HousingNowTO
Senior Member
100% Agreed, but the process was mostly driven by the "progressives" on Council... and there's nobody willing to champion the "Redevelop TCHC sites Faster" policy on Council. It is Political-Kryptonite.
- Thread starter Northern Light
- Start date
AlbertC
Superstar
Online community consultation meeting is tomorrow, June 10, 2021 from 6:30 and 8:30 pm.
Lots of commentary in this article from Councillor Brad Bradford, the technical lead from HousingNowTO, and a local area rep:
beachmetro.com
Lots of commentary in this article from Councillor Brad Bradford, the technical lead from HousingNowTO, and a local area rep:
Online community meeting on June 10 to hear Housing Now's plans for Queen and Coxwell include building heights of 18 and 12 storeys – Beach Metro Community News
By ALAN SHACKLETON An online community consultation meeting on plans for a mixed-income, mixed-use development on Queen Street East just east of Coxwell
beachmetro.com
HousingNowTO
Senior Member
Public-Consultation meeting is now underway...
HousingNowTO
Senior Member
Some of our volunteers visited the site this morning - new info BOARDS are up from the City....
Northern Light
Superstar
Interesting observations from Twitter on this one...........
allengeorge
Senior Member
The general problem with appeal to authority is that:
1. it’s lazy (since you don’t have to articulate the strengths of your position)
2. it’s simplistic and often lacks context (you can quote something without considering tradeoffs)
Jane Jacobs obviously had a lot of insight, changed the way people think about planning, and made the community more involved - those are all great things. But, her ideas aren’t sacrosanct, and every generation has to make different tradeoffs for the challenges being faced.
1. it’s lazy (since you don’t have to articulate the strengths of your position)
2. it’s simplistic and often lacks context (you can quote something without considering tradeoffs)
Jane Jacobs obviously had a lot of insight, changed the way people think about planning, and made the community more involved - those are all great things. But, her ideas aren’t sacrosanct, and every generation has to make different tradeoffs for the challenges being faced.
Northern Light
Superstar
Also worth adding.......If the St. Lawrence neighbourhood would be seen in many ways as Jane Jacobs-friendly ......
Are we building another two dozen of these around Toronto?
*****
Where the answer is no........and where we choose not to check population growth, it will get accommodated in some other way (height)
That said, if we could have had a mixture of political will on this site; and better processes in relation to TCHC renewal; such that we included the footprint of the Harveys, the existing TCHC building, and the current
low rise health clinic, we probably could have (whether or not we should have) shaved off a few storeys on the tall building; and still delivered more rental and more affordable rental housing than the current scheme.
Which is to say, while I take no real issue w/the height here; I'm theoretically willing to hear some objections (to a point).
But there must be a will in the community, and in the City (Council and Planning) to push the alternatives that meet the same need.
*****
Just look at this massive, 2-storey block to the immediate east of this site:
We're getting new music venue out of this..........but really, this site should clearly be so much more dense.
At a mere six-storeys (with a setback after 4 on Queen); and while hiving off roughly the middle 1/4 of the site as park (in order to allow future daylighting of Small's Creek)......you could still get 450 new housing units on site, very conservatively.
Yes, the City would have to expropriate, no, I wouldn't delay the existing project.......but the high-level concept could have included what would be built there.
The Zoning could have been changed at the same time.
The community could have been given a choice..........Mostly six, 4 on Queen (with a modest setback), and 8 on Eastern across the whole site.......
Or 18 in a couple spots..........in exchange for no objections or appeals across the extended area.
Again, I'm not stuck on the lower height.........merely pointing out it's possible to deliver more of a Jacobs-like solution, if you are determined to build high enough, on enough sites.
HousingNowTO
Senior Member
Here is the FULL article on last-week's public-meeting...
HousingNowTO
Senior Member
Here's the full VIDEO if any of you wanna play the "Jane Jacobs" Drinking-Game during the public-comments..!
HousingNowTO
Senior Member
As to the HARVEY's land question --- there are some details below. Also, there is apparently some "bad-blood" between the HARVEY's owner and City Hall from the 1990's when the City BLOCKED their attempt to get a Drive-Thru on that site.
Apparently, "REVENGE is a dish best served Cold"... (*or with a side of Onion-Rings).
Apparently, "REVENGE is a dish best served Cold"... (*or with a side of Onion-Rings).
Northern Light
Superstar
From that Twitter thread, I quite like this:
To me, this is the same idea I'm expounding above, if probably more tongue-in-cheek.
Which is to be sincerely open with residents who object..........by saying there is no scenario in which this amount of affordable housing (or more) will not be built here, or on adjacent lands.
So if you want to take away height, it's incumbent on you (the objectors) to offer an alternative, with at least as much affordable housing. (at the same cost or no more than a rounding error's difference)
If you want to do that by adding land and density on adjacent properties (and pay for the cost of acquisition) or donate to the development such that fewer market units are required............then the rest of us (and the City) are listening.
Northern Light
Superstar
Ridiculous site for a drive-thru (I confess, I would prefer to ban drive-thrus outright....but still)
*****
Looking at your post above..................I have a question, what do you consider a reasonable per unit land acquisition cost?
I was looking at the site as ~8000ft2; if you could graft it on to the rest of the building footprint such that it didn't need its own garbage area or elevators..........
(assuming six floors, 5 residential) I was thinking you might get 50 units which would be about 120k per unit cost. (based on the appraisal you noted)
Are my numbers way off?
Or is that just an excessive price
HousingNowTO
Senior Member
There's a 4-Metre set-back and a 6-Storey height-limit on the Queen Street side, so you likely don't get that many units per floor (Storeys 2-6).
I would think that you would likely only get another ~5-ish units per floor, rather than 10-units per floor... but you would get more units in the 8-12th floor too (*before the TOWER-GUIDELINE floor-plate limits kick-in).That said, at 120K per unit (using your numbers) it would be very hard to make any of them "Affordable-Housing" rental-units for 99-years.
Attachments
HousingNowTO
Senior Member
FULL FLOOR-PLATE (from floor-1 thru 6)
MID FLOOR-PLATE (from floor-8 thru 12)
Tower FLOOR-PLATE (from floor-13 thru 17)
HousingNowTO
Senior Member
As expected, Pages and Pages of NIMBY letters in this issue of the BEACH METRO NEWS...
LINK - https://issuu.com/beachmetronews/docs/issu_beachmetro-21-06-29
LINK - https://issuu.com/beachmetronews/docs/issu_beachmetro-21-06-29