ferusian

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City:
Toronto
306 GERRARD ST E
Ward 13: Toronto Centre

Development Applications

Project description:
Official Plan and zoning by-law amendment application to facilitate the redevelopment of the site for a 10-storey mixed-use building having a non-residential gross floor area of 4510 square metres and a residential gross floor area of 14,477 square metres. 191 rental dwelling units are proposed.

This site includes 306 Gerrard St E (a single-storey commercial building), 308 Gerrard St E (a vacant single-family house), and 310 Gerrard St E (a single-storey commercial building)

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306 GERRARD ST E
Ward 13: Toronto Centre

Development Applications

Project description:


This site includes 306 Gerrard St E (a single-storey commercial building), 308 Gerrard St E (a vacant single-family house), and 310 Gerrard St E (a single-storey commercial building)

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Proponent here is YSM or Yonge Street Mission.

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Architect is Diamond Schmitt

They did a community presentation back in November/21

Some slides from same, below:

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Note below, Retail on 2 levels

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Glad to see redevelopment of the north side of Gerrard in addition to the upcoming Regent Park Ph 4 and 5 on the south side of the street. So far this looks like a big improvement over what's currently there, while still retaining a lot of community benefits you wouldn't get if it had just been sold off to a regular developer. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
 
What an exciting project! I took a stroll past these properties a few weeks ago and thought to myself, gee, this would be a great site to intensify with affordable units given that they're all owned by YSM. And here we are! Amazing news. So far the design looks great. Will be nice to have the north side of Gerrard be a little bit more balanced once the final phases of Regent Park are built on the south side.
 
306 is a charming little building. Not the kind of thing that warrants preservation necessarily, but the lines, materials, and proportions are all excellent.

I wonder if it'd make sense to connect that private laneway through to Rolston, not so much for vehicular access but more as part of the pedestrian network. Even if Rolston was made one-way to help limit traffic on it?
 
New renderings are added to the database! Minor changes to the project detail.

The overall building height went from 36.0m to 42.10m.

The renderings are taken from both planning rationale and architectural plan via Rezoning submission:

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  • PLN - Planning Rationale - JAN 24  2022-44.jpg
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Is this project 100% affordable or are there market units mixed in?
I think it is 100% Affordable - but at different levels of Affordability. Some of the units will be Moderate Income / Workforce Housing.

Chart below is 2019 numbers from the City, but all of those numbers have increased since then.

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I think it is 100% Affordable - but at different levels of Affordability. Some of the units will be Moderate Income / Workforce Housing.

Chart below is 2019 numbers from the City, but all of those numbers have increased since then.

View attachment 385542

I find that interesting, and problematic.

I know a few people working security, and I would posit that the median wage is considerably lower than $44,000 per year.

Probably closer to $36,000

Which is essentially just above minimum; except that the average full-time guard works 44 paid hours per week as opposed to 40, and gets a certain number of Stat. holidays at 2.5x pay.

No question there are some better paying security jobs both private and public; but that seems an optimistic pay read to me. I wonder if includes armed guards?

The lower two tiers read as both being minimum wage, the difference being scheduled hours of work.

It speaks again to the notion that while there is certainly a housing affordability issue, there is also an income isssue. Both in terms of full-time employment opportunities (and/or guaranteed minimum hours); as well as the hourly rate of pay.

To put this another way, if Ontario had Seattle's minimum wage, adjusted to Canadian Dollars, no one working full-time would earn less than $43,000 per year.

Which would empower alot more people, especially those coupled or otherwise sharing accommodation to find somewhere decent to live.

Of course we also need to talk about minimum shift lengths and guaranteed weekly hours.
 
It speaks again to the notion that while there is certainly a housing affordability issue, there is also an income isssue. Both in terms of full-time employment opportunities (and/or guaranteed minimum hours); as well as the hourly rate of pay.
Rent_and_Affordabilty_202009_HousingTO_PLAN.png

The City indexes their model(s) every few years, both on the INCOME bands - and on the RENT bands.
 
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The City indexes their model(s) every few years, both on the INCOME bands - and on the RENT bands.

Right, we can nit-pick how accurate the income stats are.............

But...irrespective of that, they are too low.

We can't only address housing, we must address income; they both require intervention.
 

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