will go up and the shelving against the windows. Ugh!
2) Retail unit size caps. An absolutely cap of 30,000ft2 (to encourage more grocery stores rather than fewer); and where promoting smaller retail, setting unit size caps at or below 2,000ft2.
3) Mandating reduced use of glazing at-grade, there is a need for some solid texture to break up big blobs of cool, glass. Its important to be able to differentiate one unit from the next at a distance with the eye.
4) Provision of proper space for a visible signage band above the retail entrances, with visibility of same from a distance.
5) If you want patios, the building and the sidewalk need an integrated design model for optimum function, you don't try to figure how you would do it after construction.
6) 'Weather Protection' overhangs are almost always a bad thing. They impair retail visibility, and make space feel 'less safe' to the vulnerable (women, in particular)
7) No backlit box signs. They're ugly and add no value.
